the most incredible part of her “he’s not a Nazi” moment on Fox News.

In March, with Donald Trump running for re-election for months and his wife’s absence from his campaign becoming harder and harder to ignore, a reporter finally got Melania Trump to comment on when she would join the race. “Keep going,” Melania said. This two-word quote was widely reported; “Melania Trump teases potential return to campaign trail,” CNN’s headline read.

Months later, with the race in the end, you have to laugh. We stayed tuned, okay—long enough to see that the answer to when Melania would assume the traditional duties of a campaign spouse was more or less never.

By consistently skipping campaign events, Melania trained the public and the media to have such low expectations of her that when she popped her head out of the sand a few times in the final weeks of the election, it was met with astonishment. That’s what happened last week when news outlets noted Melania’s “surprise” and “rare” speech at Trump’s ill-fated rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. It was as if they had a hard time believing that she was actually acting like a normal campaign spouse for once. She also assured Fox News this week that her husband “wasn’t Hilter.” Just in time!

To be fair, she has appeared here and there – at the Republican National Convention, she didn’t give a speech, but at least she showed her face, and she went to the one fundraiser that just happened to came with a nice paycheck. But it’s fair to say Melania ends this election season having redefined what it means to do the bare minimum as a campaign spouse in a modern presidential election. She dared to ask, “What would happen if I just…didn’t?” and it seems to have barely affected her husband’s campaign. Did she at least make room for future candidates’ spouses to also fuck and do their own thing when their husbands and wives run for something? Honestly, probably not — it seems like one of those things that might be unique to Trump. Plus, it would be doing something she has mostly opted out of.

Don’t be fooled by her interviews with Fox News, including the one she did on Tuesday. If you watch it, it’s striking how much more focused she seems to be on selling her latest memoir than she is on urging the public to vote in the election that’s just days away. While many first ladies publish memoirs, most choose not to do so just weeks before their husbands’ presidential run, presumably because they don’t want to be a distraction. But it’s also when “attention is high and remains profitable,” as Carlos Lozada recently wrote in a New York Times column. “Why should Anders be the only one selling merch during the trip home?”

All this absence may have taken a toll. How else to explain what happened Fox & Friends when one of the hosts asked Melania how she feels about the “rhetoric that’s out there today” calling her husband things like “another Hitler.” (Was that “rhetoric” or was it reporting on a comparison he himself made? Who can say?) “It’s terrible,” Melania replied. “He is not Hitler, and all his followers who stand behind him…” The reply trailed off, eventually leading to a series of headlines like this one from Bakken: “Melania Trump: My husband is ‘not Hitler’. ” If Melania and her handlers were indeed strategic about when to deploy the mysterious former first lady to maximize her influence, they can’t be happy that the result was a slew of articles in which she entertains and ultimately dismisses – but entertains the !-possibility that her husband is Hitler. This is what happens when you ghost an entire campaign season.

To end her historic run as the least supportive spouse, Melania plans to spend Election Day at home in Palm Beach, she said. Fox & Friends audience. If Trump wins, God help us, but if he loses, I think there’s a chance we’ll never see her again.