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Free, Melania

Page 12

by Kate Bennett


  The ceremony had started at 7 P.M., and afterward guests were shuttled in black limousines to Mar-a-Lago, where most had already spent the day enjoying free spa treatments or golf. Along with the celebrities, politicians, people on the Forbes 400 list, and media titans, were Melania’s few personal guests, people she met pre-Trump: essentially just her parents, her sister, and a handful of girlfriends. Her life in New York before meeting Trump (even while dating Trump) was simple and centered on home. She was not a social swan, and she didn’t hit the charity circuit like so many wealthy Manhattan wives do. Her circle was small, not because she wasn’t a friendly person or because she had few social skills, but because she only wanted to spend time with people who mattered to her and, most important, people she could truly trust.

  Spectators lined up behind police barricades in front of the church just to catch a glimpse of the star power—they waited so long many ordered pizzas from their cell phones. “If someone had dropped a bomb on that place, it would have wiped out an entire generation of famous Americans,” said the bandleader’s wife.

  These were, of course, the years that Hollywood loved Trump, or at least tolerated him as a mainstay of popular culture. But Trump thought they loved him. The Apprentice was a huge hit, and the idea that this real estate magnate slash reality TV star would one day be in the White House … well, it was ridiculous. When that day eventually, and unbelievably, came, nearly all of Trump’s celebrity friends would abandon him. It remains a stinging sore spot with the president.

  Back then, however, Trump had famous pals, and they adored Melania, liking the way she kept him centered. He wasn’t oblivious to having found in Melania a woman capable of putting up with him. “[If] this were just another really wonderful woman, I wouldn’t have done it,” Trump said when asked ad nauseam why on earth after two hellish divorces would he dare marry again. “This is beyond that.” He must have really meant it, because although he and NBC wanted to carry the wedding live, Melania said no way would she have television cameras at her big day. In fact, there was virtually no press at all, and guests were asked not to take photos or video. Only Katie Couric broke the rules, snapping away at the reception. “I didn’t have her thrown out,” Trump said. “I heard about it a little bit later. But, she was fun. You know, it does happen.”

  As the Michael Rose Orchestra struck up the forty-six-piece band, the celebration kicked off in the new Mar-a-Lago grand ballroom. At various points in the evening, Tony Bennett and Paul Anka would sing—as would Billy Joel. Joel included in his repertoire a song he wrote called “That’s Why the Donald Is a Trump” to the tune of “The Lady Is a Tramp.” (Page Six wrote about Joel’s performance at the wedding, claiming the singer was so “tipsy” he kept losing his place reading the lyrics.)

  But the vibe of the wedding was fun and easy and no one minded because they were having a good time bearing witness to yet another over-the-top Trump nuptial. Guests marveled at the detail, the lace overlays on the tablecloths, the flowers, the china. “I wanted to do everything like Louis XIV style because it’s my favorite,” said Melania about her decor inspiration. Even Bailey, who attended the wedding as a guest, said Melania was able to enjoy the night. “She really let go,” says Bailey, who got tons of future clients from that wedding. Bailey admits that for years following the event, his clients would use it as a model for what they wanted him to do for their own weddings.

  Bailey said that at one point during the wedding, Ivanka approached him and said, “When I get married, I’m calling you,” which she did. “Literally, at six in the morning, the day her engagement was announced, she called me,” said Bailey.

  But for Melania’s big day, the focus was on what she had envisioned, created, and executed, and it was 100 percent to her liking. “That night, I did not get one request from Melania that anything was wrong or upsetting,” says Bailey, adding that this was most definitely the exception and not the rule. “She wasn’t ‘move the light, fix this.’ She was completely at ease once the entire ceremony and reception started.”

  In her later life, the White House staff would say the same of their new boss. Melania’s attention to detail and certainty about how she wanted things to look and the mood she wanted to set was discerning—she was a stickler for making sure it was all just as she imagined it would be. She pores over every detail of a table setting or a floral arrangement, asking that everything for a big event be set up the night before so that she can do a walk-through, sleeping well in the knowledge she won’t be surprised with mistakes on the day of. The value of this type A behavior means that she tends to be calm and effortless at whatever celebration she oversees, as though the evening had never required hard work or induced stress.

