Before becoming first lady and moving to the White House, Melania Trump liked to read in her separate room at Trump Tower, Donald Trump reportedly told a former Playboy Playmate he allegedly had an affair with shortly after his wife gave birth.
In an eight-page handwritten document obtained by The New Yorker, ex-Playmate Karen McDougal wrote that, in early 2007, Donald Trump “did take me to his house—showed me around. Pointed at his wife’s bedroom.
“Said she liked her space—to read or be alone,” wrote McDougal, who met Trump in June 2006 at a pool party hosted by Hugh Hefner, Playboy magazine’s founder and editor.
So perhaps she does the same in the White House, since she also has a separate bedroom there.
US Weekly [1] also ran a report claiming that Melania “refuses to share a bed with Donald, even on rare occasions,” and “They never spend the night together—ever.”
In his book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, published last year, Michael Wolff wrote that Donald Trump “retreated to his own bedroom—the first time since the Kennedy White House that a presidential couple had maintained separate rooms.”
But McDougal’s account also brings up the less widely known tidbit that Melania supposedly enjoys reading—an activity that her husband apparently does not like.
On National Read a Book Day, the first lady tweeted an encouragement for everyone to read a book and “Let every page educate you & take you on an exciting journey!”
On National #ReadABookDay [2] I encourage everyone to read a book. Let every page educate you & take you on an exciting journey!
— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) September 6, 2017 [3]
Meanwhile, Donald Trump declines to read the “President’s Daily Brief,” which contains the most pressing information that U.S. intelligence agencies collect daily from around the world, and relies on an oral update instead, The Washington Post [4] reported. Wolff wrote that the president “didn’t read” and “he didn’t really even skim.”
Of course this report also confirms what we have long suspected, that there is nothing the First Lady loves more than gazing somberly into the distance and reflecting on the question, “What is she thinking?”