The life and secrets of Melania Trump
Univision Investiga traveled to Slovenia, the country of birth of Donald Trump's wife, and took a tour of the intriguing past of the former Slovenian model who could be the first lady of the United States.
Ljubljana, Slovenia- One night in September 1998, Slovenian journalist Dusan Nograsek received a call that began what he still considers to be one of the strangest stories he has ever covered in show business.
A modeling agency invited him and four other reporters to meet a successful Slovenian model in Paris.
Unpublished photos of Melania Trump's life in Slovenia
From Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, the reporters flew in a private plane with expenses paid to Paris and stayed at the luxurious Lutetia hotel. After a long wait they saw the beautiful model appear in suite 211. He introduced himself as Melania Knaus and asked not to have his photos taken.
“Nobody knew her, nobody knew who she was. They told us her name there, we wrote it down, '' 'the reporter recalls.
The meeting with journalists would become a curious preview of some of the characteristics that since then have surrounded the public interventions of the wife of the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump: surprises, secrets and contradictions.
A team from Univision Investiga traveled to Slovenia to learn more about Melania Trump's past (Video of the special Here and Now). Friends and acquaintances of the ex-model remember her as an introspective and charming young woman, but very intelligent, who grew up in a modest family of strict parents thinking that her future was elsewhere. At least beyond the borders of the tiny country of less than two million inhabitants that survived under a "light socialism", as some remember here the populist autocracy of Marshal Tito.
Over and over again we hear the phrase that Melania was an "ordinary" girl, introverted, creative, cunning. Sometimes immodest.
To intrigued journalists who visited her in Paris in 1998, Melania told her that she was one of the 50 best models in the world, as reported by Nograsek. For the photographer who discovered her as a model when she was nearly 17, that rating was over the top.
"It's not real. She had little time as a model and in such a short time you can't be among the top 50, '' Stane Jerko, one of the most prestigious model photographers in the country, told Univision.
As proof of the model's fame, and in the absence of photos, reporters received a cover of Harpers Bazaar magazine, in Spanish, in which Melania appeared with a black chiffon that showed her breasts. It was the August 1997 edition that was mounted in Mexico and circulated for Hispanics in the United States. On the inside pages there was no interview with the model on the cover, only a very brief explanation in which they referred to her only by name: "In the middle of summer, Melania, photographed by Manfred Gestrich". Another model was featured on the cover of the English edition.
Trump was already Melania's official boyfriend. She did not speak about him during the interview, but today the reporter suspects that the entire launch montage had the stamp of the New York tycoon: private plane, luxury hotel, tour of Paris for journalists.
The situation was still strange. The journalists were facing an unknown model who claimed to be famous, who did not allow herself to take photographs because none of them was an expert and that the only thing she had to show to make herself known in her country was a magazine in a foreign language.
“She said goodbye after dinner and we went on the tourist route in Paris. Later that evening we went to the airport, during the flight there was quite a bit of turbulence and we were all wondering what was this all about? '' 'Nograsek recalled.
Sweet childhood
Slovenia is a country in the form of a hen that can be covered in three hours. The route passes through cozy and picturesque villages that have traces of various cultures and the wounds of some invasions. Slovenians do not hide their pride that their language has survived all forms of external siege. And to the difficulty of learning it. In Slovenian, for example, people's names change according to the tenses of the verbs.
"We must fight for our language because language is nation," said Melania's architecture professor, Blaz Vogelnik.
Because of that love of their language, some Slovenians were upset after learning that Melania responded in an unkind way, "English, please," to a well-known mogul in the country who came to speak in their language during a reception in Florida , as recounted by the unauthorized biography of the former model written by journalists Bajan Pozar and Igor Omeriza (Melania Trump, The Inside Story).
In defense of Melania, a journalist who identified herself as Ksenia and who lives in Raka, a town in the center of the country, told Univision that Barron, Melania's son with Trump, speaks Slovenian thanks to the fact that his mother taught him to to communicate with his grandparents who live in New York.
Ksenia said that Melania's cousins, who also live in this quiet village surrounded by grasslands and vineyards, are very grateful that she sends her children the clothes that Barron no longer wears.
"In the last few months this has been a bit crazy, all the people around the world want to know everything about Melania," he said.
It is an explainable haste. Less than three months before the presidential elections in the United States, Melania's life is known in patches. There are some unpublished passages and others that she has not clarified. Today it is not known how this former model, who could become the first lady, obtained residency in the United States. It is also unclear whether or not she has a college degree.
Univision Investiga has twice asked the Trump campaign about his wife's immigration history. The first request was not answered. This week, the office of Melania's lawyer in the United States, Charles Harder, answered all the questions in a questionnaire except two, the one that inquired about the way in which Mrs. Trump obtained the Green Card and another that requested the records of her career in Slovenia.
Melania was the second of two daughters by the marriage of Viktor Knavs and Amalija Ulčnik, workers at the now liquidated government textile factory Jutranca in the town of Sevnica, located in the chicken wing. She was a seamstress and he was a driver. The family Germanized the surname and now they are signed Knauss.
The model was born in April 1970 in the Novo Mesto hospital a year after her sister Inés.
In Sevnica, where she spent her childhood, life was peaceful and safe, as her friends from school recall.
“We were children, everything was sweet at this time. We had a very beautiful childhood. It was a calm environment. We had almost everything we needed and something more, '' 'explained Diana Kosar, a classmate.
She remembers that Melania was a mature and obedient girl who sewed the best dresses for the dolls following the virtues of her mother.
“It was good for everything that was creativity. We didn't draw the dresses, we just sewed them, but she drew them first, they were very good sketches, '' 'he added.
Melania, amid the bustle of the neighborhood children, liked to take solitary breaths.
“I needed space and time for her. She would read or think about things that she would later draw, '' Kosar said.
The parents occupied a two-room apartment in Sevnica, a town of 5,000 inhabitants. They acquired it through the housing plan of the now liquidated official Jutranca textile factory for which they both worked. When Melania was born they moved to a nearby building with one more room than the previous one.
Viktor, Melania's father, was a member of the communist party. Several neighbors agree that he signed up more out of convenience than conviction. And in that condition she ran the small risk of getting into trouble with the party for having her daughter baptized. She was baptized in a Raka Catholic church like many of her family members.
For some neighbors who continue to live in the neighborhood, it was a surprise to learn recently that Viktor had had an extramarital child that she refused to acknowledge for years until a court forced her to pay support based on a paternity test.
The drama of Melania's half-brother Denis Cigelnja, who is 50 years old and works for a supermarket chain in Slovenia, was reported by an article by journalist Julia Ioffe in GQ magazine and by the former model's Slovenian biographers citing court documents . As part of an international legal offensive that includes one of Melania's ex-boyfriends, Trump's lawyers have demanded that biographers remove the Amazon biography. Pozar replied that he will not.
Academic enigma
Melania always wanted to leave her town. “She always knew that she wanted to leave Sevnica because it was too small for her. He wanted to go to Ljubljana. It was her first goal. A big city for us here in this town, '' said Kosar, his childhood friend.
Few friends of that time with whom Melania maintains communication. It is known that she exchanged messages with who her nanny was, who has already passed away, and with a partner who lives in Lebanon.
Melania settled in the capital and was accepted to study architecture at the University of Ljubljana, after passing the strict entrance exams.
“She is undoubtedly a very smart woman because no one can come to our faculty if they are not smart enough [….] You must have a very high IQ. Don't underestimate her, '' said Vogelnik, her former first-year coach.
Vogelnik explained that by the time Melania enrolled, an architecture degree took an average of almost eight years to complete. In an interview at her home in a residential area near the Slovenian capital, the retired former professor spoke with the irreverence of the years. He maintained that he can only attest that she attended classes the first year but several times avoided the question of whether he is certain that she finished the race. Although she did not rule it out.
"She realized those are the best days for a beautiful woman to waste," he said.
Doubts about the academic title arose after Melania told US television that she had finished her architecture degree and posted it on her personal website. She perhaps did not count on the fact that 18 years ago, in the interview of its launch in Paris, her version was different.
“The question arose if she plans to continue her studies, if she plans to finish her studies and at this point she answered that being a model for her is more important than continuing her studies, '' Nograsek recalled.
The weekly Nedeljski Dnevnik, where Nograsek worked, reproduced the answer never denied by Melania.
"I enrolled in the faculty of architecture but did not finish because I was more interested in working as a model."
Univision Investiga asked the architecture faculty for the academic results and went to the headquarters to speak with an executive. The faculty responded that it cannot reveal the documents without Melania's authorization.
A search of an official thesis database, consulted by Univision in Slovenia, does not show any work by Melania as a graduation requirement.
