First lady Melania Trump tweeted her appreciation for a Navy SEAL awarded the Medal of Honor on Thursday, her first tweet since having a medical procedure for a benign kidney issue 10 days ago.
“Thank you Master Chief Slabinski for your heroic actions. @POTUS & I are proud to have you @WhiteHouse today to award the #MedalOfHonor. Thank you & thank you to all our military who risk & sacrifice your lives for our freedom,” the first lady tweeted shortly after the President presented the medal to retired Navy SEAL Britt Slabinski.
The tweet came five days after the first lady returned home to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
In addition to the tweet, Trump’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, told CNN that the first lady has been “having internal meetings with staff as she continues to recover.”
Trump was released from the hospital Saturday after a lengthier stay than many medical professionals speculated was necessary based on the information about the embolization process described in a statement from her press office on May 14, the day of Trump’s procedure.
Grisham told CNN at the time of Trump’s release that her treatment was commensurate with the medical ailment from which the first lady was suffering; however, many questions remained as to the exact nature of Trump’s procedure and her hospitalized recuperation.
“Every patient is different,” said Grisham. “The medical professionals who have been giving opinions to the media based on one statement are uninformed. Mrs. Trump has a medical team that is comfortable with her care, which is all that matters. Her recovery and privacy are paramount and I will have no further comment beyond this. Anyone else who chooses to speak with the media will only be speculating.”
Until Thursday afternoon, Trump’s most recent tweet occurred on May 18, expressing her concern for the community in Santa Fe, Texas, following the school shooting there. President Donald Trump visited his wife three times while she was at Walter Reed. He publicly welcomed her home to the White House with a tweet (that initially misspelled her name) on Saturday.