Reporter Details Bizarre Trump Demand: ‘It Was Important to Him To Have a Fully Carpeted Bathroom’
President Donald Trump demanded that White House staff ensure the Residence was equipped with a full carpeted bathroom upon taking office again, according to the authors of a new book.
New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman discussed their book, Regime Change, on Wednesday’s All In on MS NOW, where host Chris Hayes read an excerpt describing the unusual request.
“New carpet was laid in the bathroom on Inauguration Day, as before,” the authors wrote. “Trump’s preference for a fully carpeted bathroom had posed a challenge for the Residence staff during his first term. The portion nearest the shower would often be soaked through; the staff was never quite sure why, but they worried about mold growing underneath.”
Hayes confessed that he had not seen such an arrangement.
“I’ve never in my life encountered carpeting in the bathroom, but this apparently is a real Donald Trump must-have,” he said.
“Yes,” Swan replied. “It was important to him to have a fully carpeted bathroom and Residence staff solution to the damp problem, or the potential mold problem was to get essentially a small piece of carpet and overlay it as if it was a bath mat on top of the carpet in front of the shower, and then substitute and rotate that carpeting. So, we do have some details from inside the residence, including some disputes and tensions between the president and the First Lady over the interior decorating and renovating.”
Swan and Haberman reported that the president and First Lady Melania Trump repeatedly clashed over the interior decorating in the White House.
“I think it was a pretty one-sided battle,” Haberman told CNN last week. “But it is absolutely true that while she was not there, in the early stages of this second presidency, the president was very focused, as he has been a lot, on decorating and decor, and she had items in the center hall of the residence that were put where, as the residence staff understood, she wanted them to be.”
She added that when the First Lady was absent, Trump would take some of the items and put them in his room or the Oval Office.
Watch above via MS NOW.
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