Invited to the White House to meet outgoing US first lady Jill Biden, as is tradition as part of the peaceful transfer of power, her successor Melania Trump has other plans for how the next four years will play out.

As a start, she did not attend the first lady meet-and-greet when president-elect Donald Trump met Joe Biden in the White House residence on Thursday morning (AEDT), with reports claiming she had a “prior scheduling conflict”.

Michelle Obama escorted Melania around when Trump first won office in 2016.

But by 2020, and with accusations of a rigged election, the Trumps packed their bags and headed straight to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, with no handover to the Biden family.

The Associated Press confirmed Trump was heading to Washington after Biden invited him by phone, quoting spokesman Steven Cheung, who said he “looks forward to the meeting”.

‘Deliberate signal’

RMIT adjunct senior fellow and director of International and Security at the Australia Institute, Emma Shortis, tells The New Daily Melania will be visible “when she needs to be”.

“That will send a very clear and deliberate signal about the campaign and Trump’s world, and generally speaking, Trump’s contempt for the Biden White House and the Democrats more broadly,” said Shortis, who has just spent the past two weeks in Washington, North Carolina and Pennsylvania watching the US election unfold.

“It’s entirely deliberate and it’s a signal of dominance to Trump’s supporters.

“It says a lot about where American politics is today. The US has always prided itself, as Kamala Harris said in her concession speech, on the peaceful transition of power in a democracy.

“Trump has done a lot of work trashing those norms of American politics. This is reinforcing that.

“This victory is so comprehensive that they don’t even have to pretend they have respect for an outgoing president.”

Tammy Vigil, an associate professor of communications at Boston University and author of a book on Michelle Obama and Melania Trump, tells the BBC Melania has “been unique among modern first ladies”.

“She does things the way she wants to do them, as opposed to the way she has to do them.

“But she fulfils the base expectations.”

Six months before the US election, Melania began making public appearances, including a closed-door tea party at Mar-a-Lago. Photo: Instagram/Andrea Hanks

Melania during the first Trump presidency

During her four-year residency in the White House from 2017 to 2021, she famously made it known on several occasions she wasn’t really invested in the job.

She wore a ‘I really don’t care. Do You?’ $39 Zara army-green jacket while visiting a child migrant detention centre in 2018, was recorded saying “who gives a f— about Christmas?” in a leaked tape and her blood-red corridor of Christmas trees was polarising.

She also redesigned the White House Rose Garden, which sent social media into a frenzy.

In her official public capacity, the White House archives say the Slovenian-born First Lady was an advocate for children all over the world addressing issues of disease, technology and cyber bullying with her Be Best campaign.

Living between Washington and New York to raise their son, Barron, now 18, she accompanied Trump on “countless international trips” and met more than 30 diplomats and heads of state to raise issues impacting children globally.

But as Trump set about becoming president for a second time after losing the 2020 election, Melania was conspicuously absent for most of it.

“There is a tendency – and this happened during the first term and during the campaign, to portray Melania as a sympathetic figure, a kind of tragic victim of her husband’s political radicalism,” Shortis said.

“I think that’s a mistake.

“Melania is all in on Trump’s agenda and she makes it clear every now and again … she’s been used quite cleverly by the Trump campaign to soften his image when they feel that’s required.

“They did that with her book when [Melania] was released [in October] and there was noise about how she is pro-choice on reproductive rights.

“That was seen as contradicting and undermining him, [but] that was a deliberate strategy to soften Trump’s position on abortion and soften his campaign’s position and target it at suburban white women and it looked like it was quite effective.”

In 2019, Melania joined other country’s first ladies on a walking tour in France. Photo: Getty

So how do the next four years look?

It’s clear she doesn’t want to play by the rules.

Others have called her an enigma who introduced a new era into the White House.

She’s disenfranchised staffers and appears to have few supportive people in her corner who go on the record.

“The role of First Lady is such a weird one … so high profile but doesn’t come with any power necessarily, so that depends on the spousal relationship.

“I expect she will be fairly quiet behind the scenes and focus on her role as that supportive reinforcement of Trump’s politics and play that demure quiet role.”

Melania shared her passion projects on social media.  Photo: Twitter/@FLOTUS

Any cause célebre?

Shortis said it’s unlikely Melania will revive the Be Best campaign that dominated her tenure.

“If she does, it won’t be for a while … she will be rolled out when Trump needs some soft PR [which] I think he probably will.”

On border control? She might dig out the “I don’t care” jacket again?

“She may well do. She’s been effective at doing that signalling when they feel it’s necessary … she is very good at the plausible deniability tactic, which is what she did with the jacket.”