Has any president in the history of the United States had a more fraught relationship with women than Donald Trump? His vulgar behavior speaks for itself: he flagrantly cheated on all three of his wives, brushed off multiple accusations of sexual assault, bought the silence of a porn star and a Playmate, and proclaimed his now-infamous seduction technique: "grab 'em by the pussy." How does he get away with this abhorrent behavior in the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp? And what are the roots of this profound misogyny?
GOLDEN HANDCUFFS: The Secret History of Trump's Women (Gallery Books; on-sale October 16, 2018) by Nina Burleigh answers these questions by examining the six most important women in Donald Trump's life-his mother and grandmother, his three wives, and his first-born daughter. The book grew out of a Newsweek cover story in which Burleigh assessed the influence of the Trump wives and daughter Ivanka-in their poses, pageant shows, modeling careers, brands, and businesses-on The Donald, but more broadly on American women. Months later, Burleigh published an article on the Trump's women's preferred shoe-the stiletto pump-which netted her more personal hate mail than she's ever received in her journalistic career. Burleigh also examines the other women in Trump's orbit-his two older sisters; his often-overlooked younger daughter, Tiffany; his female staffers; and those he calls "liars"-the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct.
Donald Trump's maternal grandmother was a widowed mother of three who took her late husband's nest egg and started the Trump Organization--investing, building, borrowing, and building again, a cycle of debt and creation that became the hallmark of the company. While Donald Trump claims his mother came to New York on a holiday, papers show she listed her occupation as "domestic." Her first job in America was as a maid inside the Carnegie Mansion, working for Andrew Carnegie's widow-an experience that initiated a love of ostentatious wealth, which her son Donald inherited.
Burleigh takes an even closer look at Trump's relationships with his wives as well as his daughter, Ivanka:
On Ivana: Burleigh details how Ivana went from wife to business woman and how Donald felt it ruined their marriage. Donald repeated that many times over the years, "advising men that putting their wives to work was a bad idea and earning the loathing of feminist America, itself a badge of honor among his political base." Post-Donald, "Ivana embraced the Trump brand and styled herself after Donald's ideal femme-primped, stilettoed, bejeweled, peroxided, bustiered, like a mistress, not a wife. She also styled herself as a mini-Donald, with her yacht, her younger men, and her voracious embraces of capitalism and 'deals.'"
On Marla Maples: "Her marriage to Donald lasted exactly three years, four months, and twelve days before she herself was fired."
On Melania: "She was a malleable goddess, gorgeous and silent, trained to be looked at, the perfect accessory as Donald sailed into his sixties. She understood the rules, and she played by them. But when he ran for president, and she had to teeter on stage not just to pose in her four-inch Manolo Blahniks, but stand on them and speak, he broke the rules. She did not sign up to become the First Lady of the United States of America."
On Ivanka: "The amount and kind of plastic surgery she underwent as a teenager and young woman is a matter of pure speculation, since she denies it. But Donald's very specific, Playboy bunny/porn star ideal of big-boobed and sanitized female beauty, plus the example of her own mother's increasingly dramatic efforts to stave off natural aging, must have left a mark on the young woman's self-image." "Ivanka has worked hard crafting an image of herself as a subtler, calmer version of the man, a female 'entrepreneur' who has learned by careful study how to 'negotiate the best deals' and who dreams as big as the Manhattan skyline. And with her father in the White House, she is his female alter ego, as angered by the slights and as certain of her rectitude and instincts as he is."
Burleigh also looks at the women closest to Donald Trump during the campaign and how they helped his presidential run - from Melania who appealed to Christian evangelicals and toxically masculine men fed up with female power, "the Silent Partner, gliding like a Barbie doll that God's hand moved around beside or behind the candidate"-to Ivanka, ".polite, reasonable, groomed, and respectful, and blond-if Trump was such a misogynistic ogre, how could he possibly have spawned a daughter like that, who so obviously loved and supported him.Here was a white woman who worked, like so many women did, and who was a parent, just like us."
GOLDEN HANDCUFFS is a revealing, comprehensive, and pro洋ocative exploration of how Trump's upbringing by his mother and grandmother informed his relation毗hips with his wives and daughters, which in turn have shaped his attitudes toward women in general. It is a book much needed in our current political climate, shining a new and shocking light on the current President of the United States.
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