  As the reception dinner rolled on, the toasts began. Eric Trump, who ten years later would also get married at Mar-a-Lago and, like his stepmother and sister, also hire Preston Bailey, was warm and welcoming to his new stepmother. He was twenty years old, the youngest child from Trump’s first marriage to Ivana. “I know this is the last time I’ll ever have to stand up here,” he said, raising a glass. It was thoughtful and reassuring to her, even if others in the room might have been willing to bet it wouldn’t be the last time. At twenty-seven, Donald Trump Jr., whom everyone still called Donny, was the brattier of the three oldest Trump kids, and he didn’t mind being perceived that way. “I look forward to spending many years annoying both of you,” he said during his toast, tucking his long hair behind his ear, a prediction that would very much come true. Months later, Don Jr. would himself get married in the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago to Vanessa Haydon, also a model (from whom he is now divorced). The decor at Donny and Vanessa’s wedding was as opposite from Melania’s white-and-gold vision as could be. Vanessa wanted purple tablecloths and bright fuchsia flowers. When they cut the cake, Donny, ever the frat boy, smeared frosting over his new wife’s face. The saving grace of Melania’s relationship with Don Jr. would come a few years later, when Barron was a young boy. An only child, he was grateful, and so was his mother, for the rambunctious fun of playing with Don Jr. and Vanessa’s five children, some of whom were almost the same age as their uncle.

  For Ivanka, letting go of her father to another wife was more complicated. She was twenty-three when he married Melania, and while she liked the Slovenian model a lot more than she did Marla, which was not at all, coming to terms with another alpha female in her family wasn’t always easy.

  Four years after her own wedding, Melania would attend Ivanka’s nuptials to Jared Kushner at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, wearing a sexy, strapless, royal-blue silk gown, a massive starburst-shaped diamond brooch attached to the waistline. Simple and understated Melania was not.

  Ivanka was also especially close to her younger brother, Eric, and she felt that if Eric was okay with Melania, which he was, she was fine as well. Years later, when Eric married Lara Yunaska at Mar-a-Lago, Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, would perform the wedding ceremony; Ivanka herself designed Lara’s engagement ring and the couple’s wedding bands from her now-defunct eponymous fine-jewelry line. Forever on brand, that Trump family.

  Melania’s arrival was all good by Ivanka’s standards. Like her dad, she felt that the Slovenian “deserved” to marry into the Trump family after sticking with him for more than six years. Again, the word “love” was rarely used to describe why the couple was together and why they got married. Still, she offered more support for the union with Melania than she had for Marla Maples—who married her father at the Plaza Hotel; Ivanka and her two brothers didn’t even show.

  “I want to thank my girl” was how Trump opened his wedding toast, addressing not Ivanka, as one might imagine with a start like that, but Melania. “It has been the best six years of my life in every way. My little Melania.” It was, at best, worth a cringe. But Trump, with his awkward expressions of emotion, and Melania, with her daddy issues and joyful nuptials, didn’t appear to think the toast was anything other than hopelessly
romantic.

  Just after midnight, it was time to cut the cake. A gargantuan, two-hundred-pound, Grand Marnier–flavored creation many feet and seven tiers tall, the wedding cake was about as Trump as it gets. The facade was covered with three thousand white sugar flowers. “I said ‘I want all roses,’” was Melania’s instruction to Mar-a-Lago’s pastry chef, Cedric Barberet, who met the demand with gusto. It took two months for Barberet and his team to build the cake’s platform, as well as the intricate wiring system used to support all the buttercream and yellow chiffon cake with orange zest, which was weighed down with liqueur. Like an actual Trump building, inside the thing was mostly infrastructure. It succeeded in staying upright, of course, and at the wedding it was a centerpiece worthy of oohs and aahs, but sadly it wasn’t edible. The tiers weren’t deep enough with actual cake for pieces to be cut for the guests, so only the base had “cake” enough for show for the couple to do the ceremonial cutting. Trump winked at the gathered crowd as they cut into the cake, her hands on top of his. “We made a wish,” he said.

