Reportedly obsessed with boxes

Donald Trump is reportedly obsessed with boxes

A New York Times report details the former president's love of his 'beautiful mind' boxes, which recently got him in quite a bit of trouble

Alex Shultz

Donald Trump loves boxes, according to a report from the New York Times.

Trump's love of boxes is unrequited and has gotten him into a bit of a pickle of late; this week, he was hit with a 38-count indictment related to his post-presidency safekeeping of allegedly confidential materials, which were stored in boxes.

While he was president, Trump's “aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the 'beautiful mind' material,” the Times reported Thursday. They were referencing the Academy Award-winning movie “A Beautiful Mind,” which is about a brilliant mathematician with schizophrenia. 

One box-knower cited by the Times said, “While the materials were disorganized, Mr. Trump would notice if somebody had rifled through them or they were not arranged in a particular way.” And two anonymous sources confirmed that Trump “was generally able to identify what was in the boxes most immediately around him.”

Trump has long collected — or hoarded, if you're feeling less generous — all sorts of papers and mementos, including well before he ascended to the presidency. But when he achieved presidential status, according to the Times, he switched to a more statesmanlike approach: filing the papers in boxes. Cardboard boxes, specifically.

“Starting in the early months of his administration, Mr. Trump began using a cardboard box to bring papers and documents from the West Wing up to the residence at the end of the day.”

Trump liked to pick certain boxes and take them on trips, the Times said. He took boxes on Air Force One. When boxes filled up with things, his aides would deliver him new boxes for box uses (putting things inside the boxes). “Some aides would periodically encourage him to condense the number [of boxes] he had in his immediate vicinity,” the Times detailed. Such calls went unheeded, it seems.

Thus explains one compelling theory as to why Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence has since been photographed full of boxes. Boxes in the ballroom. Boxes in the bathroom, even! Being president means accumulating materials. Those materials go in boxes. Trump collected the boxes. He loves boxes.