White House tours are a classic part of Washington, D.C. It seems like such a novel idea: You contact your member of Congress, they arrange a tour, you get to go in and look at all the rooms named after colors and also one named after China.
That’s...apparently not the tour Trump is fond of giving his buddies. No, instead of hearing about how the Kennedys used the Red Room as a music room, if Trump gives you the tour, he gets straight to the good stuff, like checking out where Bill Clinton began an affair with Monica Lewinsky.
As the Washington Post reported today:
When President Trump brings senators, New York friends or other guests to the Oval Office, he occasionally opens a door near his desk summoning guests to follow. Flashing a grin, he wants his friends to see where Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton reportedly began their sexual encounters.
“We’ve remodeled it since then,” he said on a tour in December, a person with direct knowledge of the event said. In another visit in 2017, Trump told a TV anchor, “I’m told this is where Bill and Monica. . .”
The Post’s story is based on the new White House insider-grift book Team of Vipers, written by former aide Chris Sims, which will now sell plenty of copies so people can read about all the other rude and lewd things Trump does in that big, storied house. But this particular Sims anecdote also showcases another much larger trend for the president, in that he’d much rather play C-SPAN Cribs than do any actual work. As the paper reports:
“Most people want to keep parts of the White House private for their families and themselves,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said of previous presidents. “He’s very restless and doesn’t like desk work. He’d rather roam around and B.S. with people than hunker down.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said of the tours: “The President is proud of the White House and its rich history.”
Sanders’ response is definitely my favorite part of this. “The President loves his big important house where people once had sex, thank you very much.” But according to the Post, Trump’s absolute favorite shit is telling guests that Abe Lincoln was tall but his bed is hella small:
He often remarks how tall President Lincoln was and how short the bed is during these visits, before noting the nearby Lincoln desk and the Bill of Rights, guests said.
“I don’t know how he slept there,” Trump said on one tour in early 2018, according to a person on the tour. “He was a really tall guy!”
The whole story is surreal—Trump also reportedly likes to say that all Obama did was sit around in the Oval Office’s dining room and watch basketball all day, which seems like projecting his own TV habits with a bit of racism thrown in, but hey.
It all adds up to a well-known caricature of the president: He is absolutely the shitty rich kid who has a dumbwaiter in his house and like six Playstations that he can’t wait to show you.