White House staff began monitoring President Trump’s trash because he was throwing out high-end silverware, a new book has claimed.
The president’s alleged snacking habit also meant staff had to monitor his bedroom mess, which included food wrappers being left on the floor.
Trump’s alleged living arrangements were revealed in the upcoming book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, which was written by The New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
“A nighttime snacker, the President would frequently leave an array of empty potato chip bags, Starbucks wrappers, and ice cream cartons in the trash, or on the floor,” the pair wrote, according to an extract of the text obtained by The Daily Mail.
The pair added, “The staff had to begin monitoring the trash after it was discovered he was sometimes throwing out White House sterling silver utensils.”
The two journalists also claimed that Melania Trump had moved into the White House’s traditional master bedroom, while the president had taken over the room next door.
“In the early weeks of the new administration, items were spirited from the second-floor corridor into the President's bedroom,” the book reads. “Sometimes Trump carried the objects in himself, rearranging things across the private quarters on a whim.”
The authors added, “Once, when staff gently reminded the President that he was taking things from the Center Hall his wife had personally selected, he made clear he didn't care.”
Trump “seemed almost to be competing with her,” the authors noted.
Staff often felt “caught between the two Trumps,” who were the only presidential couple to maintain separate bedrooms since President Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon.
To replace the missing items, White House staff would reportedly photograph new items for the First Lady’s approval.
“Trump's obsessive focus on interior decorating made the staff yearn for the First Lady to return and hopefully rein him in,” Haberman and Swan wrote.
When talks about renovations to the White House Rose Garden reached the first lady’s team, she was “very unhappy,” the journalists claim. An agreement to pave over the grass but to leave the rose bushes intact was reached eventually.
Melania also reportedly expressed concern about the size and location of Trump’s infamous White House ballroom, with aides trying to accommodate the couple's “competing desires about the future of the complex.”
