Golden Handcuffs

October 15, 2018
President Trump’s wives and daughters languish—and, occasionally, thrive—in luxurious bondage to his ego, according to this gossipy group portrait. Newsweek writer Burleigh focuses on six women of “Trumplandia” and their relationships with the billionaire: his grandmother Elisabeth, from whom Burleigh speculates he got germ phobias and racism; his mother, Mary, who bequeathed him her tacky, extravagant tastes; first wife Ivana, whom he divorced for evolving from glamorous trophy wife to hard-headed businesswoman; second wife Marla, who bridled at the glamorous trophy wife image; current wife Melania, content as a glamorous trophy wife but, Burleigh suggests, humiliated and morose over Trump’s womanizing and her awkward first lady role; and daughter Ivanka, who gives a classy, insincere polish to Trump’s callous politics. Burleigh’s narrative is dishy fun, replete with fashion and decor, fights, sex scandals, Trump’s incomparable boorishness (whether he’s publicly upbraiding a wife or bragging about his daughter’s sexual allure), and wry, catty prose. (She describes a postbreakup Marla “appearing in public shorn, in flat shoes, without makeup, like Joan of Arc heading for the pyre.”) Burleigh’s amateur psychoanalysis and insinuations that these women have sold their souls to become Trumpian “brand extensions” can seem facile, but her account of life in Trump’s gilded cage is entertaining and evocative.