A pretty good percentage of the articles written on this site about Donald Trump could start with the phrase “You know, for a normal person, this would be very different.” But that’s not who we’re talking about here.
I like to consider myself normal, and I’ll tell you right now that if my kid spoke more than one language, I would be as proud a dad as any man’s ever been. In fact, if my kid and my wife spoke a whole different language than me aside from English, I’d do my best to learn it as well.
But again, we’re talking about Trump. Trump will learn Slovenian the day he finds out he can make money by speaking it, and not a second before.
That doesn’t stop him from being annoyed by his wife and son when they speak it in front of him, though. That’s according to Mary Jordan, the author of The Art of Her Deal, a biography of the former First Lady.
Jordan says that sometimes Barron, who actually speaks THREE languages, will speak Slovenian to Secret Service agents. Those guys don’t understand him, either, for the record.
In an interview with CBS News, Jordan said that “There’s a unit within the family unit, and it’s Melania, her mother, her father, and Barron. And they all speak Slovenian.”
But Trump gets mad when he can’t follow along, Jordan says. “He has said it annoys him sometimes because he has no idea what they’re saying.”
The strangest part is, it’s not like this is new for Trump. He speaks only English (because he only values English), but has had quite a multilingual family. His first wife Ivana, spoke 5 languages, including her native Czech. Don Junior speaks fluent Czech and the French he learned in school. Ivanka speaks French too, and a little bit of Czech.
And seeing as Ivanka has so many interests in China (all those patents and voting machines, you know [1]), her daughter Arabella speaks Mandarin. I guarantee Donald doesn’t speak a word of Mandarin.
Eric speaks French the same as his older brother and sister, all having learned it in school, but he speaks no Czech.
Barron clearly prides himself on his grasp of languages, although his mother once told People magazine that there’s just one you should speak here. “My opinion is that [the] more languages you speak, [the] better it is, but when you come to America, you speak English,” she said, in broken English.
I’d wager Trump was proud that day.
Here's footage of Barron speaking at the age of 4 – with a Slovenian accent, due to his lack of meaningful interaction with people other than his mother.
For his sake, I hope that his father largely remained a background character in his life. pic.twitter.com/qKvUcxxurU [2]
— David Levy (@David_J_Levy) August 13, 2024 [3]