President Donald Trump has claimed he was told as a child that he had a “brilliant” aptitude for music, and that he could have “been a flutist” if he pursued it.
In an interview Tuesday on Pod Force One, Trump told New York Post columnist Miranda Devine that she was the first to ask him whether he had ever played an instrument.
“I played, like, for very short periods of time, the flute. Could you believe that? I had flute lessons,” Trump said, later calling it an “unusual instrument.” “Can you believe it? I could have been a flutist. And I didn’t particularly like it. I don’t know, it wasn’t for me.”
Trump claimed that when he was 11 or 12, an aptitude test revealed music as a top option—which didn’t sit well with his father.
“I went through this process for a couple of days, and they came up to my father, they said, ‘Your son is brilliant at music. He can be an incredible musician,’” according to Trump. “This is not what my father wanted to hear. You know, this was not the greatest thing ever.”
Trump claimed to have a good “ear,” though the way he discussed it, it seemed to relate instead to his taste in music and to his recall ability during a cognitive test, which he had mentioned to Devine minutes earlier.
“I play great music. People like the music I play,” he said.
“But it’s funny because my father would not have thought about music for me. But I do. I think I have an ear for music,” he continued. “They play a note, like on the piano, and then I remember it to this day. And then they’d ask you other questions, and then they’d play notes later on, and they’d say, ‘Which is the note we played from one hour ago?’ And I’d, like, get it right, I guess.”
While attendees at Trump’s rallies may not mind his playlist, several artists—or their estates or families—have at one point or another objected to his use of their songs. The list is long, and includes Aerosmith, Foo Fighters, Rufus Wainwright, Beyonce, Pharrell Williams, Isaac Hayes, Sinéad O’Connor, R.E.M., the Rolling Stones and Tom Petty.
Relatedly, when the president hawked Trump Guitars last year, Gibson filed a cease-and-desist order, accusing the company of copying its trademarks.
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