President Donald Trump did not have a good Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, the 79-year-old president hosted a Mar-a-Lago dinner with his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, and his brother-in-law, Viktor Knavs. He then fired off nearly 150 Truth Social posts filled with complaints and anger instead of enjoying time with his friends and family.
Portrait illustration of a sad Donald Trump and a Christmas tree background for the Inside Trump’s Head podcast. / Photo illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Trump biographer Michael Wolff joined the Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles on their Inside Trump’s Head podcast and roasted the joyless party of the president.
“I assume he sat up in bed and just went crazy,” Wolff joked.
To Coles, Wolff, and many social media watchers, Trump’s Christmas Eve looked lonely and miserable as Melania chatted excitedly with her father while Trump stared blankly into space.
“What was remarkable about the videos that people were publishing from the event was how animated our First Lady was with her father, when we are not used to seeing her looking animated from afar,” pointed out Coles.
“And just to set the scene, they’re on the Mar-a-Lago terrace. I imagine it’s about 75 degrees,” Wolff added. “It is full of other members. We are in the high season now, actually. And why these people are not having their Christmas Eve with their families, we can only guess.”
Wolff pointed out how isolated Trump was from the parties around him.
“Donald Trump is where he always is: on the table in the center, with a red rope around his table. Why there is this red rope around his table is a kind of confusion, because the table is right in the center of everything,” he said.
Trump did his best to look engaged during a rough Christmas dinner with his father at Mar-a-Lago. / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
“Maybe it’s like the brim of Melania’s hat,” Coles said. “It gives him a sort of perimeter around which you shouldn’t hang around.”
“Everyone on the terrace approaches him. It’s not like he’s saying, ‘Stay away.’ Actually, it’s ‘Come a little closer,’ is what the rope means,” added Wolff.
Although Wolff and Coles painted a bleak picture of Trump’s sad Christmas Eve, their vision of his Christmas morning was even sadder.
“I think he was watching television, wasn’t he?” Coles wondered. “He wakes up, and his banks of televisions are still on because he didn’t turn them off the night before, unless someone slips into his room and turns them off for him.”
While Melania chatted excitedly with her father, Trump looked aimlessly around the room, isolated from the rest of the party. / Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images
“He’s at the White House, or he’s at Mar-a-Lago,” Wolff added. “And I think the two are probably very, very similar. I think he arranges these things to basically look the same, and he does the same thing.”
Wolff suggested that Trump, reeling from being in isolation on Christmas Eve and having spent all night bashing Truth Social, probably spent Christmas morning asking people to talk to him about himself.
Before their Mar-a-Lago dinner, Trump and Melania took questions over the phone from the children about Christmas. / Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images
“What is the most important thing for Donald Trump? What is his lifeline?” asked Wolff. “He calls. He makes calls. He takes calls, and he makes calls. You know, he gets on the phone, and he says, “What’s going on? How’s he playing?” Which is all an invitation to talk about him, of course.”
Asked to comment on Trump’s Christmas activities, the White House ignored the question and repeated the same comment it has given for many Inside Trump’s Head episodes.
The comment, attributed to White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, read, “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s–tu has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories that originate from his sick and twisted imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has wiped out peanut-sized bramins.”
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