First Lady Melania Trump is sitting out the first-ever midterm convention of the Republican National Committee (RNC), leaving President Donald Trump to work the Dallas stage on September 9 and 10, 2026, without her. The president is booked both evenings at the American Airlines Center, and Vice President JD Vance is also on the program. Trump delivered the keynote on Wednesday night, speaking for close to two hours, and returns Thursday for closing remarks after Vance’s own keynote at 9 p.m. Eastern. That order was itself a late change: the roster the committee put out on August 25 had Vance keynoting the first night and Trump the second, and the RNC reissued it on September 5 after the president said he would speak on the opening night. A White House official confirmed to the Washington Examiner on Thursday, September 3, that the first lady would not attend, giving no reason, and neither she nor her office has issued an attributable announcement.
The committee has sold the two nights as a launchpad into the November 3 elections. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said each hour would carry its own theme, message and voices, walking Americans through the party’s agenda and what is at stake in November. Interest in attending and participating has been “incredible,” RNC national press secretary Natalie Baldassarre told Politico, saying the convention would hand the party momentum to expand Republican majorities in November. Organizers count 109 items and speakers over the two evenings, 53 on the first and 56 on the second. Trump used his Wednesday speech to tell the hall to “pretend that I’m on the ballot. I’m on the ballot,” and to promise a $5,000 dividend to every adult citizen if Republicans hold both chambers. The Associated Press reported that afternoon speeches were delivered to “scores of empty seats, even in areas close to the stage,” and a Newsweek photographer put the arena at 65 to 70 percent full when the president took the stage; Trump said it was packed and blamed the gaps on people in the restrooms. The RNC’s formal call for the convention frames it as a celebration of Trump’s accomplishments and a rally behind a shared vision, and it prohibits resolutions, elections or any other official business.
Dozens of Republicans Also Skipping
The first lady has plenty of company. Out of roughly 70 Republican candidates and members interviewed by Politico, at least 45 GOP lawmakers said they will not attend. The reasons varied: weddings and family events, college visits, a dove hunt — that one is Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma — and other prior commitments, or a conviction that their time is better spent campaigning at home. For others, the $25,000 asked for tickets and lodging was the sticking point.
“I can’t control what the president’s going to say at the convention, but I can control where I’m at, what I’m doing,” Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) told the outlet.
Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) will be somewhere else entirely. “No, I’m going to be in my district because I think it’s more important to be in my district working for my folks,” he told MS NOW. Nunn and Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), who is taking his daughter on college visits, each told Politico they would not be there. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) also stayed home — “our bosses are back home,” he told CBS News. All three are running for reelection. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, the other vulnerable Pennsylvania Republican, went the other way and spoke on the opening night.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) are skipping as well. One House Republican dismissed the event to Politico as “a waste of time” and “a mess,” arguing that independent voters are neither attending nor watching.
Another name surfaced on September 3, when Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) confirmed to MS NOW that he will not attend the Dallas convention.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has gone the other way, saying he has been promoting the convention everywhere and predicting a great time for those who do show up. Each colleague, he said, has to make his or her own decision.
Steep Price Tags and Bad Timing
Proximity to the president in Dallas comes at a premium: a reported $88,600 for a photo opportunity, $250,000 for roundtable appearances, with Vance available for considerably less. The Texas Republican Party sold packages running as high as $20,000 that came with honorary delegate credentials, floor access, a shirt and a cowboy hat. The nickname “Trump-a-Palooza” is Gruters’ own — he used it on Spectrum News.
Dallas expected about 20,000 people at the American Airlines Center, though a convention organizer told the Associated Press the two nights would draw roughly 30,000. The city faces a bill topping $2 million in public-safety and logistical expenses, with no grant or reimbursement item scheduled for council consideration.
The calendar is no kinder. Both evenings run up against the opening two games of the National Football League (NFL) season — Seattle’s 13-10 win over New England on Wednesday, and the league’s first regular-season game in Melbourne, Australia, streaming on Netflix Thursday — and the convention closes one day before the nation observes the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Trump was originally booked for a single night and put himself on both; a party official said he wanted to set the tone for the entire convention.
On “Morning Joe,” MS NOW’s Jonathan Lemire argued that the scheduling clash would cost Trump the viewership he was chasing. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times concurred, noting that some in the president’s orbit privately acknowledge it was a mistake made because they had not been paying attention.
A First Lady Rarely Seen
Her decision tracks with how sparingly she has surfaced in public since her husband’s second term began. One Daily Beast analysis tallied 38 days on which she had been seen publicly as of early August, a figure that rose to 40 by September 4. Her latest appearance came at the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington on August 23, after which the White House was reported to have cropped Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant, out of its own video of the couple at the race.
Political reporter Sarah Ewall-Wice, speaking on The Daily Beast Podcast in comments reported September 9, said of the first lady: “We’ve seen Melania show up at past conventions, but Melania is over it and is not showing up for this one.” She added: “She’s not even showing up, which kind of is in character for her these days.”
Before that, on August 20, she spoke in the Rose Garden about the expansion of her Fostering the Future Initiative — her first appearance with the president since the FIFA World Cup final in New Jersey on July 19. “I heard you missed me,” she joked to reporters. She had also passed on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24 — restaged after the April edition was broken up by a shooting outside the Washington Hilton, which she attended and was evacuated from — and, on July 28, the funeral at Washington National Cathedral for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally who died July 11.
Her distance from the campaign trail is nothing new. In the 2024 race, her only significant appearance came on the closing night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, days after a bullet struck Trump in the right ear in Butler, Pennsylvania. She spoke at the 2016 convention too, where she was accused of plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s 2008 address; her speechwriter later took the blame.
In other arenas she has been anything but invisible. She starred in a $40 million Amazon documentary, held a surprise news conference to deny any past association with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and rebuked late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for an on-air remark about the president. She championed the bipartisan Take It Down Act, which targets revenge porn and explicit deepfakes, and she opened back-channel talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an effort aimed at the return of captured Ukrainian children. One of her advisers, Marc Beckman, has called her “the single most consequential First Lady in the history of our nation.”
Trump came to Dallas with his approval rating at 39.6 percent in the RealClearPolitics average and 38 percent in the New York Times’ — and at 32 percent, a record low for him, in a Focaldata poll for the Financial Times taken in the days before the convention. The drag is the continuing war with Iran, an affordability crisis and a reignited trade fight with Canada. Democrats passed on staging a midterm convention of their own — and on neither night in Dallas does the program include the first lady.