President Donald Trump delivered a speech in the Rose Garden on Monday that praised first lady Melania Trump's work on improving the foster care system.
One conspicuous detail, however, was that the first lady wasn't there to receive the praise.
"President Trump at education event ... highlights the hard work on foster care issues by First Lady Melania Trump, who is absent," Garrett Haake, the chief White House correspondent for NBC News, posted to X.
The first lady, whose true feelings toward the president have been the speculation of biographers and Beltway insiders since Trump's first term in office, has been virtually missing for months.
She gave a public speech last week after widespread reporting about Trump's bizarre relationship with top White House aide Natalie Harp, and she and the president were seen in a heated discussion at the IndyCar street race in D.C. on Sunday, but beyond that, she has mostly remained out of sight.
During the education event, Trump went off into a number of other rambling topics, boasting that he stopped men playing in women's sports, touting his pseudoscientific executive order on vaccines and claiming it will reduce rates of autism, and broadly boasting about his cutbacks to the Department of Education.