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Marla Maples, the second wife of Donald Trump and mother to his younger daughter Tiffany, 30, glides into Claridge’s. Her blonde locks bounce, and a toned body offers no hint that she celebrated her 60th (or “turned 30 again”, as she puts it) last October. At first, her all-American charm masks some seriously staunch beliefs as well as a fierce desire to help her ex-husband win the US November elections.
Because Maples, in from Florida, is still on small talk, cheerily recounting her morning spent at the Hillsong Church in Soho, following a blow dry in a Chinatown salon. Everything is seasoned with Stateside-superlatives. London is “magical”. Her “message” is one of “unity and light”. Ignore a few spiritual one-liners, though, and her initial impression is charming.
During a photoshoot, wearing the Ibiza-boho uniform of a vest, swinging yogi necklace and kick-flare jeans which suit her life as a “spirituality and wellness advocate” running the marlamaples.com blog, she proves herself a pro: game to straddle a sofa to catch the light and launch into leg-flaunting poses. “Make me look good — I am still looking for Mr Right!” she says.
Trump was not The One. Maples met the then businessman as a homecoming queen from Georgia’s Bible Belt, when she moved to New York in 1985 to work as a model and actor. By the end of the decade, their highly publicised affair would end Trump’s first marriage to the late Ivana in 1990 and see the tabloids blow up Maples’s life.
As she relives it, taking a seat on an outdoor terrace, her Kate Moss Cosmoss zen fades. “I had no idea what I was stepping into. I watched the lies. It was heartbreaking to me. I would find myself just crying,” she says. “I saw first hand what really could be twisted.” It is the first hint of what is to come during an hour-long conversation in which Maples obsesses over misinformation. Her ambition is to “spread truth”, she says. It is something extraordinary. With the same grace she possesses to float through hotel lobbies, Maples flies from lambasting the “plan-demic” to chemical trail conspiracy theories (she is convinced “they’ve been spraying chemicals into our air, especially over America, that are making people very sick and polluting our earth”). Her overarching belief is that “people are hiding behind a veil of what truth really is. I think there’s a lot of governments that may be involved in that.” But more on her dossier of eyebrow-raising opinions later.
First, Trump. The former president could well lead the Republicans to victory against a flailing Joe Biden — and the build-up will see Maples return to the limelight. “I’ve never been a fan of politics. I see how it can separate and divide us,” she says. “At the same time, I found myself in the throes of it.” Their daughter played a part in his winning 2016 election campaign, while “my role was to give Tiffany strength.”
This time Maples wants to join the frontline. “I’m ready. I am available if needed and I’m not sitting back anymore,” she says. “I want to step out more, share more and not be afraid of positive or negative outcomes that come from speaking out.”
This is why she is giving her first profile interview in eight years today, following a talk she gave at the Cambridge Union in June. Her father, a real estate developer and part-time Elvis impersonator, died at the end of May. “I’ve been in the caregiving mode. Now my mother and father have each passed, and my daughter’s happily married. It’s time I can really be more on point with what I may be called to do,” Maples says. Sources close to her have suggested she is ambitious enough to take on the vice-presidency. Is this true? “Someone would have to ask my ex-husband about that,” she laughs, but quickly adds: “I’m open. I’m open to whatever way that I can serve. Right now everyone [in the Trump family] is just seeing how we can help.”
Her support may come as a surprise to some; you could easily forgive Maples for hating her ex-husband. Having met Trump aged 21, Maples’s name quickly travelled as whispers through New York. By 1990, the New York Post had run the infamous front page which read “Marla boasts to her pals about Donald: ‘BEST SEX I’VE EVER HAD’” (a remark he has supposedly dined out on ever since), while Ivana publicly and viciously blamed Maples for the end of her marriage.
Trump and Maples’s wedding announcement, in 1993, attracted cynicism from the start. He was struggling financially, not helped by a stinging $14 million divorce settlement with Ivana. It was thought marrying his girlfriend could bolster his stability in the city. Maples, on the contrary, so wanted to get hitched there were rumours she packed a wedding dress everywhere they travelled.
The ceremony was eventually held in the Grand Ballroom of Trump’s Plaza Hotel, two months after Maples gave birth to Tiffany, when she was 30 and he 47. The pre-nup was brutal, leaving her with $1 million should they split within five years (they separated, just in time, after four), plus $100,000 childhood support for Tiffany until she was 21 and a shackling confidentiality agreement. Maples raised their daughter alone in Calabasas, California, largely out of the public eye. Tiffany graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington in 2020, and is now married to Michael Boulos, the Lebanese-American billionaire business heir, whom she met in Mykonos and who proposed in the White House Rose Garden just before Trump left, in 2021.
Their wedding was a blow-out affair at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 complete with a 7ft cake modelled on her parents’ own, a princess Elie Saab haute couture gown, and photographs of Trump grinning with the bride, Maples and Melania, his wife since 2005. “Anything from the past I’ve forgiven,” says Maples. “That is a conversation that Donald and I have had: forgiving each other. Marriages are challenging, especially when you play them out in the media.”
Recent lawsuits against Trump have not swayed her faith either. Last year, a jury found him liable for sexual abuse of the writer E Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million following an incident in 1996 — when he was married to Maples. She doesn’t believe the claim. “I do know my daughter’s father well enough to know that he’s never had to push himself on another person. He’s always had women throw themselves on him instead,” she says. “I don’t believe there was a crime done.”
As for the New York jury that found him guilty of 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, she can only chuckle. “They love these little sexy stories. We have a country that is failing. Our cities are not protected. How do we make people feel safe again? That’s more important than having these lawsuits that are not affecting any of us today.”
Maples is more than happy to detail her concerns about the US and the world at large. She believes “the media” is hiding rising crime rates in US cities — in New York, specifically, by “gangs that had come up off the southern border” — and declares: “It’s time to wake up to a higher truth, and to not believe everything that is shown to us in the news.” Where does she go for her news? “Oh my god,” she smiles. “Conversations.”
She remains furious about the Biden administration’s handling of the Covid pandemic; the current US president implemented a goal to hit 100 million vaccine shots in his first 100 days. 200 million were administered in 91 days.
“I’m not a fan of forcing people to take an injection. They wouldn’t tell people what was in it. I think that’s horrific,” she says. “A lot of people are sick because of the Covid vaccine. Many people died that didn’t need to die.” She also claims the drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were “things that worked” to treat infection, but “were pulled off the shelves in many states and many countries”. As for her own natural remedy for coronavirus? Delivered in complete seriousness, she offers: “Surround yourself with joyful people. Joy keeps you alive and happy for a long time.”
When it comes to who is to blame for the issues Maples believes are crippling her nation’s health — dumping chemicals in the air, toxic drinking water, the reason vaping is not illegal, etc — she looks to big pharmaceutical companies. It is to ensure the hospitals remain full, she thinks. “They’re earning their trillions and trillions of dollars off the back of all of us — I think a lot of people are paid off.”
“We knew it was going to be a challenge,” she says, of Trump’s political rise. “It would be very simple to just enjoy the life but the family came together... wanting to have a positive impact, even though it’s often judged as a negative impact.” She doesn’t understand any perceived evils. “I see a family that’s really committed to protecting our freedoms.”
As I leave, she mentions the then upcoming general election in the UK. “I hope they can vote in a free way, and have their votes counted properly,” is her ominous departing thought.
She might have left the surname behind in the Nineties, but cut Marla Maples and her blood still runs Trump.
