Here's How Donald Trump, Melania Will Spend New Year's Eve 2021

Former President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, are expected to return to Mar-a-Lago and join a lavish New Year’s Eve party after they abruptly skipped the event last year in the wake of his electoral defeat to Joe Biden.

On Dec. 31, 2020, the former president decided to abandon his New Year’s Eve party where guests paid up to $1,000 a ticket and instead returned to Washington on short notice. The White House announced the abrupt change in Trump’s schedule, which came just hours after Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he plans to object to the upcoming certification of Biden’s victory in Congress, according to Associated Press.

This year, Trump and the former first lady could stay in Florida and attend the New Year’s Eve black-tie gathering in Mar-a-Lago, sources familiar with the discussions told the Daily Mail.com. The Trumps had celebrated Christmas Eve with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

It is unclear how much tickets to attend the lavish party would cost this year. It is also unclear who else would attend the New Year’s Eve bash. Last year’s attendees included the former president’s two oldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, their wives Kimberley Guilfoyle and Lara Trump, and the former president’s daughter Tiffany.

Both Ivanka and Jared did not seem to join the party last year, but Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was seen among the guests despite the absence of the then-president and first lady.

This year’s New Year’s Eve gala comes as Florida battles a spike in COVID-19 cases amid the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant. On Wednesday, Florida reported 46,923 COVID-19 cases, making it the state’s largest single-day increase since the pandemic began.

Florida’s weekly average case rate has also seen a consecutive increase since Dec. 10, growing to 30,356 on Tuesday from 1,700 earlier this month, Miami Herald calculations of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical advisor and the nation’s top infectious disease expert, also strongly recommended against large New Year’s Eve gatherings.

“If your plans are to go to a 40-to-50 person New Year's Eve party with all the bells and whistles and everybody hugging and kissing and wishing each other a Happy New Year? I would strongly recommend that, this year, we do not do that,” Fauci said during a press briefing Wednesday.