While Donald Trump, the 46th President of the United States of America, had a bit of a rocky term during his time as the head of the US, much of his personal life came into the public spotlight for the first time, for better or for worse. However, did we manage to find out what languages the ex-president can speak?
Donald Trump only speaks English and has never been known to speak any other language. This is interesting since many of his family speak multiple languages, but Trump has been clear that English is well and truly the only language he ever wants to speak.
In today’s post, we’re going to jump in and explore why Donald Trump is so reluctant to speak any other language, the history of language among other presidents, and more. Let’s dive in and get into it.
Trump Speaks English. That is That.
According to EliteDaily and other sources, it appears that Donald Trump only speaks English, and when you look through video content of Trump, whether that was before, during, or after his presidency, there’s no footage where he’s speaking any other language in addition to English.
So, it’s pretty safe to say he doesn’t speak another language, and if he does, he’s keeping it hidden really rather well.
Of course, while being able to speak multiple languages is an ideal skill for a political figure to have because it definitely helps when it comes to international communications, it’s not essential. The most recent presidents, Obama and Bush, didn’t speak other languages.
In fact, many cite president Franklin Roosevelt as the last multilingual president the US ever had, and he was in office way back in the 1930s and was capable of speaking both French and German.
Now, it’s no secret that Trump was very anti-immigrant and very patriotic to the US and saw many other countries as ‘the enemy.’ Spanish is obviously quite a common language within the US, with a large portion of the country being of Mexican heritage, and that’s something previous presidents took into account.
The US Census Bureau found that back in 2010, over 55 million people in the US (out of a population of 319 million at the time) don’t speak English at home, and 34 million speak Spanish as their first language.
So, it makes sense that a president would want to appeal to this large portion of the US population. Mitt Romney and Obama spent a huge $23 million on political ads during their campaigns for this exact reason. Trump spent zero. It’s just not for him.
Trump’s Multilingual Family
Just because Trump doesn’t speak multiple other languages, that doesn’t mean that his family doesn’t. Melania Trump, Donald’s wife, apparently speaks more languages than Trump could ever know. Born in Slovenia, Europe, she reportedly speaks Slovenian, French, English, German, and Serbian.
Barron, Trump and Melania’s son, also reportedly speaks both Slovenian and English and has been taught while growing up to effortlessly switch back and forth between the two languages with ease. It would be interesting to know the conversations Barron and Melania have with one another, with Trump having no idea what’s being said!
It turns out that Trump might have a bit of a thing for bilingual partners. His first wife, Ivana Trump, was born in the Czech Republic, and both her and their son, Donald Trump Jr, speak both English and Czech.
Not As It Seems
So, Trump has a rather extensive bilingual family, of which his present wife is capable of speaking five languages, but it’s worth mentioning that there are critics to this, and all may not be as it seems.
An article posted in the Mercury News back in 2020 explored some of the biographers that have been writing about Trump and Melania’s life, including a Washington Post reporter and Mary Jordan, the author of The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump.
While claiming to speak so many languages, even Melania only has footage of speaking both English and her native Slovenian, and any extra languages she claims to speak, such as French and German, have only extended to basic polite statements, like Bonjour (Hello in French) and Grazie (Thank you in Italian).
Mary Jordan, who’s the official author and writer of Melania’s biography, even reached out to the White House for more proof that Melania was able to speak more than two languages, but no evidence was provided.
So, does Trump have a multilingual family, or is it all to create some kind of special image that makes the family seem worldly? I guess we’ll never truly know, but it’s interesting to think that not everything may be as it seems.