Donald Trump is an idiot. Truly. As he heads into his third election, as a one-term, twice-impeached loser with a basket of criminal charges against him, he needs all the support he can get. Yes, he has his MAGA base, but let’s be real, that isn’t that big (thank God). He needs women, suburban women to win. And in 2020 he lost a lot of them, because of his horrible handling of the coronavirus. And now he chose a VP who says a president must have children? What about George Washington? Our first president, the father of our nation, never had children. But I digress.
Trump likes to portray himself as a family man, who hired his daughter Ivanka as senior adviser and has his son Don Jr. working the campaign trail for him.
However, his comments in series of past interviews reveal retrograde ideas about fatherhood that are out of step with today’s America, where both parents work in nearly half of all two-parent households.
Buzzfeed took a look back at a series of interviews from 2003 to 2007, in which Trump talked about fatherhood, taking care of the kids, and parental gender roles. Trump, who is not exactly known for being consistent, stayed on message about parenthood throughout: Dads supply the money, moms do everything else.
Here’s an overview of what these interviews teach us about Trump:
Trump doesn’t change diapers…
“No, I don’t do that,” Trump said on the Opie and Anthony show in 2005. “There’s 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… I’m really like a great father but certain things you do and certain things you don’t. It’s just not for me.”
…or really do anything hands-on to care for his 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,” Trump said in a 2005 interview with Howard Stern. “Marla used to say, ‘I can’t believe you’re not walking Tiffany down the street,’ you know in a carriage. Right, I’m gonna be walking down Fifth Avenue with a baby in a carriage. It just didn’t work.”
It’s not just babies that Trump avoids.
In a 2007 interview, Trump told Stern about his relationship with Tiffany, his daughter with Marla Marples. Trump said that Tiffany visits him, “You know for about an hour, ‘Hi dad,’ Hi Tiff, I love you Tiff.’ She’s a great kid,” says Trump, who tells Stern that Tiffany’s a smart girl—something he knows because he “glances” at her report cards.
Perhaps he’s trying to patch things up with Tiffany after his comments on a previous Howard Stern Show?
Speaking to Stern in 2003, Trump said he married Maples because she got pregnant with Tiffany. “At the time it was like, ‘Excuse me, what happened?” Trump said. “And then I said, ‘Well, what are we going to do about this?‘”
However, back in 2019 it was revealed by Trump’s fired assistant that Trump doesn’t like to be photographed with Tiffany because he thinks she is fat.
And of course Trump is no longer friends with Howard Stern, since the shock jock has come out and revealed how dangerous Trump is. Trump took to Truth Social in 2023 and said, “The real Howard Stern is a weak, pathetic, and disloyal guy, who lost his friends and MUCH of his audience. Until just recently, I haven’t heard his name mentioned in years. I did his show many times in the good old days, and then he went Woke, and nobody cares about him any longer. I don’t know what they (really!) pay him, but it shouldn’t be much. His influence is gone, and without that, he’s got NOTHING – Just a broken weirdo, unattractive both inside and out, trying like hell to be relevant!”
