the last book I ever read (The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, excerpt twelve)

from The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump by Mary Jordan:

Marriage thus far had not been a success story for Trump. His first one, to Ivana, ended badly. The second, to Marla, included the sting of having Marla caught on a beach late at night with one of his security guys. People close to Trump said they had never seen him so furious and humiliated. In January, Marla announced that she was publishing a memoir, All That Glitters Is Not Gold, and that it was not expected to be flattering to Trump. Trump is known for threatening to sue to try to stop books about him from being published. Marla’s memoir never appeared, eventually being withdrawn “by mutual consent.”

Jay Goldberg, Trump’s friend and lawyer who worked on his divorce from Ivana, said marriage hadn’t been an easy fit for Trump, who was always looking for the next thing. “I noticed in the relationship with Marla, the philosophy that there’s nothing that destroys love except for marriage… that if you have steak every night, you get tired of it,” Goldberg told me. “He was so in love with Marla when he was cheating on Ivana. Then once they got married, the fun of the chase was over.”

the last book I ever read (The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, excerpt eleven)

from The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump by Mary Jordan:

CBS newsman Dan Rather invited Trump and Melania to sit for a joint 60 Minutes interview. In a segment taped in December 1999 and aired on January 11, 2000, a visibly skeptical Rather grilled Trump about his unconventional views. Watching the interview in 2019, it is striking how little Trump has changed in both the words he uses and his demeanor. He’s been reading off the same script for decades, with Melania nearby, glowing with admiration. When Rather asked about Senator McCain’s war record, Trump said exactly what he would say on the campaign trail almost two decades later: “Does being captured make you a war hero? I don’t know. I’m not sure.” He said other politicians are “dumber than a rock,” and that George W. Bush “doesn’t seem like Albert Einstein.”

the last book I ever read (The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, excerpt ten)

from The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump by Mary Jordan:

Six months before Melania’s Sports Illustrated shoot in Mexico, the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant held its 1999 competition in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Trump often invited his pals to be judges, and that year he asked Kylie Bax and world heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield. Perhaps more important, he invited Diane Smith, the influential Sports Illustrated senior editor in charge of the swimsuit edition. Within months of the Miss Universe pageant, Melania, Bax, and Holyfield all appeared int eh 2000 swimsuit issue. (Male sports stars are sometimes featured posing with the bikini-clas women.)

A few weeks after the fall photo shoot, in late 1999, Sports Illustrated’s top editor, Bill Colson, received a phone call out of the blue: Donald Trump wanted to have lunch. Colson had never met Trump, and he thought it strange to be summoned by the celebrity developer. But everybody knew Trump was interested in sports, particularly golf and tennis, so perhaps it made sense that he wanted to chat with the editor of the biggest sports magazine in the country. Colson met him at Jean-Georges, the high-end restaurant housed in the Trump International Hotel and Tower on Central Park West. Colson engaged Trump on sports, and they chatted. But Colson said it soon became clear why he was there.

“Did it go well with Melania?” Trump said.

the last book I ever read (The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, excerpt nine)

from The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump by Mary Jordan:

She laid out her story: She was born and raised in a small town. At nineteen, she won a contest at Rome Cinecittà film studios. She left the architecture program at the University of Ljubljana before the end of her first year of studies to pursue modeling. She had lived in Milan, the Paris, and “for the past two years, my address is on Park Avenue in New York City.”

At times, her story seemed to veer into exaggeration or pure confection. She described a luxurious life as one of the highest-paid models in the world and added that she was “among the top 50” internationally, according to multiple articles published right after the press conference. “I know some of the top models personally, as well as other famous personalities, like Elton John, Jon Bon Jovi,” Melania said. “Sometimes we get together, or we see one another at various events.” The Vienna office of Elite models was representing her, she said, and “other big agencies are trying to get me. People all over the world know my name and my work.”

the last book I ever read (The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, excerpt eight)

from The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump by Mary Jordan:

Zampolli told me that he met Donald Trump before Melania came to the United States. He was typically vague about the details. By the time Melania arrived in New York, Zampolli was already doing Trump-like work in courting the gossip writers at the New York Post’s Page Six. He would tip off reporters to celebrities at parties and then often appear in the newspaper photos next to them. He saw how Trump would use lavish parties, head-turning models, and outlandish stunts to get press attention and realized it could work for him, too. By my count, Zampolli has had more than one hundred twenty Page Six mentions since 1996.

In 1998, Playboy magazine named Trump and Zampolli two of “New York’s Top 10 Playboys.” These were ten men who the magazine believed “personify life, liberty and the pursuit of dreams.” It was quite a list, including Derek Jeter, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Sean “Puffy” Combs, and a Tribeca hotel owner who rented rooms to models only.

the last book I ever read (The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, excerpt seven)

from The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump by Mary Jordan:

Atanian’s photos show a beautiful young woman, often without makeup, with no high-gloss finish. It wasn’t lost on either of them that Atanian was in a position to help a struggling young model. He did a lot of work for the magazine Marie Claire, and she would ask him, “Matthew, when can you send me through to casting?”

He told her that he had no control over such things, which wasn’t true. He simply didn’t want to see her get hurt. There was a wide gulf between commercial modeling and editorial modeling for high-end fashion photos in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, or even Marie Claire. “Melania was commercial at best. She was never going to achieve her dream of doing editorial,” Atanian told me, adding, “A true editorial model has a certain relationship with the camera lens, in her face and in the way she moves, as if the model gives life to the photograph with her sheer power and chemistry. There’s just something in the picture that you can’t describe, but certain models have it.”

the last book I ever read (The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, excerpt six)

from The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump by Mary Jordan:

Paolo Zampolli has been a rare constant around Melania for more than two decades. He said that two years after she arrived in New York, he introduced her to Donald Trump. Zampolli worked for a while in international development for Trump real estate projects. He also started he own real estate firm and in 2006 was in the news for using catwalk models to help sell Manhattan’s priciest condos and penthouses. The Italian is now an ambassador to the small Caribbean island of Dominica. He maintains extraordinary access to the White House and Mar-a-Lago. His Instagram account is proof of that access, featuring players in the ever-changing landscape of Trump World: Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Ben Carson, Rudy Giuliani, Kellyane Conway, John Kelly, Rod Rosenstein, and even Fox News superfan Jeanine Pirro. He posts photos of himself with Trump, Melania, and Barron. He has been photographed in the Rose Garden and at Thanksgiving turkey pardons, and he displays online his engraved White House invitations. He is a special planet orbiting close to the Trump sun.