Does she want you to leave the money on the night stand or the dresser??

White House silence on Melania stokes conspiracy theories

The first lady hasn't been seen in public since her release from the hospital after a routine procedure.

By ANNIE KARNI

She’s left the White House and moved back to New York City.

She’s cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller.

She’s holed up with the Obamas, working on a tell-all book about her husband — unless she had a secret nip and tuck, in which case she’s just healing.

During the two weeks since Melania Trump returned to the White House following what was described as a relatively minor surgery — a period during which she has been absent from ceremonial events like a Memorial Day wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery — conspiracy theories have flooded in to fill the void of information about the first lady’s health, and whereabouts.

The White House has released almost no information about Trump’s condition since May 14, when her spokeswoman said the first lady was undergoing a routine embolization procedure at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center “to treat a benign kidney condition.”

Her team chose to leave unexplained her extended five-day hospital stay for a procedure that is typically completed in one, or her subsequent disappearance from events at which the public has come to expect to see her next to her husband.

The directive to reveal less, not more, has been coming straight from the first lady, according to people familiar with the situation. In contrast to her husband, who has a symbiotic relationship with the media, Melania Trump is nonplussed by any attention, people close to her said. And she views most of the questions about her health not as driven by real concern, but by nosiness. And she doesn’t care to play the game — even at the price of feeding the rumor mill.

“It’s expected that Trump people are hiding something,” said one senior administration official of the media’s questions about the first lady. This person noted that the first lady went for longer than two weeks out of the public eye before she left Trump Tower and relocated to the White House last summer.

But since then, the natural rhythm of life at the Trump White House has come to include the first lady more often. Days before her surgery was announced, she presided over the rollout of Be Best, her anti-bullying initiative, in the Rose Garden.

“The public had grown accustomed to seeing more of her for a period of time, especially with the state dinner, which she executed flawlessly, and her high-profile initiative rollout,” said Anita McBride, who served as chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush. “It's natural for people to be interested in her and wanting more.”

Spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham would not say Tuesday when the news media or the public can expect to lay eyes on the first lady until at least the end of June, when the White House hosts a regular summer gathering for members of Congress. Grisham said the first lady has “had several meetings internally with staff, and will continue to do so this week. We are focusing on her initiatives, and also some longer-term planning for events, such as the congressional picnic and Fourth of July.”

She declined to comment on the speculation about the first lady that has been growing since her most recent public event, in which she accompanied her husband to greet the three American prisoners released from North Korea earlier this month.

“Sadly, we deal with conspiracy theories all the time, so this is nothing new, just more silly nonsense,” Grisham said. “She is doing great. I wouldn’t characterize it as a long absence. She was hospitalized for almost a week and is now home and recovering.”

Melania Trump is under no public obligation to release a full picture of her health, or to disclose all the information about what she does with her time.

And while she is perhaps the most private first lady in modern history, she’s not the first woman in her position who has chafed at the scrutiny from the public and the press — and at times simply decided to ignore them completely, rather than explain herself.

In 1998, at the height of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, Hillary Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, then a student at Stanford University, escaped together to Colorado for a secret ski trip. They didn’t alert the White House staff or the press corps of their travel plans or their destination.

Before that, Hillary Clinton for months stubbornly ignored the media as they pressed for more information about Whitewater, in that case letting her political enemies fill the void.

“I don’t think Melania Trump has a public obligation” to say more about her health, said Patti Solis Doyle, who served as a top adviser to Clinton in the East Wing. “But in terms of communications strategy, if you come and tell the American people what happened, then people will stop speculating.”

Melania Trump may not care one way or the other about speculation. But when it comes to medical issues, in particular, modern-day first ladies have handled things in a much more public fashion.

Most famously, former first lady Betty Ford in 1974 posted pictures and delivered steady updates about her surgery and recovery after she underwent a radical mastectomy — if social media had existed then, she might have been live-tweeting and Instagramming her medical journey. By making herself the poster child for the procedure, Ford became an advocate for cancer awareness, and was widely credited with inspiring American women across the country to get breast cancer exams.

Melania Trump has in the past listed Ford as one of her role models in the job.

“It’s unusual over the course of the past 50 years for a first lady not to be in public view, and, when she is out of the spotlight for a prolonged period, not to tell people what's going on,” said Katherine Jellison, a history professor at Ohio University who specializes in the history of first ladies. “There’s no guidebook to being first lady. It’s not an elected office, and she’s not under any obligation to tell us. It’s just become the modern norm and expectation that we know.”

Jellison added: “The danger in a situation like this if you don’t have some control over the narrative, then people’s imaginations go wild.”

In this case, the wild speculation has painted Melania Trump as an unhappy member of the Trump clan, eager to flip on her husband, or at least escape. In reality, the senior administration official said, a primary reason she disclosed her medical procedure at all was that the president planned to visit her in the hospital.

Melania Trump has been defined by her desire for privacy since her husband’s election. But her most recent absence comes after a string of high-profile appearances for which she received mostly positive reviews.

In addition to the rollout of her Be Best campaign, she represented the Trump family at former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral in April, smiling in what looked like a semi-candid group picture with the Bushes, the Clintons and the Obamas.

With the help of her small East Wing staff, she pulled off the administration’s first State Dinner later that month, hosting French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife.

People who work closely with her insist the rollout of “Be Best” is proceeding with hardly any interruption. The East and West Wings are coordinating on a series of roundtable discussions here and on the road, for the remainder of the year, according to people familiar with the plans.

So far, the president’s attempts to put to rest questions about his wife’s whereabouts have only added to the confusion.

“Right there,” Trump said when asked about his wife’s health earlier this month, eerily pointing up at an empty window in the East Wing. “She’s doing great. Just look at us, right there.”