‘Don't Tell Melania': Trump Once Offered Rising MAGA Star His Bed
The president made the offer aboard his personal jet in 2023, when Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, 35, was pregnant.
'If you need a bed to lay down in, there's one here on the plane. If you feel sick and you need to lay there, you can lay on it,' Trump reportedly told Luna.
'Just don't tell Melania. She doesn't like other women on my bed,' he joked.
The comments, revealed in Axios reporter Alex Isenstadt's new book Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power, cast new light on the president's eyebrow-raising marriage to Melania Trump.
'She f---ing hates him,' a source close to Trump and his family told Michael Wolff, who last month published another book to delve into Trump's second campaign, All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America.
Melania was rarely seen by Trump's side on the campaign trail last year. The first lady has reportedly limited her stays at the White House since Trump's return to power, splitting her time between D.C. and Florida.
'She leads her own life and joins [the president] when appropriate in either place,' a source told People last month.
Isenstadt's book divulges other candid moments from the president's campaign trail, such as sarcastic comments about going after his political opponents.
'Listen, everybody. There will be no retribution, there will be no revenge. Wink, wink,' he reportedly told aides in March 2024.
He also raged against E. Jean Carroll and Stormy Daniels to an aide in April 2024, reportedly ranting, 'E. Jean Carroll says I f---ed her. Stormy Daniels says I f---ed her. But I never f---ed them. Everyone's f---ing everybody, but I never f---ed any of these people.'
But his Republicans colleagues weren't off the hook either. When Ron DeSantis prepared to run against him in the 2023 Republican primary, Trump reportedly told then-Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, 'I'm going to squash this guy like a bug.' He also insulted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) for lacking charisma and made fun of casino mogul Steve Wynn's incurable eye disease, according to Isenstadt.
'Many of these so-called insider books are a desperate attempt to make money off of President Trump's name because journalism is a dying industry with reporters peddling lies and selling their souls in order to make a quick buck,' White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
'These works of fiction either belong in the bargain bin of the fantasy section in a discount bookstore or should be repurposed as tissue paper.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump and Putin's phone calls last for hours because of Russian president's ‘monologues,' report says
President Donald Trump's phone calls with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, often last for hours because of the Kremlin's leader's penchant for launching into long, grievance-based monologues, according to a new report. Trump is currently seeking an in-person meeting with Putin in an attempt to thrash out an end to the war in Ukraine, which the president pledged to wrap up within 24 hours of returning to the White House in January. Trump and Putin have held 'multiple calls and passed numerous messages through intermediaries' of late, according to officials cited by The Wall Street Journal. Their conversations are 'typically friendly,' the WSJ's sources said. Still, whereas Trump likes to talk up the prospect of improved U.S.-Russian relations through enhanced economic cooperation, Putin commonly 'lists his grievances and core desires,' such as the international community's refusal to recognize his country's claims over Crimea and the Donbas. His 'lengthy' diatribes and the need for translation can cause the calls to drag on, White House aides said, occasionally testing Trump's patience. 'Putin does this very methodically,' said John Bolton, Trump's estranged former national security adviser from the first term. 'He's very knowledgeable, he knows what he's talking about. When he wants to try and influence somebody, he just talks and talks and talks.' 'Putin's done his homework. He's had years of figuring out who Trump is,' added former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill. The American started this year by rebuking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office for his supposed ingratitude towards his foreign allies for their support, but has lately pivoted to expressing his frustration with Putin. He complained recently: 'I go home, I tell the first lady, 'And I spoke with Vladimir today. We had a wonderful conversation.' She said, 'Oh, really? Another city was just hit.'' With the war still rumbling on and Trump said to be privately furious at the failure to make progress, he has begun to threaten other countries that buy oil from the aggressor with higher tariffs, notably hitting out at India and China for, as he sees it, thwarting his efforts to drive Putin to the negotiating table. Fox News' White House Correspondent Peter Doocy reported on Thursday that the Trump administration was 'really optimistic' that the meeting between the two presidents 'might happen next week.' However, his choice of words implied it was still uncertain. Doocy added that none of the advanced logistical work had yet been done by the State Department to prepare for such an encounter, noting that planning of that nature would generally take place 'at least a couple of weeks' before it is required to be put into action. He also said that no location had yet been decided, with Putin expressing a preference for the UAE, but that Trump would probably prefer to host the Russians at his Doral golf resort near Miami, Florida, a suggestion made only partly in jest.
