THE NEXT FIRST LADY?
Melania Knauss-Trump will heat up the race
The Donald’s better half could trump every other First Lady. Melania Knauss-Trump has remained under the radar since billionaire Donald Trump launched his presidential bid — but the incredibly sexy wife, mother and entrepreneur is poised to shock the West Wing as much as her outspoken husband would.
“She’ll make a very beautiful First Lady, I can tell you. And a great First Lady. She’s got a great heart,” Trump boasted about his wife while campaigning last week. In Trumpspeak, she’s not a total loser. The unlikely front-runner continues leading the GOP pack with 24% of Republicans favoring him, according to Reuters, which makes the power couple’s move to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. look more credible than it did the last time (or two) that he ran.
But the stunning 45-year-old Slovenian ex-model looks more suited to Women’s Wear Daily than the White House, with her figurehugging designer minidresses and sky-high stilettos.
“She would be the most stylish First Lady we’ve ever had, beyond a shadow of a doubt — beyond Jackie Kennedy, beyond Michelle Obama,” says celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch, who has worked with the Trumps on the Miss USA Pageant. “You see her across the room, and you want to know who that woman is.”
Jacqueline Kennedy set the bar for First Lady fashion with her iconic pillbox hats and Chanel suits. Michelle Obama brought style back to the White House after the dowdy Bush and Clinton administrations with her right to bare arms in looks from hip American designers such as Isabel Toledo, Jason Wu and Naeem Khan.
But Knauss-Trump shares Nancy Reagan’s expensive taste for haute couture, wearing Marc Bouwer to the 2012 Met Gala and a slinky gold Alexander McQueen gown a year earlier, while draping herself in Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino and donning Manolos and Louboutins — all while breaking the ultimate political taboo: cleavage!
“She does not shy away from ‘sexy,’ which will make her a style pioneer in the White House should she be First Lady,” says Gretta Monahan, co-host of TLC’s “Brides Gone Styled.”
But will Middle America embrace a “sexy” presidential spouse (who is not Bill Clinton)?
After all, the European supermodel posed nude on a bearskin rug — with a diamond collar around her neck and a cuff on her wrist — aboard Trump’s private jet in 2000 for a provocative spread in British GQ, which led to a titillating lacy lingerie shoot for FHM that same year.
And she doesn’t just look good naked — she has a good time, too. “We have incredible sex at least once a day,” she confessed to Howard
Stern in a 1999 phone interview about Trump, her boyfriend at the time. “Sometimes even more. ... He’s a very successful businessman, he’s very charming. He’s very smart, the energy between us is unbelievable.”
Do you say the Pledge of Allegiance with that mouth?
“When have we ever had a sexy First Lady?” asks Bloch. “Michelle (Obama) is beautiful, but not sexy. Jackie (Kennedy) was not sexy — Marilyn Monroe was the sex symbol of that time. So I think she’s going to have to really prove herself to women.”
It should help that Knauss-Trump has an impressive body of work besides her famous figure. She earned degrees in design and architecture in her native land before embarking on her modeling career, and now runs a QVC jewelry line and a cosmetics brand that nets $1 million a year. She handles her business ventures personally, such as sketching her jewelry pieces in the Fifth Ave. penthouse she shares with the wouldbe commander-in-chief.
That would make her one of the few First Lady business executives, according to Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a historian for the National First Ladies’ Library. Lady Bird Johnson ran her family’s media conglomerate, and Obama was a lawyer and aide to Chicago’s mayor.
And Knauss-Trump’s origin in Sevnica, Slovenia, means she’d be the only First Lady other than Louisa Adams (born in London, wife of John Quincy Adams) to be born outside the U.S. — and the only one ever born and raised in a Communist nation.
But she defies all the rules. After all, no President has come to office with a First Lady who’s a third wife.
Melania met Trump at a New York Fashion Week show in 1998 while he was still married to second wife Marla Maples. Trump divorced Maples a year later. Melania was never really implicated in the split, and in fact, dated Trump for five years before their extravagant 2005 marriage in Palm Beach.
But Knauss-Trump embodies many traditional values that could make her an asset in her husband’s administration.
She’s a hands-on mother, taking the Trumps’ 9-year-old son, Barron, to and from school each day and fixing his lunch. The young Trump would inject some more youthful energy into the White House, as Sasha and Malia Obama, John-John and Caroline Kennedy, Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton have.
She’s also a philanthropist. She serves as honorary chairwoman for the Boy’s Club of New York and Food for the Poor in Florida, is active in the Police Athletic League and was a goodwill ambassador for the American Red Cross from 2005-2009.
What’s more, her former jet-setting lifestyle, modeling throughout Europe, could make this worldly woman the perfect diplomat. First Ladies have cohosted presidential social events and been goodwill ambassadors domestically and overseas ever since Dolley Madison put the position in the public eye by hosting political events and raising money for projects like orphanages. KnaussTrump can easily embrace these roles.
“She’s poised. She’s gracious. She’s going to be an extraordinary asset in foreign relationships,” says Bloch, “but I think here in America she’s got a little work cut out for her. I don’t know how regular women are going to relate to her.”
Make no mistake: KnaussTrump epitomizes the 1%. She posts pictures on Twitter of Chanel bags and private planes. Sarah Palin was slammed for her $150,000 campaign wardrobe while she was running for vice president in 2008, but Knauss-Trump was married in a custom John Galliano for Christian Dior dress, estimated at up to $200,000, that landed her the cover of Vogue.
“Melania oozes an unapologetic luxury lifestyle ... She embodies a spirit more of international royalty than an American celebrity,” says Monahan.
Perhaps that’s why KnaussTrump hasn’t played a larger part in the campaign so far. She supported her husband at his June 16 campaign announcement and attended the GOP debate on Aug. 6, but has done little else publicly. That’s in contrast to many other Republican candidates’ wives, including Mary Pat Christie and Heidi Cruz, who have taken leaves from their jobs on Wall Street to campaign. Anita Perry and Janet Huckabee not only advise their spouses, they’ve hired their own chiefs of staff to help their campaign operations. So where is Knauss-Trump?
“My guess is that she’s not particularly interested in doing a lot of the day-to-day grind of campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire that most candidates’ spouses do,” says David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College.
“But Donald Trump’s campaign has not followed any of the normal rules of how you practice politics. So it’s hard to say what his wife will do, because we can’t even figure out what he is up to half the time.”