Working on the second floor of the West Wing allowed aides to avoid dealing with President Donald Trump because he never walked up the stairs to get to the upper floor, a forthcoming book by author Michael Wolff said.

Wolff wrote that working out of the second-floor office, as Trump advisors Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Miller opted to do, “meant a degree of exclusion but also protection” because “Trump would never climb the stairs (and, by the end of his term, he never had).”

An excerpt of Wolff’s book “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency” published in New York Magazine on Monday shed more light on the confusion among Trump and his hollowed-out circle of aides as the January 6 insurrection unfolded.

The unlikelihood of Trump climbing those stairs was first reported by The Washington Post in January 2017, during the early days of the Trump administration.

“Though Conway took over the workspace previously occupied by Valerie Jarrett, who had been Obama’s closest adviser, the confidant dismissively predicted that Trump would rarely climb a flight of stairs,” The Post said at the time.

In April, Trump lodged a rare defense of President Joe Biden after he took a tumble on the stairs of Air Force One while leaving Joint Base Andrews in March. Trump defended Biden against criticisms that he is too old, and compared Biden’s plane stumble to when he struggled to walk down a ramp at West Point in June 2020.

“I know that if it were me, they would be up and down, going crazy,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “I had an instance where on a slippery, slippery ramp, a piece of steel, very steep and very long railings … and it was pouring at West Point.” He added, “The last thing I want to do is go down because when Gerald Ford went down and it was not good.”

“Landslide” is scheduled to be published by Henry Holt & Co. on July 27.

14 thoughts on “Why Donald Trump Never Went to This Part of the White House”
  1. I’m 65 years old and have stairs in my home that are on par with a ladder, I have fallen up them and down them my whole life therefore I try very hard NOT to have to use them for no good reason (bathroom on second floor). See where I’m going with this? He probably should have used the stairs more because everyone that’s ever lived in this house was thin.

  2. This is crazy ! Who really cares why President Trump didn’t wand to climb some stairs in the white house. My guess would be he wanted to save his energy to battle Democrats over at the capitol.

  3. I’m seventy and avoid the stairs as much as I can, my knees don’t like the stairs either, hurts like hell!

  4. A sarcastic article, and apparently the book is negative, too. I don’t need to have our President set stair records when he usually worked 20 hours a day. Incl most weekends. Younger people said they couldn’t keep up. Biden’s even ruling military doesn’t have to do 1.5 mile runs; feels a leisurely walk, maybe butterfly siting is enough. And push-ups? They can now just do some gently hand waving, maybe blow kisses to the enemies.

    China said they plan to take us over by 2035 and increased their military budget by 200% while Biden cut ours to ZERO %; in fact with inflation, we’re at NEGATIVE 2%.

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