President Donald Trump went on a bit of a tangent about getting a dog Monday evening in El Paso.
Trump was talking about German Shepherds who work on the border to find drugs.
“I wouldn’t mind having one,” the notoriously pet-averse Trump said.
“How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn sort of not – I don’t know, I don’t feel good, feels a little phony to me,” Trump said.
He added that people have asked and told him it’s “good politically” to have a dog, but “That’s not the relationship I have with my people.”
An audience member pointed out that Obama had a dog. Trump laughed. “Obama had a dog. Yeah you’re right.”
The Trumps have broke with tradition in not having a pet; the illustrious tradition of keeping pets in the White House dates back to Thomas Jefferson, who kept a mockingbird and a couple of bear cubs during his presidency. Throughout the years, presidential pets became celebrities of sorts.
Trump lived with a poodle, Chappy, with his first wife, Ivana, who wrote in her memoir, “Raising Trump,” that, “Donald was not a dog fan.”
“When I told him I was bringing Chappy with me to New York, he said, ‘No,’ ” she wrote. “‘It’s me and Chappy or no one!’ I insisted, and that was that.”
Chappy, she later said, “had an equal dislike of Donald.”