  The top tier was the only other part that was also actual food, and it was preserved for Melania so she could presumably eat it with Trump on their first wedding anniversary, as is tradition. As for the guests, Barberet baked dozens of five-inch-tall spare cakes with the same flavors as the main cake, and slices of those were served. Later, after the party was over and the sun was coming up, Barberet and his staff would demolish the wedding cake, cutting hunks of it off the sides and eating as much as possible, right down to the wires.

  At 1:00 A.M., with no signs of the party slowing down, Melania slipped off to her room for an outfit change, reemerging in a body-hugging Vera Wang gown—white, of course—with detailed ruching at the bodice and a flowing Grecian-style hem. She had taken down her massive beehive hairdo and let her natural waves tumble past her shoulders. In lieu of the veil, she had put on a floral crown made of white roses. The costume change was significant enough to switch Melania from formal Palm Beach bride to tropical party-vibes bride. Her nutmeg-colored skin dark against the white of the dress, smile as big as could be, she danced with guests outside on the patio, which had been transformed into a nightclub-like space, with colored lights and dance floor. Melania had removed all of her diamonds from the wedding, stripping off the sparkling bracelets and massive necklace. She was, it appeared, very much having fun. Trump, not one to dance to modern music, stayed mostly on the periphery, talking to his VIP guests, discussing the success of The Apprentice, and asking everyone if they thought Melania was the most beautiful bride they had ever seen. (“Of course, Donald.”)

  At 4:00 A.M., the party finally wrapped, and legend has it Trump actually carried his bride over the threshold to their suite. The event had gone off without a hitch, exactly as Melania anticipated. She was now Mrs. Donald Trump, the only title she ever imagined she would have. Never in a million years, and especially not that night as she slipped into her bed at Mar-a-Lago, with its high-thread-count sheets and fragrant roses on the nightstand, did she believe she would one day be first lady of the United States.

  9

  Family First, First Family

  “Sometimes I just think, ‘Oh my God, this is my baby. I have a baby.’ There’s nothing like it.”

  —MELANIA TRUMP

  From the day she had him, Barron Trump became Melania’s world, her most prized possession and the barometer by which she would make decisions for the rest of her life.

  When Melania got pregnant, it made the cover of the New York Post. “Trump Baby: Melania Due in Spring” screamed the headline, as though everyone in Gotham was on a first-name basis with Melania Trump. She called in to Martha Stewart’s talk show the day the news broke. Martha, as she is wont to do, was candid, promptly declaring that she had an inkling Melania was with child because Melania looked fat in an appearance on her program the week before. “You looked just too wholesome … and plump.”

  Melania also gave an interview to People magazine, recalling the moment she told Trump “he was going to be a father.” Of course, he’d been a father already for more than two decades. “At first he needed to take it in. He was very surprised. And then he was very happy.” Trump corrects his wife, saying he was more surprised the doing it actually worked as fast as it did. “I expected we were going to have children, so I wasn’t totally surprised,” he says. “But I was surprised by the speed of it. It happened very quickly.” Always quick to plug his successes.

  As a present for getting pregnant, Trump bought Melania a snazzy silver Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren sports car, which he had delivered to her at Trump Tower complete with a big red bow on top. Not exactly a family car—there’s no space for a car seat—but then again Trump’s never been one for sentimentality. It was a splurge, however; the sticker price is somewhere around $550,000.

