President Trump keeps telling arena crowds exactly which parts of his act his wife wants retired, and then performs them anyway.
Jimmy Fallon has mocked the guttural noise President Donald Trump, 80, made at a rally at Clemson University’s T. Ed Garrison Arena in Pendleton, S.C., on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, where the president told the crowd that his wife has “been absolutely impossible to live with” since the release of her self-titled movie.
Fallon said of the sound: “Sounds like Melania on their wedding night.” Trump followed the line about his wife by saying he was “kidding” and “having fun.”
The Impression She Asked Him to Drop
Trump had worked the same material a week earlier in Bullhead City, Ariz. At a rally there on Wednesday, Oct. 14, he told thousands of supporters that First Lady Melania Trump had asked him to retire his onstage impression of a transgender weightlifter. “My wife is going crazy with me,” he told supporters, quoting her as telling him, “You’re president of the United States, you shouldn’t be doing this.”
Seconds after that quote, he hoisted an imaginary barbell over his head and grunted for the crowd.
Her second complaint, by his account, was his walk-off dance to the Village People’s “YMCA.” He quoted her as saying, “You should not dance off the stage, my darling. I love you very much, but please, don’t do that.” She wanted him to skip the dancing and leave with a gentle wave, he said, and he acted it out on the spot with a breezy “Goodbye, everyone.” At the end of the Arizona rally, he danced off the stage.
Trump moved from the weightlifter material in Bullhead City into a story about a swimmer supposedly suffering from windburn. Footage of that stretch circulated on X and drew criticism. “What the hell is he talking about? How does talking about that help anyone?” one viewer wrote.
A “Gay National Anthem” Lawsuit Threat
Trump has called “YMCA” the “gay national anthem,” and he has said the song helped him win the highest gay vote of any Republican in history.
Victor Willis, the Village People frontman who co-wrote the track, died in June 2026. He threatened in 2024 to sue anyone describing the song as a gay anthem. The group performed at Trump’s inauguration festivities in January 2025.
The Crowd Told Him to Finish
Trump ran the routine earlier in Wasilla, Alaska, on Tuesday, Oct. 13, while campaigning for Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. “Oh, my wife hates this … she said it’s so damn unpresidential,” Trump said, quoting her as calling it “so unelegant, darling.” He answered her, by his own account, by pointing out that he had just won the election in a landslide and asking to be left alone.
He performed the barbell bit again in Wasilla, with a moment of mock hesitation. After the “unpresidential” line, he asked the crowd whether he should finish. The audience cheered, he thanked them and finished, then wrapped the stretch by arguing that transgender athletes in women’s sports demean women.
Trump called Sullivan “one of the best and most respected senators in DC,” and he joked that it had been “a lot of flying.” Wasilla sits about 45 miles north of Anchorage, is the hometown of former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and serves as headquarters of the Iditarod sled dog race.
The president also told the Wasilla crowd about a police officer whose retirement investments had improved. The officer said his wife now considered him financially capable, according to Trump, who asked the man whether he intended to stay married. The officer said he was considering it. “Stay with your wife. It’s much less expensive,” Trump said he told him. The story drew laughter at the rally and criticism online, and one commenter described his apparent outlook as treating marriage like “an emotionless financial transaction.”
The weightlifter impression has been in the act since at least May 2025, and Trump has said for months that his wife dislikes it. At an Oct. 7 rally in San Antonio, he said she corrected his pronunciation of “vegan” by addressing him as “Sir.” The rallies come as Republicans work to protect their grip on Congress before Election Day on Nov. 3.
A Shared Pen in the Rose Garden
Melania Trump’s most recent public appearance alongside the president came at an Oct. 19 Rose Garden event launching a women’s health task force she championed. She has kept a selective schedule since 2025, and she disappeared from public view for a month over the summer.
Trump praised her “historic initiative,” reading from a prewritten script. “Thank you very much, everybody. Melania works so hard. You wouldn’t believe it, and she’s accomplished so much in a very short period of time,” he said. He also told the audience, “Well, you think she’s easy. She’s not so easy.”
He offered her the pen after signing the executive order, drawing laughter. “Why don’t you sign? Why don’t you sign, right? I don’t know if her signature means anything,” he said. “Yours is the most important,” she replied.
The first lady appeared on “Fox & Friends” on Sept. 23, where the interview addressed her role as an adviser. She said she had praised the delivery of her husband’s U.N. General Assembly speech. “Sometimes he doesn’t want to hear it, what I tell him, but that’s okay,” she said.
Cheung Accuses Wolff of Fabricating Stories
Author Michael Wolff wrote in a July 20 post on his Substack publication HOWL that the marriage is “probably at its lowest point since the Stormy Daniels trial,” attributing the account to White House insiders. He also wrote that the couple barely spoke.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung accused Wolff of fabricating stories and challenged his credibility. Wolff had alleged earlier, in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” that the Trumps kept separate bedrooms.
A New York jury convicted Trump in May 2024 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The case rested on reimbursements for a $130,000 payment Michael Cohen made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.