President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have an iconic and sometimes strange marriage. But if you remember, Donald Trump has actually been married three times: to Ivanka Trump from 1977-1992, to actress Marla Maples from 1993-1999, and to Melania since 2005. With his experience, you might even think he’d be an expert on marriage.
Unfortunately, some of the things Trump has said about marriage are downright inappropriate. These are definitely the kinds of things that will get other married men in a world of trouble if they say them out loud!
Here are the most outrageous and inappropriate things Donald Trump has ever said about marriage.
On never helping out with the children
Donald Trump’s children have been a source of fascination and scandal in their own right. And some of Trump’s statements have made people wonder about how much he has helped raise Barron (the only child he has with Melania). Take, for instance, this quote from a 2005 interview with Howard Stern.
“I like kids. I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids. It’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park.”
While some find that old-fashioned, others think it is downright controversial.
On how a husband should not “act like the wife”
Continuing Trump’s views on gender roles, in 2005 he was asked on the Opie and Anthony radio show if he ever changed diapers.
“No, I don’t do that. There are a lot of women out there that demand that the husband act like the wife. And you know, there’s a lot of husbands that listen to that.”
Trump added, “If I had a different type of wife, I probably wouldn’t have a baby, you know, cause that’s not my thing. I’m really, like, a great father, but certain things you do and certain things you don’t. It’s just not for me.”
On how a wife should do exactly what the husband tells her
Many marriage issues pop up when one spouse feels like the other is taking them for granted. Marriage is actually a partnership between equals. But that may be news to Donald Trump!
When Oprah Winfrey interview Donald and Ivana Trump in 1988, Trump declared that there wasn’t much conflict in their marriage for one simple reason.
“There’s not a lot of disagreement because, ultimately, Ivana does exactly as I tell her to do,” Donald said.
Fellas, once again: we do not recommend trying this at home with your own wife! Ivana laughed off his comment, but you will not have the benefit of being in front of a live TV studio audience!
On dinner being ready when he comes home
At this point, you may think President Trump cannot get any more on the nose about reinforcing stereotypical gender roles. However, he takes it to the next level in this weirdly self-aware quote.
“I don’t want to sound like a chauvinist, but when I come home at night and dinner’s not ready I go through the roof,” Trump said in a 1994 interview with Nancy Collins on ABC’s Primetime Live.
He claimed that Ivana’s preoccupation with her work affected their marriage negatively. “After 12 hours dealing with my companies, I didn’t want to talk business. I can instantaneously shut it off, my survival mechanism. But she’d be yelling into the phone with the casino; I didn’t want my wife shouting like that. Ivana had a great softness that disappeared. She became an executive, not a wife.”
Sadly, not wanting to sound like a chauvinist and not acting like a chauvinist are very different things.
On never giving your wife “negotiable assets”
Arguably, one of Trump’s best qualities is his weird sense of humor. When it comes to things like his tendency to get divorced, Donald has a wry perspective.
For example, he was dismissive about giving his wife Ivana expensive gifts while they were married. “I would never buy Ivana any decent jewels or pictures. Why give her negotiable assets?” he said in a 1990 Vanity Fair article.
It was certainly inappropriate to say about his then-wife. But given they later divorced, it turns out that he may have had a fair point!
On wives in the workforce
We know that Donald Trump did not want to give Ivana “expensive gifts” such as “decent jewels.” However, he had an interesting perspective on what to pay her for her salary when he appointed her president of Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel in 1988.
At the press conference announcing her new position, he joked, “My wife, Ivana, is a brilliant manager. I will pay her one dollar a year and all the dresses she can buy!”
Vanity Fair reported that Ivana did not take the joke well. She reportedly told a friend, “How can Donald humiliate me this way?”
On the benefits of an open marriage
When you’ve had multiple divorces, many people will ask why you got married in the first place. When it comes to Donald Trump, it may be because he thought he could have his cake and eat it too.
In his 1990 book Trump: Surviving at the Top, Trump wrote, “I even thought, briefly, about approaching Ivana with the idea of an ‘open marriage.’ But I realized there was something hypocritical and tawdry about such an arrangement that neither of us could live with — especially Ivana. She’s too much of a lady.”
Donald and Ivana ultimately did not have an open marriage, which may be why they divorced after his affair with Marla Maples, who became his second wife. Unfortunately, affair allegations have continued to plague Trump over the years, more recently from Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels.
On not spending more time with your wife
One of the biggest cliches about marriage is that women expect men to change and men expect to stay the same. While the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, Donald Trump seems determined to live up to that cliche.
This quote about his doomed marriage to Marla Maples, from his 1997 book Trump: The Art of the Comeback, probably explains why the marriage failed.
“Marla was always wanting me to spend more time with her. ‘Why can’t you be home at five o’clock like other husbands?’ she would ask. Sometimes, when I was in the wrong mood, I would give a very materialistic answer. ‘Look, I like working. You don’t mind traveling around in beautiful helicopters and airplanes, and you don’t mind living at the top of Trump Tower, or at Mar-a-Lago, or traveling to the best hotels, or shopping in the best stores and never having to worry about money, do you? If you want me to be home at five o’clock, maybe these other things wouldn’t happen and you’d be complaining about that, too. Why would you want to take something that I enjoy and change it?’ I always viewed her whys as being very selfish. But the fact is, in a marriage both sides have to be happy.”
So much for quality time!