Fact check: did Melania Trump change her Twitter location to New York City?
Melania Trump has not been seen nor heard from by anyone among the media or the public in two weeks, leading to endless questions about why she’s in hiding. Over the past twenty-four hours, a large number of social media users have noted that her official @MelaniaTrump account on Twitter now lists her location as “New York City.” Many have interpreted this as a sign that Melania has moved back to New York.
So many social media users have pointed out the “New York City” location on Melania Trump’s Twitter account, it’s nearly impossible to determine where it originated. Some have ended up incorrectly and inexplicably attributing this to Palmer Report, even though we’ve never had any connection to this narrative; we’ve only ever reported over the past two weeks that no one knows where Melania is. In any case, we did some digging with regard to Melania’s Twitter account and her location, and we got to the bottom of it.
Melania Trump has two official Twitter accounts. She’s had control of the @FLOTUS account since January of 2017, and she periodically tweets from it. She’s also had the @MelaniaTrump account since 2010, but she ceased tweeting from it once she inherited the @FLOTUS account. In other words, she hasn’t touched the @MelaniaTrump account in a year and a half. We dug through records on archive.org and determined that throughout this time, her @MelaniaTrump account has always listed her location as New York City. She never changed it to Washington DC to begin with. This is simply a dormant Twitter account.
We’re aware that some political pundits are claiming to have inside sourcing confirming that Melania Trump has indeed moved to New York City. We can’t fact check other people’s inside sources without knowing the identity of those sources. In any case, the “Melania in New York” narrative has no connection to Palmer Report one way or the other. We have not reported any such thing. We can only factually state two things: 1) the @MelaniaTrump account on Twitter has always listed her location as New York City, meaning she did not recently change her location to New York City, and 2) no one among the media or the public has seen or heard from Melania in the past two weeks.