  Trump also did a solo interview about Melania’s pregnancy, again centered on the concept of timing, only with a much more sinister bent. “I think I’ll give her a week,” he jokes to Howard Stern about how much time Melania will have to get her body back after the baby. His wife, listening at home, is then five months pregnant. “I’ve seen ’em all types. I’ve seen beautiful women that for the rest of their lives have become a horror,” says Trump, talking about the miracle of childbirth and what it may or may not do to a woman’s physique. “You know, I mean it’s been a very tough life for them, okay? They gain, like, 250 pounds. It’s like a disaster.” He reassures Stern that Melania isn’t going to be like that. No way. Any listener would be cringing by now, internally begging him to shut up, just don’t make it worse, be quiet. But he doesn’t. “I mean monster in the most positive way,” he goes on. “She has gotten very, very large—in all the right places.” Ten years later, New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser will disavow Trump and his presidential candidacy because in her eyes he’s a total creep and she’s had it. One of the incidents she cites as proof happened two months after Melania had Barron, when Peyser visits the triplex for an interview. She is being nice and cordial when she compliments Melania, standing nearby in five-inch stilettos, for having lost all her baby weight. “Trump corrected me: ‘She’s almost lost all the baby weight.’”

  And if she does get cellulite? Trump pledges he will, valiantly, stay in the marriage. “I will. I will love her so much, you have no idea. I’m a very loyal person. I will love her so much.” It’s the first time the word “love” has been uttered by Trump in an interview when talking about Melania. Sadly, it may also prove to be untrue, at least the loyal part. More than a decade later, two women will come forward and say they had affairs with Trump shortly after Melania gave birth. Former Playboy model Karen McDougal claims she had a ten-month affair with Trump in June 2006. And porn star Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, says she had a one-night fling with him the following month. Trump denies both allegations.

  For Melania, the pregnancy simply provided another opportunity to ignore the outside world and focus on her independence. She got to work dismantling parts of the 67th floor of the triplex—specifically, a few of the guest rooms—being careful not to disturb the decades-old gold facade the public had gotten used to seeing during interviews, reality television episodes, and photo shoots. Melania builds out a nursery suited for a new Trump baby, since the last to live there was Tiffany, more than a decade earlier. She spends most of her days resting or visits with her sister, Ines. Never married and with no children, Ines, an artist, has also moved to New York City, living in a Trump-owned building on Park Avenue, in an apartment said to be worth $2 million, a handful of blocks from Trump Tower. Amalija visited often, and both she and Viktor planned to spend even more time in Manhattan, with a grandchild coming and because Melania asked that they be actively involved in helping care for the child. Ultimately, Viktor and Amalija have spent so much time with Barron, watching him, looking after him, staying with him when his parents travel, that he is fluent in Slovenian. Those who have spent time with him say that he has a slight Sloven
ian accent.

  By this time in her pregnancy, Melania was not yet a United States citizen (she became one four months after Barron was born), but she had had her green card since 2001, when she sponsored herself, controversially, on the basis of being a model of “extraordinary ability.” Once a citizen, she was able to sponsor her parents to obtain green cards and, ultimately in summer 2018, U.S. citizenship. The type of family visa process that the Knavses and Melania used is specifically the kind that Trump and his administration are trying to repeal, calling “chain migration” harmful to the United States. But, apparently, it’s okay for his in-laws.

  While having a baby for Melania meant gathering up her Slovenian support system, for Trump the pregnancy was a chance to boast about his virility. At red carpet appearances over several months, he’s photographed with his hand on Melania’s growing stomach or actually pointing to it with a big grin as if to say, “See? I DID THAT.” Melania, next to him, is smiling in practically every picture during this time period, beaming, actually, that at thirty-five she is finally getting what she had hoped for: a child. The sense of family instilled in Melania from a young age and her close relationship with her parents and sister made her want to be a mother. Additionally, having a child with Trump would mean the child would be well cared for financially and afforded privilege and prestige, necessities in the life she wanted for her offspring. Again, in her decision to tie herself to Trump, the wait was worth it to fulfill that goal. If the paramount goal was to settle down and only settle down, could she have married someone and had a child earlier in life? Sure. But could she have given that child the life she envisioned for them, and herself, if she had settled? Probably not.

 

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