<\/p>\n
Celebrity chef Paula Deen got an unexpected shout-out at Melania Trump’s 113th Annual First Lady’s Luncheon.<\/p>\n
The event is a historic, bipartisan presidential tradition hosted annually by the Congressional Club since 1912 to honor the First Lady of the United States. The 55-year-old First Lady and the Second Lady, Usha Vance, hosted congressional spouses, administration officials, and leaders to support charities at the Washington Hilton.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the event, the 79-year-old chef was called out and then applauded by fellow attendees. Deen stood up, but did not face the cameras as she applauded along with the assembly.<\/p>\n
Deen’s appearance comes thirteen years after the former Food Network star and her brother, Bubba Hiers, were sued by Lisa Jackson, a former manager of the siblings’ restaurant, Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House.<\/p>\n
Jackson alleged sexual harassment and a workplace that saw racial slurs dropped numerous times. That establishment closed in 2014.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In a deposition that was part of the lawsuit, Deen admitted that she had used racial epithets in the past and tolerated racial jokes in the workplace.<\/p>\n
Her Food Network shows were subsequently canceled, but her career continued, with the doors to her own restaurant, The Lady and Sons, remaining open.<\/p>\n
In August 2025, Deen opened up about the documentary, Canceled: The Paula Deen Story, during an interview on Fox & Friends.<\/p>\n
“My children and I were a little leery at first,” she said of the documentary to Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy at her Savannah, Georgia home.<\/p>\n
“But then we decided \u2014 let me tell you something, Steve. I thought I was going to die of a broken heart.”<\/p>\n
She continued, “And I said I couldn’t let myself fall back into that terrible (agoraphobia). But I had, like, 5 and a half, 6 million people come in on my Facebook and put their arms around me. And without y\u2019all, I would not have survived.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.the-express.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Celebrity chef Paula Deen got an unexpected shout-out at Melania Trump’s 113th Annual First Lady’s Luncheon. The event is a historic, bipartisan presidential tradition hosted annually by the Congressional Club since 1912 to honor the First Lady of the United States. The 55-year-old First Lady and the Second Lady, Usha Vance, hosted congressional spouses, administration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2386195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[465137,31122,365251,308491],"class_list":["post-2386194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-annual-luncheon","tag-melania-trump","tag-paula-deen","tag-washington-dc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Paula-Deen-gets-shout-out-at-Melanias-luncheon-after-racial-slur.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2386194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2386196,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386194\/revisions\/2386196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2386195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2386194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2386194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2386194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}