President Donald Trump is currently married to his third wife, first lady, Melania. He helped his three children bury his first ex-wife, Ivana, who passed in 2022, and still parties with his ex-wife, Marla Maples, at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
All three women attended his second inauguration last January, each keeping their distance due to their contentious past. But details of his time with each woman have the public convinced he has no idea what a good or healthy marriage looks like.
During a bizarre moment at the Oval Office this week, Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk, signing a funding bill to end a partial government shutdown. He was surrounded by several Republican elected officials, including Rep. Steve Womack, who is mourning the death of his wife, Terri Lynn Williams Womack.
“Where’s Steve?” Trump asked on Feb. 3, scanning the room from his chair, before briefly acknowledging Womack’s loss, then reaching over in a way that felt less comforting than performative.
The Arkansas Republican announced that his spouse of more than four decades died Sunday following a brief illness, a loss he described as deeply painful. Womack then steps out from behind Mike Johnson and comes forward and grabs Trump’s hand.
“He had a rough… it’s [been] a rough week or so right?” said the president before patting Womack’s right hand in a way that felt more appropriate for calming a dog.
Womack’s expression shifted almost immediately. His smile disappeared, his head dipped, and he showed how removed he was from the moment by resting his hand on the back of Trump’s chair instead.
Seemingly unaware of the change in tone, Trump kept going anyway, praising Womack’s late wife in broad, saying, “He had an incredible wife who passed away. She was an incredible woman and everybody knows that. Everybody up here. So we’re with you all the way.”
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Womack thanked the president, who then smacked him on the chest instead of moving on from the moment.
The former reality star revisited the loss of his wife again, noting that Womack had endured a “rough deal.” Trump added, “He had a good marriage. A good marriage is better than a bad marriage, but it makes it a little bit tougher when something like that happens.”
The remark spread quickly once posted online, where people fixated on the implication that grief might be measured differently depending on the quality of a marriage.
“Trump knows all about bad marriages he is the clubhouse leader in that department. He buries them on his golf courses to save money! He is just totally unhinged,” read a brutal comment on Threads.
Another social media user tied the moment to the former real estate mogul’s personal history, writing, “This sounds bizarre until you remember his wife also died, and he didn’t love her very much. It’s so evil lmao.”
Others leaned into biting humor.
“He tried. I’m shocked he didn’t say ‘I have a golf club that we could bury her in, great tax write-off and she can hang out with my ex,’” one user joked.
Another summed it up bluntly: “What an idiot! He is an embarrassment and those clown around him giggle when he makes such a ridiculous statement to a guy whose wife had just passed away.
One person who observed the entire room wrote, “What in the stage managed ridiculousness is this. It’s like the equivalent of how many people can I fit into a car. The props! The slurring, the rambling, spineless Mike Johnson bowing his head in servitude. The whole thing is just ridiculous.”
Womack’s loss remained the central reality beneath the reaction.
In a public statement on X, he described his wife as an avid landscaper and excellent cook who adored her pets, noting that her three children and four grandchildren were the most important parts of her life. He thanked the public for its prayers and said he found comfort knowing she was no longer in pain.
Sunday afternoon, Heaven welcomed an angel. My wife of 41 years, Terri Womack, went to live in eternity with Jesus. My heart is broken and that space remains without her presence. I take comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering in pain and is at peace evermore. Her legacy of… pic.twitter.com/ns9rgRZDv3
— Rep. Steve Womack (@rep_stevewomack) January 20, 2026
Trump’s comment reopened long-running conversations about his own marital history, with each marriage unfolding publicly and often contentiously.
He was married to Ivana Trump for more than a decade before their marriage ended in 1990, following his highly publicized affair with Marla Maples. In her memoir, “Raising Trump: Family Values from America’s First Mother,” Ivana recalled a confrontation that took place during a family vacation in Aspen in December 1989.
“This young blond woman approached me out of the blue and said, ‘I’m Marla and I love your husband. Do you?’” Ivana wrote. “I said, ‘Get lost. I love my husband.’ It was unladylike but I was in shock.”
Maples later offered her own account of the encounter in a 1990 interview.
The Trump Family Tree
— X-Dimension (@X_DimensionNews) January 20, 2025
Clear lineage showcasing the family dynamics.
Here's a visual representation of the Trump family, detailing Donald Trump's relationships and his children from his marriages to Ivana Trump, Marla Maples, and Melania Knauss-Trump. This tree includes his… pic.twitter.com/LdTDRuDkQ7
“She couldn’t pronounce my name, but she was asking me if I was Moola or whatever,” Maples said. “She just asked if I was the one who had been loving her husband for years. … I didn’t want to scream.”
Trump later married Maples in the 1990s, and together they welcomed a daughter, Tiffany, before divorcing. In 2005, he married former model Melania Trump.
In 2022, Ivana passed at the age of 73 and was buried at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey. State law allows cemeteries on private land under certain conditions. Having a burial site on the property can qualify portions of the land for cemetery tax exemptions, something surely appealing to the president.
His marriage to Melania is equally as messy. Speculation that their relationship is not genuine or built on love is fueled by Melania constantly swatting away her husband’s hand in public, her frequent scowl when he gets close, and her recent decision to spend most of her time at Mar-a-Lago rather than in Washington, D.C., with him.
