Decades ago, Donald Trump boasted to Sen. Mitt Romney’s son at a football game about what would happen when he dumped then-girlfriend Melania Knauss, according to excerpts from a new biography about the Utah Republican obtained by Rolling Stone.
“Trump sidled up to Romney’s son, Josh, and pointed at a leggy brunette across the room. ‘Have you seen my girlfriend, Melania?’ he asked, smirking. ‘When I drop her, the phone is gonna ring off the hook. Every guy in New York wants to go out with her,’” wrote the author, Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins, according to the outlet.
The biography, “Romney: A Reckoning,” is based on dozens of interviews with Romney, his family and members of his inner circle.
Trump reportedly made the comment at a New England Patriots game where he and Romney were guests of team owner Robert Kraft. It was one of their first encounters.
The book also details their first meeting at Mar-a-Lago “a few years” earlier in 1995. Romney remembered Trump as a “cartoon character” who strutted around the lavish Florida estate “like an English lord,” according to the excerpt.
Among other tidbits, Trump reportedly boasted about the value of his silverware.
Donald Trump and Melania Trump married in 2005. He separated from his ex-wife, Marla Maples, in 1997.
Reached for comment about Romney’s telling of their early meetings, a Donald Trump spokesperson told Rolling Stone, “Mittens is a loser who is retiring because he knows he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving another campaign.”
The spokesperson added, “He should stop lying and creating fake stories in order to stay relevant.”
In a 2019 interview with the Washington Post, Romney recalled similar details from his early run-ins with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The Post reported that the former president brought Melania Trump to a New England Patriots game with Romney in the early 2000s.
Donald Trump endorsed Romney’s 2012 presidential bid, but Romney did not return the favor in 2016. He has been an outspoken critic of the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.
The 76-year-old announced last month that he will not seek reelection in 2024.
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