ABOARD AIR TRUMP -- Melania Knauss pulls up her black Calvin Klein sheath to show off her supermodel knees.
"I never wear skirts this long," says the girlfriend of Donald Trump, with a pretty grimace, standing in the aisle of his plane, stocked with gilt fixtures, French impressionist paintings and a double bed.But politics requires sacrifices. And Monday's trip to Miami was a dress rehearsal for Trump's potential White House bid. So the amiable Knauss was doing her bit. But the Slovenian's stilettos by Manolo Blahnik gave her away as someone blissfully unfamiliar with rope lines.
Trump was making his maiden foreign policy speech to Cuban-Americans who adore his Castro-bashing. "I'd have, personally, two words for him: 'Adios, amigo!' " he told a large, cheering crowd, adding that he wanted the first hotel in free Cuba.
The flirtation of the Trumpster, as he calls himself, is the apotheosis of our Gilded Age. Our politics is warped by money, celebrity, polling and crass behavior, and our culture is defined by stock-market high-rolling, boomer narcissism, niche marketing mania, rankings and a quiz show called "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"
"I love Regis," Trump says.
Why shouldn't billionaires play "Who Wants to Be a President?"
"I've already got my own airplane," he says. "We could save money on Air Force One."
You gotta love a guy whose economic platform runs all of a page and a half and is a $5.7 trillion squeeze-the-rich tax plan that would make the Donald at least $750 million poorer. And there are more provocative plans to come.
Oddly, given so many years of Trump plastering Trump on every available surface, the builder and casino owner actually looked a bit shy when he saw the Trump 2000 posters, with his own pouty kisser staring back, and Cuban-American fans at the Bay of Pigs Museum yelling "Viva Donald Trump!"
He gave a tentative wave to his first rope line but soon recovered enough to note that Steve Forbes never had so many cameras at the airport or a supermodel by his podium.
Trump does not live an examined life. He lives a quantified life. He uses a kind of ego arithmetic. About the candidates, he demands: "Did they make billions of dollars in a short period of time? No. Could they . . .? No." And: "Hey, look, what's so good about these people? I do 'Face the Nation,' 'Meet the Press,' 'Larry King.' I think I do better than they do. They're boring as hell. They get no ratings and everybody turns off the set."
He refers to W. as the anointed "son of the president who should have finished the war" and says he looks "vacuous." He thinks Bill Bradley is "not exactly Cary Grant." Al Gore has made "dreadful mistakes," including Alpha Girl.
"I think the only difference between me and the other candidates," he summed up, "is that I'm more honest, and my women are more beautiful."
New York Times News Service