Donald Trump may be president, but he also has to endure holiday meals with his in-laws.
Trump, 79, spent Christmas Eve at his Mar-a-Lago estate with family members, including first lady Melania Trump, 55, and her father, Victor Naves, who is two years the president’s senior.
The trio sat together for an extravagant Christmas Eve dinner Wednesday night at the Palm Beach resort, which Forbes estimated was worth $325 million in 2023. In video footage from the event broadcast online, Knavs, 81, looks animated as he chats with his daughter, who leans in close to listen to him.
Trump, Melania and her father, Victor Naves, attended a Christmas dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Wednesday. / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images
Trump, meanwhile, stares straight ahead, seemingly frozen out of the conversation. Before he notices the camera is on him, he sits sullenly scanning the room, shaking a stiff, demonstrative fist.
Critics of the president were quick to seize on the moment online, pointing to what they described as Melania’s lack of interest. “Can he stay away?” An X user teased. “Trump is angry and embarrassed that Melania only wants to talk to her father,” wrote another in the post, which has been viewed 1.6 million times.
Knavs and his late wife, Amalija, both worked in fashion and sales in Slovenia before moving to the United States after their daughter married a real estate scion. They became US citizens in 2018, despite their son-in-law’s radical stance on immigration.
A fixture in the president’s family life, Knavs appeared at events from Trump’s inauguration to his Thanksgiving dinner table. When Barron Trump — the president’s youngest son and only child with the first lady — graduated from the prestigious Oxbridge Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida in May 2024, the Knavs were the only family members besides Barron’s parents, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Both Melania Trump and Barron Trump are known to have close ties to the Slovenian businessman. Melania Trump was largely absent from the current president’s third and final campaign as she cared for her mother, Amaliza Naves, who died on January 9, 2024 and was laid to rest in Palm Beach, according to reports.
Barron Trump and his grandfather Victor Naves participate in the inauguration parade. / Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images
According to reports, Barron Trump remained close to his grandfather throughout the funeral.
In 2016, Melania Trump’s childhood friends told The New York Times that they remembered Knavs — who was then a member of Yugoslavia’s elite Communist Party — as a “larger-than-life figure” like Trump himself.
At the time, the Trump campaign denied that Melania Trump’s father had ever been an “active member” of the party.
“But he was very successful there,” Trump said in a 2016 interview. “It’s a different kind of success than you’ve had here. But he succeeded.”
Trump may have looked exhausted over a jam-packed lunch, during which he took calls from children across the United States as part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s Santa Tracker.
Trump and first lady Melania attended the presidential tradition at their sprawling Palm Beach estate. / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images
In true Trump fashion, a decades-old presidential tradition took a political turn.
“Pennsylvania is great. We won Pennsylvania, three times actually, but we won Pennsylvania. We won it in a landslide. That’s why I love Pennsylvania,” Trump enthused to a 5-year-old from the Keystone State who was still alive during his first two presidential campaigns.
The president later capped Christmas Eve with a scathing post on Truth Social, which he called “radical left scum.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
