President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with American manufacturers in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with American manufacturers in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Photo: Jacquelyn Martin Photo: Jacquelyn Martin Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close In the pale of winter, Trump's tan remains a state secret 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON — The trees in the capital are barren, spindly things. The temperature has dipped, requiring puffy coats. With the government open — for now — President Donald Trump has left the frigidity of governing for a weekend in Palm Beach.

But in a town where not even the longtime operation of the federal government seems certain, Trump has adhered to one constant: a conspicuously sun-kissed glow, one that has shone like a stoplight against Washington’s graying backdrop. Much like Warhol’s shock of white hair or Big Bird’s saffron plumage, the president’s vibrant hue is so consistently present and meticulously maintained that it was a culturally embedded representation of him long before he entered politics.

The president’s shade is one that Alec Baldwin, the actor who portrays Trump regularly on “Saturday Night Live,” recently described as vacillating between a “Mark Rothko orange” and a “slightly paler Orange Crush,” depending on the setting. Which right now is February in Washington.

“Which is not in the tropics last I checked,” Baldwin said in an interview.

The official line from the White House, as with other matters surrounding the president’s physical health and appearance, is that Trump’s glow is the result of “good genes,” according to a senior administration official who would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

And, OK, a little powder — a translucent one, not a bronzer — which the president applies himself before television appearances, the official said.

But mysteries abound. One persistent question: Does Trump use a tanning bed, as a talkative makeup artist said in 2016 and Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former aide, claimed in a tell-all book? (Manigault Newman wrote that an usher was fired for mishandling transport of the contraption.)

Trump’s former boarding school classmates have described him as a fan of ultraviolet rays, someone who would pop a tanning bulb into a light socket to go “to the beach.” Even James Comey, the former FBI director turned presidential foe, speculated on Trump’s glow. The president’s “face appeared slightly orange,” Comey wrote in his memoir, “with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles.”

But according to three people who have spent time in the White House residence, no such bed or spray-tan booth exists in a hidden nook of the residence, a cranny of the East Wing or a closet on Air Force One. Two senior White House officials insisted that no such apparatus exists.

Several of the president’s supporters had little to say when asked how the president achieves his glow or other ways in which he prepares to get camera-ready. One former campaign hand admitted that aspects of the presidents’s process sound “like a captivating story” but declined to elaborate, saying Trump should be allowed to get dressed in peace.

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