They named it to honor a chain of stores: Tiffany. Very logical in parents obsessed with fame, money, and ostentation. But she has eluded the family destiny. Or, at least, she has exercised it in a relatively discreet way. For someone with the surname Trump, Tiffany (22) is a relative unknown to the American public. She does not usually go out with her father at rallies and, when she does, she always appears far from him, in a corner, far from her half-sister, Ivanka (34). Unlike her, Tiffany doesn't seem to have a say in Donald's presidential campaign. She is 'the other' daughter of the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States.
All that will change on Wednesday. On that day, "the other daughter" of Donald Trump will be presented to the American electorate. She will be at the Quicken Loans Sports Center, in the city of Cleveland, before some 20,000 people, and with all the television networks in the United States and the world focusing on her. At that point, Tiffany will step out of the darkness and into Donald Trump's shiny chrome universe with a speech in which she will ask for the vote for her father.
Tiffany's star appearance will be a typical moment of this Convention. Because at Quicken Loans there are hardly going to be political heavyweights, nor representatives of large companies or pressure groups, who flee from Trump like the bubonic plague, to the point that yesterday the Republican Party, the party of money and people wealthy, he still had to find a donor who would give him 6 million dollars (5.4 million euros) to pay for the ceremony and had sent a pleading letter to Sheldon Adelson -the one from Eurovegas- begging him to scratch his fortune of 22,000 million euros and send them a check worth that small amount.
There will be no former presidents, nor former presidential candidates. But there are second division 'celebrities', such as underwear model Antonio Sabáto, golfer and swimsuit model Natalie Gulbis, and the president of the Ultimate Fight Championship wrestling organization Dana White, a militant atheist who, when he speaks, tends to insert a cue between every two words.
And then Tiffany will come. She to make herself known. In reality, she is relatively well known, but not by Trump standards. Rather, it should be said that in viral, that she is a new category of celebrity in the US. Tiffany has 156,000 followers on her Facebook-owned Instagram account where she posts photos of how she lives herself when she is rich, young, and famous.
Tiffany Trump has been classified by the serious and transcendental New York Times within a new herd of celebrities from the United States: the snap pack. In other words, the band in the photo, which is dedicated to documenting their parties, trips, dinners and whatever it takes on Instagram. It is a name borrowed from the rat pack (the gang of rats) of the 50s and 60s. The Las Vegas rat pack, founded by Humphrey Bogart and with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis. But snap packs differ in that they are not stars. In fact, they are only one thing: children of.
There are many young people in that group: Kyra Kennedy is the daughter of human rights activist Robert Kennedy, himself the son of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Gaia Matisse is the great-great-granddaughter of the painter Henri Matisse. Reya Benitez is the daughter of music producer Jellybean Benitez, who has collaborated with Madonna, Michael Jackson, or Whitney Houston. Barron Hilton is the little brother of Paris Hilton, who, let's not forget, kicked off his unsuccessful modeling career by signing with Tiffany's father Donald's agency in the late 1990s. And so on, until you get to Tiffany.
But aside from chronicling her rich-girl life for posterity on Instagram — and, to a lesser extent, Snapchat — Tiffany has led a quiet existence. Her mother, Marla Maples, was a former Georgia state beauty queen when she met Donald Trump, then married to fellow model Ivana Zelnícková (known to the world as Ivana Trump). Trump immediately began a relationship with Maples, which culminated in his divorce from Ivana and her marriage to the new role model in her life. Two months before the wedding, Tiffany was born.
Maples and Trump only lived together for three and a half years, although the divorce was not formalized until 1999. Since then, the former model does not seem to have had a relationship with her ex-husband. She has lived in Los Angeles, just on the other side of the United States, about five and a half hours by plane from the New York and Miami that Trump seems to enjoy the most. "I raised my daughter as a single mother," said Maples, who has never remarried, referring to Tiffany. She also raised her relatively far from paparazzi targets.
So the relationship between Tiffany and Donald has not been as close as the one the candidate has had with Ivanka. But that does not seem to indicate that there has been a rupture. Rather, just distance. Despite his exuberant character, and let's say flexible conception of his fidelity to his wives, Trump seems to be a good father. One of the earliest memories of Tiffany's life is running away with her father to buy chocolate on the street while her mother, in Trump Tower, was engaged in making (or asking the housekeeper to make) low-sugar candy.
Tiffany just graduated from the ultra-exclusive University of Pennsylvania, to which she was also her father and half-sister, and she was godmother at Ivanka's wedding to businessman Jared Kushner. Ivanka was also the one who got her an internship at Vogue magazine, where Tiffany apparently received no favors, as evidenced by the fact that her work hours started at 5:30 in the morning. Tiffany has also done some modeling, but according to the American press, she has neither the body nor the face of Ivanka.
All of those achievements, however, pale in comparison to Ivanka's, of course. For the vast majority of US citizens, Donald Trump only has one daughter. On Wednesday, Tiffany must make it clear that she exists too. It won't be an easy task, because Ivanka and her three brothers - Donald Jr. (38), Eric (32) and Barron (10) - will also be participating in the Convention. More than a political act, that will be a family reunion. And Tiffany's goal is not to be relegated to the relative who lives far away and whose relationship with others nobody knows very well what she is.
