I just can’t help myself. I’m a sucker for any newspaper or magazine article, or column, or book that attempts to explain why the Trump Family is the way it is. In other words, why Trump and his “spawn” — the older ones anyway — are so cringeworthy (to put it kindly,) or so despicably detestable, if you just want to tell it how it is.
Born Trump (subtitle, Inside America’s First Family) goes a long way towards providing an answer for why most of us feel like taking a shower after watching them on TV news, or reading their Tweets. The book by Vanity Fair senior reporter, Emily Jane Fox is not just a breezy, gossipy read. Sure, it entertains, but it also informs as to why this new First Family is “uniquely suited for the second decade of the 21st century and its fame-obsessed, money-hungry, voracious 24-hour cycle of a culture.”
Trump Tabloid Fodder
For those like me who have been reading the New York tabloids and Page Six-type gossip columns for the last 30 years, some of the material about Donald Trump’s three wives, marriages and divorces is familiar. The affair with wife #2, Marla Maples while he was still married to Ivana, Czech-born wife #1, and the icy showdown between the two in Aspen has been well-documented.
As has his pursuit of third wife, Slovenian model, Melania (he certainly does seem to have a thing for those Eastern European immigrants!) We’re also very familiar with the criminal doings and record of Trump in-law, Jared Kushner’s father, Charles, and his prison sentence after being prosecuted by then New Jersey attorney general, Chris Christie.
Super-Brilliant Reporter
Still, all this may come as eye-opening information to the majority of non-New Yorkers, and there is no doubt that Fox is a super-brilliant reporter who as well as interviewing dozens of original sources has done an equally magnificent job of culling information from every conceivable published source thus making her book a truly comprehensive study of Family Trump. Indeed, Fox honestly acknowledges the work of her researcher, Nicole Landset Blank “for the many articles I would never have even known existed.” And, that, I suppose includes interviews with Trump offspring on obscure websites like Bowsite.com. (No, I’d never heard of it either, but apparently it’s all about bowhunting — a big hobby of Don Jr’s.)
Goody-Two Shoes
Ivanka, perhaps the most visible of the three children from Trump’s first marriage is the least interesting in the book. She appears to be, and wants to appear to be a goody two-shoes, presenting herself as a foil to that other rich heiress, Paris Hilton. As one reporter quoted in the book says : “Speaking with [Ivanka] was like talking to a very carefully-crafted press release.” She obviously likes people to think she is disciplined and a workaholic. We learn she took on modeling jobs while still at school, and turned down an offer from Anna Wintour to work on Vogue magazine so that she could learn the ropes of real estate while working at another real estate development business in the city not owned by her father.
I would have liked to read more about her as a wife and mother than just the fact that she has to schedule time to play cars with her older son, that she sometimes takes her daughter to the office, and that on Inauguration Day she arranged for the White House to find candlesticks so she could light Shabbat candles for her family between the swearing-in and the inaugural balls. But maybe there is nothing more to be said about that side of her.
Other Offspring
Much of the information that appears fresh and interesting is about the other offspring: Don Jr. (a frat boy in college who graduated to fly-fishing and big-game hunting); Eric (who seems to be the only one of the original trio who occasionally appears as a real, down-to-earth human being), and Marla’s daughter, Tiffany (who has been so inoculated by her mother against Trump’s direct influence that she hardly knew what to say about her father in her speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
Barron is hardly mentioned — as I think befits a child born a Trump, but who has yet to make his own mark on the world.
Book Highlights
It is also somewhat gratifying to learn that the older Trump children are agreed in their universal dislike of Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski —he of the recent disgusting “womp, womp” comment when asked about a Down Syndrome child separated from her mother at the border. (Fox writes: “He was always the first to board Trump Force One …kicking his feet up and settling in rather too comfortably as they saw it … Plus, he was a mooch who would order cases of Red Bull and blow through a full case daily.”)
Fox has an easy writing style; it’s no chore to keep turning the pages which only occasionally veer right over the top. For example, in a story about six-year old Eric turning on a school aide and calling her a “bitch,” Fox writes of the aide, “She blushed, the blood rushing to her face to push down the rage boiling in her belly.” Really? I would have had a hard time not bursting into laughter while attributing his choice of words to something he must have heard at home!
Interestingly, many of the book’s highlights ( Trump suggesting breast implants might help Ivanka’s career as a model, Trump making baby Tiffany choose between a Big Mac and a carrot for lunch, Trump calling four-year old, Don Jr. a loser) say much more about Trump than about his offspring.
Biggest Pig Ever!
But let’s hear it in the words of Ivanka herself who commented–in a 2000 interview– on the incident of Trump waving a Big Mac at Tiffany: “Marla didn’t even like Tiffany to have whole milk, and she was married to my Dad who’s like the biggest pig ever!”
Enough said!