President Donald Trump arrived in Dublin on Saturday, September 12, 2026, with two sons, a daughter-in-law, grandchildren and a golf tournament waiting on the far side of the country. One member of the family stayed home, and the president was happy to explain why.
Speaking to business leaders at the U.S. ambassador’s residence on the first day of a two-day visit, Trump was running through the list of representatives in the room when he came to First Lady Melania Trump.
“My wife is here in spirit. She’s watching right now,” Trump said.
The first lady had asked him to pass along a hello to people she is friendly with, he said, gesturing toward U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Edward Walsh and his wife, Lynn. The exchange that cracked up the room came next.
“I said, ‘Well, why don’t you come with me?’ She said, ‘Well, it’s a seven-hour trip. Maybe I’m not that friendly,'” Trump continued.
“I said, ‘Put on a Make America Great Again hat and come on. Let’s go.’ But, uh, she sends her regards.”
He stayed on family from there, turning to his son Donald Trump Jr., who did make the trip and who married Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas in May. “He’s calmed down so much, you know. It’s amazing,” Trump said. “No, it’s a good sign. He’s like a different human being. He had a lot of energy. Now he’s a little less energy. That’s a good thing.”
Who Went to Ireland Instead
Plenty of people did board the plane. Sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. came along, with a daughter-in-law and grandchildren. White House Chief of Protocol Monica Crowley made the trip, as did White House Appointments Secretary Natalie Harp, 35, who was among the group that shook hands with Irish President Catherine Connolly.
Connolly welcomed the president at an arrival ceremony, where he inspected an honor guard. She then handed him a set of gifts that included a volume by the late Irish poet Michael Longley containing the sonnet “Ceasefire.” Trump also met Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in Dublin before flying across the country to his golf resort on the Atlantic coast at Doonbeg, County Clare, for the Irish Open. The visit ran September 12-13.
The Truth Social Hat Comparison
The Make America Great Again hat line was not his first turn with headwear and his wife. In early July, he posted a side-by-side image on Truth Social of Melania Trump and former First Lady Hillary Clinton in similar hats. Melania’s photograph was her look from Trump’s 2025 inauguration; Clinton’s came from the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022. The president gave no explanation for the pairing. The post drew more than 12,000 likes and plenty of replies.
“Hillary was first lady 30 years ago, idiot. Let’s check in with Melania in 30 years and see if she can still pull off this outfit. Wonder who she’ll be married to then,” one user wrote on X.
He has reached for the comparison with other prominent women, too. During a live interview with Elon Musk on X on August 12, 2024, Trump said the TIME magazine cover portrait of Kamala Harris made her look “like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” then added: “Actually, she looked very much like our great first lady, Melania.”
Where the First Lady Has Been
An analysis published in August counted 38 days of public appearances by Melania Trump in 2026 through late July, a lighter pace than recent predecessors: Michelle Obama gave 130 speeches in her first 18 months in the role, and Jill Biden gave 43 speeches in a comparable period. The first lady, 56, has hardly been idle since that count closed — and she has a deadpan of her own.
On August 20, after a stretch out of public view, she walked into a White House Rose Garden event for her Fostering the Future initiative and opened with a line that got the crowd laughing. “I heard you missed me. Here I am,” she said. Fox Corporation and IndyCar each contributed $1 million for scholarships at Indiana University and Purdue University, bringing the program to 26 colleges and universities.
She stood with the president at the Pentagon on September 11 for the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks — the day before he left for Ireland.
And three days after the Dublin routine, on Tuesday, September 15, she turned up at Mountain View Elementary School in Jefferson, North Carolina, a rural Ashe County school that leans hard into artificial intelligence, robotics and engineering. “I think they need to learn we need to lead,” she said of the technology. “Of course they need to be vigilant as well. But this is our future.” She sat in on a group building chatbots to explore career ideas, watched the 3D printers run and took a turn steering the robotic arms. One 11-year-old student asked for a hug and got several.
Before leaving, she announced that her Be Best initiative would give 1,500 Ashe County students subscriptions to the AI learning platform StudyFetch and send 100 Jetson Nano Developer Kits to Mountain View and other district schools. A wall of the gym carried a hand-painted banner: “Welcome to Ashe County 1st Lady Melania Trump!” She was there in person, in a room full of robots — with no seven-hour flight required.
