Two recent reports concerning our esteemed president Donald J. Trump seem to suggest the leader of the free world may have a fear of steps.
The notion that Donald Trump may be afraid of things he has no reason to be afraid of has been raised before, and the most recent allegation comes from the Times of London, which reported today that Trump clutched British PM Theresa May’s hand as they walked downhill last week because he was afraid.
“Downing Street officials claimed the president’s phobia of stairs and slopes led him to grab the prime minister’s hand as they walked down a ramp at the White House,” the paper reported Sunday.
And in the Washington Post, a source puts forth the strange notion that Trump won’t be spending time in Kellyanne Conway’s office, which is on the second floor of the White House, because he “would rarely climb a flight of stairs.”
The Daily Mail also quotes a well-informed anonymous source: “[Trump] hates heights where you can see the ground or sharp inclines even more than germs. He particularly dislikes staircases and his biggest nightmare of all is a dirty stair rail.”
And it can’t be a health issue informing his stair behavior—his personal doctor said just this year that, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” So walking up and down stairs without holding on to anything should be easy for him
Would a man afraid of stairs always grip onto the railings despite his public fear of germs?
Would a man afraid of falling down the stairs worry about other people falling down the stairs?
Would a man afraid of stairs threaten to leave a G-20 summit over stairs?
In September, President Obama arrived at the G-20 summit in China and used a metal staircase instead of a big, wide safe set of stairs. Donald Trump, who has a normal relationship with stairs, held a press conference about the stairs.
“They won’t even give him stairs, proper stairs to get out of the airplane. You see that? They have pictures of other leaders who are… coming down with a beautiful red carpet. And Obama is coming down a metal staircase,” Trump said. “I’ve got to tell you, if that were me, I would say, ‘You know what, folks, I respect you a lot but close the doors, let’s get out of here. It’s a sign of such disrespect.”
Because of the disrespect—not because he’s afraid of stairs. And that’s why there are multiple videos of him muttering like a nutjob about a set of stairs he saw someone else climb on TV. For example:
Would a man afraid of falling down the stairs tell Billy Bush he’s afraid of falling down the stairs?
“It’s always good if you don’t fall out of the bus,” Donald Trump told Billy Bush. “Like Ford, Gerald Ford, remember?”
Ford fell down the stairs in 1975, but Donald Trump’s obscure reference to it does not by any means indicate he’s thought about it every day since it happened, because of a crippling fear of stairs.
Would a man afraid of stairs refuse to eat on the second floor of the restaurant he owns?
Tucked into a September Washington Post report on the opening of Trump’s D.C. hotel restaurant, BLT Steak, is the revelation that Trump won’t eat there because it’s on top of a flight of stairs and he’s afraid “someone might push him” down them.
To access the new restaurant in Washington’s most talked-about hotel, you navigate an atrium awash in white marble and carpets, climb two sets of marble stairs and follow a host to a buffed Macassar ebony table near an ornate railing overlooking the lobby. Are we in Vegas? Grand Central Terminal?
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The elephant in the room is the Republican presidential candidate. “Has Mr. Trump eaten here?” I ask my waiter, knowing the place has been open less than 24 hours on Saturday night. “He’s been downstairs,” the server says, gesturing to the lobby. For security reasons, he adds, the mogul didn’t venture higher, out of concern that someone might push him.
Would a man afraid of stairs say something like that?
Would a man afraid of slopes need two Secret Service agents to physically protect him from the treacherous terrain of a parking lot?
Donald J. Trump: He might be a racist old loon with a bad fake tan who ran for president because he wanted people to think he was cool and also to turn a quick buck, and is now using that power to ban Muslims and refugees from our country after our country told them they could come, sending some of them to their deaths, apparently just to show he can—but no one can definitively prove he’s afraid of stairs.