Another little detail from Trump’s visit to the Kennedy Center:
[I]n a private discussion at the start of a meeting of the center’s board on Monday, Mr. Trump offered something he usually steers away from in bigger settings: a personal anecdote about his childhood.
He told the assembled board members that in his youth he had shown special abilities in music after taking aptitude tests ordered by his parents, according to three participants in the meeting.
He could pick out notes on the piano, he told the board members, some of whom he’s known for years and others who are relatively new to him. But the president said that his father, Fred Trump, was not pleased by his musical abilities, according to the participants, and that he had never developed his talent. One person in the room said Mr. Trump appeared to be joking about his father.
“I have a high aptitude for music,” he said at one point, according to people at the meeting. “Can you believe that?”
“That’s why I love music,” he added.
He has a great aptitude for epidemiology too. Everyone said so. Because his Uncle taught at MIT, dontcha know.
I’ve been struggling with where I’ve heard this piano thing before and I finally remembered. It’s from “Pride and Prejudice” the scene in Lady Catherine De Bourgh’s drawing room:
“Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation, if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”
Here’s the movie version:
Here’s the countrified Mr. Collins, Lee Greenwood:
“He’s absolutely very creative and very artistic,” Mr. Greenwood said. “I do not doubt that he has a great ear for music.”
The following goes way beyond Catherine De Bourgh. It’s full Kim Jong Un:
Asked about the anecdote, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, did not directly address it but said that the president “is a virtuoso and his musical choices represent a brilliant palette of vibrant colors when others often paint in pale pastels.” Mr. Cheung said that, given Mr. Trump’s roles as president and Kennedy Center chair, “there is nobody more uniquely qualified to bring this country, and its rich history of the arts, back to prominence.”
Yeah, he’s a musical genius. And a simply fabulous dancer:
