President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have feuded over decor in the White House, according to reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, and they confirmed some of the most dramatic details of their apparent grudge match.
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The 80-year-old president and his 56-year-old wife maintain separate bedrooms, the New York Times reporters revealed in their new book, “Regime Change,” with the first lady occupying the traditional White House master suite and Trump using an adjacent upstairs room as his private quarters, and they told CNN’s John Berman details of the couple rivalry over furnishings.
“I think it was a pretty one-sided battle,” Haberman said. “But it is absolutely true.”
Melania Trump was largely absent in the early days of the second term, she reported, but the residence staff understood she had specific preferences for where certain items in the center hall should go.
“While she wasn’t there, he started taking some of them for himself and either for the Oval Office or for his bedroom and it appeared to people as if he was competing to have a better room,” Haberman said, “and they ended up resorting to sending her photos of things that could be items that they would put out and in another way, you know, he took over.”
The Rose Garden became another battleground between the first couple, she said.
“Her signature project from Term One, which was the Rose Garden,” Haberman said. “She was very proud of it and she got a lot of criticism for it. The people around her thought thought was actually unfair. It, I think, remained during the Biden era, but he paved over it, and just, you know, put stones down there and without her desired interest in his project.”
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Swan added that the first lady’s frustrations extended into other Trump projects.
“She also wasn’t thrilled about the ballroom,” he said, explaining that she didn’t want to live in what amounted to “a construction zone” as the East Wing was demolished to make way for it.
Between the Rose Garden and the ballroom, Swan said, those were the president’s two major architectural undertakings — and the first lady hasn’t been fond of either.
“She’s not in favor at all?” Berman said.
Swan noted that Trump himself acknowledges the difference in their tastes.
“Trump acknowledges that,” Swan said. “He says, you know, she’s a minimalist that’s the way he says it.”
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“He’s a maximalist,” Haberman added.
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