WASHINGTON — First lady Melania Trump beamed Monday as she accepted the annual White House Christmas tree, telling reporters, “It will be beautiful! We are going to plan.”
Trump, 55, seemed at ease as she greeted a horse-drawn wagon with the enormous evergreen grown in the central Michigan town of Sidney.
“It will be beautiful! We are going to plan, and it’s starting today,” said the first lady on the north driveway of the White House, wearing a long white coat, red gloves and plaid Manolo Blahnik heels.
President Trump did not join the event after spending his morning on the phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping as his foreign-policy team sought to seal a Russia-Ukraine peace deal by a self-imposed Thanksgiving deadline.
The Trumps are expected to spend the Thanksgiving holiday at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., after hosting the annual meat industry-sponsored turkey pardon Tuesday at the White House.
This year’s official tree came from Michigan’s Korson’s Tree Farms.
