First Lady Melania Trump is no fan of her husband’s signature campaign move, President Donald Trump has revealed to crowds several times — even as that very dance became the centerpiece of a World Cup controversy that has drawn global attention.
The admission came amid a firestorm surrounding Belgium’s dismantling of the United States 4-1 in round 16 on July 6, 2026, at Seattle Stadium. After striker Romelu Lukaku buried Belgium’s fourth goal in second-half stoppage time, he and several teammates launched into an unmistakable rendition of the president’s fist-pumping, hip-swaying celebration — the move Trump made famous on the 2024 campaign trail to the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”
The Belgian squad’s official X account drove the point home with a photo of Lukaku celebrating alongside defender Timothy Castagne and a two-word caption: “Overturn this.”
The celebrations extended well beyond the pitch. Video circulated on social media showing the Belgium squad in the locker room, jumping on benches, waving shirts in the air and performing the Trump dance while listening to “Y.M.C.A.” — Trump’s favorite rally anthem — blasting in the background. Players including winger Jeremy Doku, midfielder Youri Tielemans and goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois were part of a Belgian squad that had too much quality for a U.S. side coached by Mauricio Pochettino.
A Dance That Even the First Lady Dislikes
The dance became one of the defining visual signatures of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Since then, world leaders and athletes around the globe have recreated it, sometimes in admiration and sometimes in unmistakable mockery.
Belgium’s players are hardly the first to weaponize the move as commentary. But perhaps the most surprising critic of the dance is someone much closer to the president. Trump himself told crowds that First Lady Melania Trump is no fan of it — a detail that adds a domestic wrinkle to an already chaotic week of World Cup politics.
If the dance has become a global flashpoint, it has also been a running source of domestic friction. Trump has acknowledged on multiple occasions that the person least enamored of the move may be the one supposedly closest to him. “My wife hates when I do this,” he told a retreat of House Republicans earlier this year, recounting that Melania Trump — “a very classy person,” in his telling — had chided him that the dance was “so un-presidential.” By his account, she has also warned him that the crowds who cheer it are “just being nice to you,” a verdict he waved off, insisting the room “goes crazy” every time. It is a rare rebuke the president seems happy to broadcast — and, judging by his continued fist-pumping from rally stages to inauguration balls, entirely content to ignore.
The Habits Melania Calls “Unpresidential”
The dance is only the beginning of what the first lady reportedly finds cringeworthy about her husband’s public conduct. By Trump’s own account, Melania has flagged at least two habits she considers “unpresidential.” Speaking to House Republicans earlier this year, the president said his wife objects not only to his rally dancing but also to the impression he does on stage — miming a weightlifter — when he mocks transgender athletes, a bit he has said she explicitly asked him to drop but that he has continued anyway. Trump has recounted that Melania reached for history to make her point, wondering aloud whether Franklin D. Roosevelt, “an elegant fellow,” would ever have danced in public.
Her objections extend to the soundtrack. Trump has said Melania is no fan of his signature anthem, the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.,” which he claims she has dubbed “the gay national anthem.” The friction runs deeper than showmanship: in her first solo remarks of the term, Melania campaigned against “mean-spirited and hurtful online behavior” — a message many read as sitting awkwardly beside the president’s own combative social media style.
