Melania Trump Snubs Don Jr.: First Lady Skips Out on Stepson's Wedding in the Bahamas — Just Months After She Kept Him Off Barron's Birthday Party Guest List
Melania Trump failed to attend stepson Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding to Bettina Anderson.
May 26 2026, Published 6:17 p.m. ET
Melania Trump failed to attend stepson Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding to Bettina Anderson over Memorial Day weekend, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
It's the second major snub after the first lady, 56, and her 20-year-old son, Barron, skipped out on attending Don Jr.'s daughter Kai's high school graduation a week prior, despite Mar-a-Lago being less than a 30-minute drive from the Jupiter, Florida, commencement ceremony.
Intimate Trump Family Gathering Made Melania and Barron's Absence More Apparent
Members of the Trump family were seen smiling during the wedding weekend.
All of Don Jr.'s closest relatives were present for the nuptials in the Bahamas, including siblings Ivanka and Eric, as well as half-sister Tiffany and their respective spouses.
Many of them shared photos from the island celebrations, proving to be a major Trump family gathering.
The groom's father, Donald Trump, said he hoped to attend, telling reporters on May 21, "He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small little private affair, and I’m going to try and make it."
However, the president later noted, "This is not good timing for me," citing, "Everything called Iran and other things."
Melania Had No Public Events Scheduled
The president said he hoped to attend his son's wedding but the timing wasn't right due to the Iran war.
The Don noted the situation was "one I can’t win on."
"If I do attend, I get killed. If I don’t attend, I get killed," he said at the time, referring to potential public backlash for flying to the vacation spot during the conflict with Iran.
However, Melania had no scheduled public events over the holiday weekend that would have kept her and her son from attending Don Jr.'s intimate wedding.
'Emotional Distance' Between Barron Trump and Half-Siblings
Barron Trump sat while his half-siblings stood at the 2026 State of the Union address.
The Slovenian native has reportedly been "emotionally distant" from the president's children for quite some time.
"Melania did not want to spend a full weekend with Donald's adult children from previous marriages," an insider told Rob Shuter for his Substack page, Naughty But Nice. "That tension has existed for years, even if nobody says it publicly."
As for Barron, he isn't close with his older half-siblings.
"Barron grew up in a completely different world from Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Tiffany," another source claimed. "There's emotional distance there, and everyone in the family knows it."
The Trump children, with the exception of Tiffany, were snubbed at Barron's birthday celebrations in March, as Melania put her foot down about the invitations.
"They're not close at all," the insider told Shuter at the time. "This wasn't an oversight."
A second source added, "Melania is in charge, and she wanted this to be about Barron, not about Donald Trump, and not about his other children."
Barron Trump Raised Separately From His Siblings
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Barron and Melania Trump are rarely seen with Donald Trump's older kids.
There has been speculation that Melania and The Don's older children don't get along, which was amplified when she skipped out on his son's December 2025 announcement at the White House that he and Anderson were engaged.
The president hosted the engagement party, standing behind the beaming couple as they announced their engagement, but his wife was nowhere to be seen.
Donald Sr.'s three oldest children were already adults by the time he married Melania in January 2005. Their mother was the president's first wife, socialite Ivana Trump, who died from a tragic fall at her Manhattan home in 2022.
The president's second-youngest child, Tiffany, was 11 at the time of her dad's wedding. She's a product of Don Sr. and ex-wife Marla Maples' six-year marriage in the 1990s. The former actress showed she's still close with Don Jr. by attending Anderson's bridal shower in April and posing alongside him for a photo.
