President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will spend Christmas together in Washington, DC, a last-minute change of plans due to the stalemate over the federal budget.
But that doesn’t mean the first lady (at right in the couple’s 2018 White House Christmas portrait) should expect a present.
The commander in chief has a history of not giving Christmas gifts to his wife, according to a published report.
He admitted he’s “a bad-present person” before he won the White House.
“Everyone gives me presents,” he told Page Six in 2005, “and I never open them. I’m like a bad-present person.”
Trump divulged in April that he was too busy to buy his wife a birthday present. But the habit continues during the most magical time of the year — when he reportedly doesn’t get any gifts from his wife, either.
“Melania says he’s next to impossible to buy for,” a source close to her told Hollywood Life. “Often they don’t exchange gifts at all for Christmas.”
Trump customarily celebrates Christmas in style at his South Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.
But he canceled plans to fly there after Congress failed to reach a deal on ending a partial government shutdown, according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She said the first lady would return to DC.
Melania Trump and son Barron arrived in Florida Friday night. Donald Trump Jr. and his new girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, also were spotted in town.
In previous years, additional members of the Trump family spent at least part of the holidays at Mar-a-Lago. It has been a tradition for more than a decade, at Melania’s urging.
Don Jr. has praised his stepmother for hosting the whole gang — even including Trump’s first wife, Ivana, on occasion.
“The dynamics are interesting, but it all works out fairly well,” Jr. told Page Six in 2008.
The first lady’s cherished traditions include Christmas Eve Mass at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach — where she married Trump in 2005 — and a sumptuous Christmas dinner.
Last year’s menu had a choice of turkey, filet mignon, short ribs, sea bass and diver scallops .
The Trump family’s Yuletide traditions have evolved since Don Jr. was a kid.
“When I was little, as unconventional as my family is, I don’t know that our Christmas was that different other than that we were on the top of Trump Tower,” he said in 2008.
“We’d run downstairs and jump into our parents’ bed, just like everyone else. Then we’d go over to our grandparents’ place in Queens.”
One Trump twist was spending the rest of the week in tony Aspen, Colo. They were there for the holidays in 1989 when Donald and Ivana Trump’s marriage publicly exploded.
“I love him and if you don’t, why don’t you let him go?” Marla Maples, Trump’s soon-to-be second wife, shouted at Ivana as the children looked on.
“You bitch, leave my husband alone!” Ivana shot back.