Trump Started a Bedroom War With Melania and Forced Staff to Dry His Soggy Bathroom Carpet

Forget The Apprentice—newly leaked details from the Trump White House prove it’s actually just a highly toxic episode of The Real Housewives of D.C.

Excerpts from Regime Change, a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, pull back the curtain on a private residence defined by separate bedrooms, passive-aggressive decorating feuds, perpetually damp carpets, and enough junk food trash to keep a rotating roster of staff on high alert.

Like many couples with enough taxpayer-funded square footage to successfully avoid each other, Donald and Melania Trump famously maintain separate bedrooms. (Can you say wedded bliss?) Melania occupies the traditional, lavish master suite, while Trump is relegated to the room next door, known on White House maps as the “second-floor living room.” But according to the book, this arrangement sparked a full-blown domestic turf war.

“In the early weeks of the new administration, items were spirited from the second-floor corridor into the President’s bedroom,” Haberman and Swan write. “Sometimes Trump carried the objects in himself, rearranging things across the private quarters on a whim.”

Yes, picture it: the Commander-in-Chief, scurrying down the hallway like a raccoon in the night, stealing lamps and throw pillows. Because Melania spent a significant chunk of time avoiding Washington altogether, the furnishings she personally selected began mysteriously vanishing into Trump’s cave.

“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,” the authors write. “He seemed almost to be competing with her—determined to have the better room.”

The petty redecorating spree apparently forced White House employees to play the dual roles of marriage counselor and hostage negotiator. Staffers found themselves nervously photographing replacement furniture and texting them to Melania for approval, praying she wouldn’t notice her husband had looted the hallway.

“Trump’s obsessive focus on interior decorating made the staff yearn for the First Lady to return and hopefully rein him in,” the book notes. Imagine being a political staffer and realizing your only hope for peace is Melania Trump.

But wait, it gets so much worse. Let’s talk about the bathroom.

According to the book, Trump insisted on having carpet in his private bathroom—an interior design crime dating back to his first term. Naturally, the laws of physics and absorption ensued.

“The portion nearest the shower would often be soaked through; the staff was never quite sure why, but they worried about mold growing underneath,” Haberman and Swan write. “The solution was to lay a small piece of the same carpet—never an actual bath mat—over the larger one.”

Instead of, you know, buying a $10 bath mat like a normal human being, the solution was to keep “several of these pieces” of regular carpet in rotation, constantly swapping them out to dry. Whatever you do for a living, take comfort in the fact that you aren’t currently blow-drying the president’s soggy bathroom rug.

As if the mold hazard weren’t enough, staffers also had to babysit the president’s late-night snacking habits.

“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 authors write.

But it wasn’t just trash. Staffers eventually had to begin monitoring the garbage after discovering that Trump was apparently throwing out actual White House sterling silver utensils along with his empty Häagen-Dazs containers.

Nothing says “imperial presidency” quite like a marital decorating rivalry, a graveyard of discarded silver, and a rotating cast of soggy emergency bathroom carpets.