Politics - News Analysis

‘Absentee Father’ Trump Calls Melania His ‘Trophy Wife’ — and Rarely Spends Any Time With Her (or Barron)

Over the past three years we have learned just about everything there is to know about Donald Trump.

What we still really don’t know much about though is his relationship with his wife Melania.

Yeah, they put on a united front (after a shaky beginning), but what exactly is going on?

According to Michael Wolff’s book, Trump boasted to people first lady Melania Trump was his “trophy wife,” and the couple often went days without seeing each other while living at Trump Tower before he was elected in November 2016.

The extraordinary claims about the first marriage are made in Wolff’s highly publicized book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. The author reportedly conducted over 200 interviews with people familiar with the inner workings of the Trump presidency, including former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Wolff paints a solemn picture of the Trumps’ 14-year marriage, writing that the president “and Melania spent relatively little time together. They could go days at a time without contact, even when they were both in Trump Tower.”

Wolff continues to describe the Trumps’ marriage prior to the White House being “perplexing to almost everybody around him.”

“Often she did not know where he was, or take much notice of that fact. Her husband moved between residences as he would move between rooms. Along with knowing little about his whereabouts, she knew little about his business, and took at best modest interest in it,” Wolff writes.

According to Wolff, Trump would boast to people “proudly and without irony” that Melania—his third spouse—was a “‘trophy wife.'” And though they spent little time together, Wolff claims Trump would jubilantly praise his wife’s appearance to others “often, awkwardly for her.”

The book goes on to claim that Trump was something of an absentee father to his youngest son, Barron, aged 13. Wolff says that much of the first lady’s life before the presidency was “entirely focused on her young son,” however.

Wolff implies Trump was too busy running his businesses and focused on becoming president to be there for his family. The author says Trump wasn’t present for his first four children. He also claims Trump was even less of a father to his fifth child, Barron Trump. Said Wolff, “An absentee father for his first four children, Trump was even more absent for his fifth, Barron, his son with Melania. Now on his third marriage, he told friends he thought he had finally perfected the art: live and let live — ‘do your own thing.’”

And that has certainly been demonstrated in the White House with the bizarre way Trump has referred to Barron.

Earlier this month when Trump gave his post-impeachment acquittal speech, Trump made the an odd comment suggesting Barron isn’t a part of his “whole family:”

And then there was that time Trump referred to Barron as “Melania’s son:”

Then there was the report that Trump is annoyed that Barron is so tall, because Donald Trump always wants to be the tallest person in the room, even if he’s wearing shoe lifts.

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