WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump draws cheers from supporters when he dances on stage at his political rallies, but he revealed on Tuesday that first lady Melania Trump is not a fan of dancing Donald.
“My wife hates when I do this,” Trump said during a meandering speech to Republican lawmakers in Washington. “She’s a very classy person, right? She said, ‘It’s so unpresidential.’ I said, ‘But I did become president.'”
The first lady was not present at the event.
Trump often breaks out his signature moves at the end of his speeches as the song “YMCA” plays over the loudspeakers, extending his arms in a herky-jerky way while the rest of his body remains stiff.
“I said everybody wants me to dance,” Trump told the lawmakers, recounting what he said was a conversation with his wife. “‘Darling, it’s not presidential.’ She actually said, ‘Could you imagine FDR dancing?’ She said that to me.”
“I said there’s a long history that perhaps she doesn’t know, because he was an elegant fellow, even as a Democrat,” Trump said.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, known as FDR, was paralyzed from the waist down due to polio but rarely photographed in a wheelchair while president.
Trump said the first lady also did not like how he sometimes pretends to lift weights during his speeches to dramatize his efforts to prevent transgender people from competing in women’s weightlifting competitions.
“The weightlifting is terrible,” he quoted her as saying.
The first lady’s press secretary did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Undeterred, Trump repeated the weightlifting anecdote on Tuesday. And when his speech was over, he did a quick dance before exiting the stage.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Paul Simao)
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