CNN
9 minutes ago
- CNN
The Christian nationalist pastor with ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Self-described Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson is part of an ascendent group of Christian religious leaders finding influence among MAGA conservatives. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is Wilson's most prominent and public follower in the Trump administration. CNN's Pamela Brown reports from Moscow, Idaho where Wilson's Christ Church is based.
The Hill
12 minutes ago
- The Hill
What to know about past meetings between Putin and his American counterparts
Bilateral meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterparts were a regular occurrence early in his tenure. But as tensions mounted between Moscow and the West following the illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and allegations of meddling with the 2016 U.S. elections, those became increasingly less frequent, and their tone appeared less friendly. Here's what to know about past meetings between Russian and U.S. presidents: Putin and Joe Biden Putin and Joe Biden met only once while holding the presidency –- in Geneva in June 2021. Russia was amassing troops on the border with Ukraine, where large swaths of land in the east had long been occupied by Moscow-backed forces; Washington repeatedly accused Russia of cyberattacks. The Kremlin was intensifying its domestic crackdown on dissent, jailing opposition leader Alexei Navalny months earlier and harshly suppressing protests demanding his release. Putin and Biden talked for three hours, but no breakthroughs came out of the meeting. The two exchanged expressions of mutual respect, but firmly restated their starkly different views on all of the above. They spoke again via videoconference in December 2021 as tensions heightened over Ukraine. Biden threatened sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine, and Putin demanded guarantees that Kyiv wouldn't join NATO –- something Washington and its allies said was a nonstarter. Another phone call between the two came in February 2022, less than two weeks before the full-scale invasion. Then the high-level contacts stopped cold, with no publicly disclosed conversations between Putin and Biden since the invasion. Putin and Donald Trump Putin met Trump met six times during the American's first term -– at and on the sidelines of G20 and APEC gatherings — but most famously in Helsinki in July 2018. That's where Trump stood next to Putin and appeared to accept his insistence that Moscow had not interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and openly questioned the firm finding by his own intelligence agencies. His remarks were a stark illustration of Trump's willingness to upend decades of U.S. foreign policy and rattle Western allies in service of his political concerns. 'I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,' Trump said. 'He just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be.' Putin and Barack Obama U.S. President Barack Obama met with Putin nine times, and there were 12 more meetings with Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president in 2008-12. Putin became prime minister in a move that allowed him to reset Russia's presidential term limits and run again in 2012. Obama traveled to Russia twice — once to meet Medvedev in 2009 and again for a G20 summit 2013. Medvedev and Putin also traveled to the U.S. Under Medvedev, Moscow and Washington talked of 'resetting' Russia-U.S. relations post-Cold War and worked on arms control treaties. U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton famously presented a big 'reset' button to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a meeting in 2009. One problem: instead of 'reset' in Russian, they used another word meaning 'overload.' After Putin returned to office in 2012, tensions rose between the two countries. The Kremlin accused the West of interfering with Russian domestic affairs, saying it fomented anti-government protests that rocked Moscow just as Putin sought reelection. The authorities cracked down on dissent and civil society, drawing international condemnation. Obama canceled his visit to Moscow in 2013 after Russia granted asylum to Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower. In 2014, the Kremlin illegally annexed Crimea and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies responded with crippling sanctions. Relations plummeted to the lowest point since the Cold War. The Kremlin's 2015 military intervention in Syria to prop up Bashar Assad further complicated ties. Putin and Obama last met in China in September 2016, on the sidelines of a G20 summit, and held talks focused on Ukraine and Syria. Putin and George W. Bush Putin and George W. Bush met 28 times during Bush's two terms. They hosted each other for talks and informal meetings in Russia and the U.S., met regularly on the sidelines of international summits and forums, and boasted of improving ties between onetime rivals. After the first meeting with Putin in 2001, Bush said he 'looked the man in the eye' and 'found him very straightforward and trustworthy,' getting 'a sense of his soul.' In 2002, they signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty -– a nuclear arms pact that significantly reduced both countries' strategic nuclear warhead arsenal. Putin was the first world leader to call Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attack, offering his condolences and support, and welcomed the U.S. military deployment on the territory of Moscow's Central Asian allies for action in Afghanistan. He has called Bush 'a decent person and a good friend,' adding that good relations with him helped find a way out of 'the most acute and conflict situations.'
