Donald Trump’s Universe: The Owner Of Miss Universe Thinks He’s A Better Judge Of Beauty Than Most

The news that Donald Trump picks 6 of the top 15 finalists in the Miss Universe pageant has surprised a lot of fans who don’t pay attention to the fine print. Sure, we figured the producers had an influence on who made it to the televised competition. After all, they pick the judges, they make the rules. But thanks to an interview with the pageant choreographer, we now know that The Donald himself, the owner of the Miss Universe pageant, flies in the day before the telecast and hand-picks six of the ladies, and has been doing so since 1995, seven years before he struck a deal with NBC Universal as co-owners of the pageant. What makes him an authority on beauty? And does his micromanaging have anything to do with the pageant’s very steady decline in viewership every year? Most importantly, do we want to support the entitlement of such an arrogant prick? We set out to look at the man behind Miss Universe to get some answers.

What makes Donald Trump such an authority on beauty?

First things first, let’s take a look at the ladies in Donald Trump’s life, his three wives. They can tell us a little about his criteria for a desirable woman.

Ivana Trump

Trump’s first wife, Ivana Zelničkova, a Czechoslovakian by birth, was an Olympic skier who first married to emigrate to Canada and become a top, Canadian model. (Do they have those in Canada?) Somewhere along the way, she dumped the first husband and, while modeling fur, (Classy, back in the 70’s.) in New York City, she met Donald. The two were married the following year, in 1976.

Donald & Ivana when Donald had hair.

She was a statuesque blonde, with an athletic build who, according to a May, 1989 Spy magazine story, entitled, “Ivanarama!”, tiled Manhattan in slabs of polished, pink marble. She was even newer money than her husband who was proud to announce that he paid her $1 a year to manage The Plaza Hotel while he was schtupping this broad:

Marla Maples

From Olympic-level, Canadian, fur model to Hawaiian Tropic girl, Trump moved down, (laterally?) through the woman chain to a “pretty,” young thing called Marla Maples from Dalton, Georgia. (As is inclined to happen in these situations, Marla was 17 years Trump’s junior.) When the marriage between Ivana and The Donald, (a name coined by Ivana who always put “The” in front of people’s names, once running up and down the halls of her office asking for The Dick, “Where’s The Dick?! I need The Dick now!”), began to crumble in 1989, it was Marla Maples who was named as the cause. “BEST SEX I EVER HAD” The New York Post headline read, alleging Maples had described The Don to her friends that way. (She denied it, but we bet it felt like a BILLION bucks.) The press had a field day with the ugliness, leading Trump to opine that his divorce from Ivana was “bigger than Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.” Not that he’s full of himself or anything. Also shocking to a god-fearing community like Manhattan was the fact that Donald and Marla met in the very church where Donald and Ivana were married. The scandal of it all.

Marla Maples for Miracle Ceramic Adhesive, around the time she met Trump.

But, alas, though Marla and Donald’s marriage–which happened in 1993– resulted in one daughter, it was not to last forever. Friends of the couple told People that Donald had never wanted to get married to Marla. For him it was lust, not love. But Marla adored Trump and kept bouncing between him and Michael Bolton for years there at the end. (Oh, honey.) A fact Trump boasted about to Vanity Fair in 1994, “I’ve left her twice. But she drops him to come back to me.” Must have been your hair, Donald. Somewhere in that time, he also found it fitting to tell the press that Ivana was still in love with him. The ego is strong with this one. In 1999, he and Marla were finally divorced.

Miss Universe

It was time for The Don to take a step back and reflect on what he really wanted in a woman. First order of business: focus on the Miss Universe Organization, which he bought three years earlier. After all, why marry one hot broad when you can cast hundreds of them? Originally, Trump started out letting the judges pick his finalists, but this was too impossible for his micro-managing, obsessive-compulsive, pussy-hound nature to bear when the hottest broads–in his opinion–were being left out of the finals. So, he decided to hand-pick 6 of the top 15 himself–with the help of the pageant staff, of course. (That “help” consists of someone holding a notepad and writing down the names he calls out.) This occupied Donald’s time well enough for a while, but he was missing something. A foreign-accented, giant woman at home who could bear his spawn.

Melania Knavs Trump

Fortunately, in 1999, he met such a woman at a fashion show. She was another Slavic lady, this one from Slovenia and 18 years his junior. Her name is Melania Knavs and the couple married in 2005. She’s probably the best looking of Trump’s three wives, a symptom of Trump having become a television star no doubt, but watching her with their 18-month old son Baron in this recent appearance on The Apprentice reinforces the idea that Trump likes his women barely able to speak English.:

Trump’s confidence grew as his ability to pick hot women…uh…increased. (Is it really hard to spot beautiful women?) But if Trump was doing any better than the judges before him, you wouldn’t know it by the Miss Universe ratings which have steadily declined since he took over in 1996. (Actually, pageant popularity has been on the decline since the 1970’s–roundabout the time this thing called Women’s Lib happened.)

Neilsen Ratings For Miss Universe From 1974 to 2007 (Source TV By The Numbers)

These abysmal numbers didn’t stop Trump from tooting his own horn on Larry King Live in October of 2006 where he brutally dissed Angelina Jolie’s looks, saying:

Angelina Jolie is sort of amazing because everyone thinks she’s like this great beauty. And I’m not saying she’s an unattractive woman, but she’s not beauty, by any stretch of the imagination. And now she’s like a representative of the United Nations and world peace on hunger and all of this crap.

And now she’s like this great beauty who is representing world peace and the United Nations. It’s called give me a break. But she’s not — in terms of beauty, she’s not a great beauty. She’s a nice looking woman. She’s OK. But she’s not a great beauty.

KING: And it’s your opinion.

TRUMP: Well, it’s my opinion.

KING: (INAUDIBLE).

TRUMP: I really understand beauty. And I will tell you, she’s not — I do own Miss. Universe. I do own Miss. USA. I mean I own a lot of different things. I do understand beauty, and she’s not.

If “owning a lot of things,” makes Donald Trump an authority on beauty, then couldn’t he create a panel of billionaires to help him? Maybe Carlos Slim Helu and Francois-Henri Pinault would like a piece of the action. In the meantime, we remain skeptical that Trump is an expert on beauty, if such a thing can even exist. After all, isn’t it in the eye of the beholder? And in the case of Trump, do you really want to leave the judgment up to him?

Miss Universe Pageant Viewership 1974 – 2007 [TV By The Numbers]
Interview With Donald Trump [Larry King Live]