Melania Trump removed the reference to her academic studies from her personal page.
"No charm"
Melania had not turned 17 when she was approached by a well-known model photographer who suggested that she pose for him.
"My eye as a professional photographer was always looking for girls to photograph, for fashion, for advertisements, so I immediately noticed this tall, slim girl with a good figure, long legs," Jerko recalls with her calm voice, during an interview in. her home in Ljubjiana.
When her friends from the fashion world saw the photos, they contacted her. The following fall Melania, according to the photographer, took a course for models and posed for fashion magazines.
Jerko thought at first that she had a very good future in modeling but after two sessions she lost her enthusiasm a bit, she said.
“Its exterior was very good to be an excellent photomodel but I think it lacked an energy, a certain charm that if you have it, you are transmitting it through your eyes, through your personality; If you have something that, as I would say, comes from the heart, it shows in the photograph, '' the photographer explained.
Jerko was always intrigued that Melania had never asked for one of the photos she took of her for free.
“She never contacted me or thanked me because I discovered her and I offered her the possibility of becoming a model and that somehow with her modeling work, with her body, she went so far that maybe she becomes the first lady of the United States, '' he added.
“And if she is going to be the first lady of America, I think she could become a true icon of America. A fashion icon ''.
Although she has walked since she was seven years old with designs from the factory where her mother worked, Melania's career as a model officially began in 1992 when she took second place in the 'Face of the Year' contest.
Bernarda Jeklin, who was a jury for the award, remembers her. “The only thing that fascinated me were her eyes. She has aggressive eyes, but not cat eyes, in my time she had tigress eyes. Dangerous eyes ... she was very skinny, she didn't have a bust ''.
After this award, Melania launched herself into modeling in Europe, but little is known about that time. In her interview in Paris, she boasted that her immediate future was in the movies. According to Nograsek, she said she had been invited by director Craig Signer to work on a film with Mickey Rourke, who was the star of the moment for his box office success of the film 'Nine and a Half Weeks'. Univision contacted Signer, who confirmed that Melania auditioned twice for the gangster movie 'Good Night to Die', but was not chosen because of her heavy foreign accent.
The mystery of the Green Card
Paolo Zampolli, an Italian-American billionaire living in New York, is perhaps the most important character in Melania Trump's life.
Around the time Melania was touring the runways of Europe in the mid-1990s, Zampolli was looking for models for her New York agency. He interviewed her in Milan, Italy.
“Very pretty, very serious. I asked him if he wanted to come to work in New York. She has said: 'I have already worked for several years here in Europe, in another half of Germany and France and Milan. I would love to try a new market [….] It was in my dream, the American dream '', recalls Zampolli.
Zampolli, who is the same age as Melania, received the Univision journalists in her spacious house in New York where she also has her office as ambassador to the United Nations of Dominica, one of the lesser Antilles in the Caribbean.
He maintains that Melania started working for Metropolitan, her modeling agency, on an H1 work visa.
"She worked only with a visa," he said when asked about another of Melania's statements that sparked suspicion about her immigration history.
This time the former model cast doubt by setting herself as an example of an immigrant who complies with the rules in the United States. Melania said that at that time she traveled to Slovenia quite frequently to renew her immigration documents. For expert lawyers consulted by Univision, the statement suggested that the then model had a tourist visa, not a work visa, since the second does not require such frequent periodic presentations.
Zampolli believes that Melania was confused when she gave the statements.
But in Melania's immigration history, a greater doubt remains. How did you get your permanent residence or Green card?
That is a story that Zampolli says he does not know despite the important role he has played in Melania's professional and personal life. Zampolli not only helped her make the leap to the catwalks of the United States and her lawyers obtained, according to her, the approval of the work visa, but she presented it in 1998 to Donald Trump. Trump later appointed Zampolli as director of international development for the Trump organization.
“You continued to be a friend and close to the Trump family. Couldn't it be assumed that he should know how she got the Green Card if he was so close? Asked this reporter.
In a mixture of Italian and Spanish, Zampolli replied that it is not a topic of conversation with the couple, even that their immigration status is not discussed with them: “In the same time that I have met them my Green Card then I hit on my passport, I never discussed with them how I did it, '' he said.
"Why do you, who know them, think that they have not clarified how they obtained the Green Card?
“This is the first time I have been asked that question. I thought it was clear how he got the Green Card, I don't know. '' '
