“Notably, she did resist Trump’s insistence that she accept Playboy magazine’s million-dollar centerfold offer. “Trump himself was on the phone negotiating the fee,” rememeber a top Playboy editor. “He wanted her to do the nude layout. She didn’t.” (“I’m thankful for my body, but I didn’t want to exploit it,” Marla offers. “How would I ever be taken seriously.”
Trump Withheld Alimony From Marla Maples When She Threatened His Presidential Ambitions
When Donald Trump publicly floated the idea of running for president in 1999, his ex-wife Marla Maples made it clear she would spill the beans on her ex-husband if he were to make it to the general election.
.. The reaction from Trump and his attorney was swift and brutal. They launched a full-court effort in the press to discredit Maples and withheld an alimony payment to “send a message.” The episode illustrates how Trump uses character assassination and threats to quash any opposition. Maples has largely remained silent on Trump’s 2016 candidacy.
“I mean you have a confidentiality agreement; you’re not allowed to talk,” continued Trump. “And she goes out and says, ‘I wouldn’t this, I wouldn’t that.’ So I say, ‘Why am I paying money to somebody that’s violated an agreement?’ But we’ll see what happens in the future and if in the future she continues I guess I`ll have to take very strong measures.”
.. ‘Why now are Mr. Trump’s representatives maligning Ms. Maples?’ and the truth is clear,” Beslow stated. “They’re hoping to discredit Ms. Maples, so that if she chooses to say anything in the future, Mr. Trump can shrug it off as the words of an angry person whose intelligence should be questioned.”
.. Trump’s lawyer then claimed Trump had no intention of withholding alimony, but wanted to send a message.
“It was never our intention to withhold the $1.5 million check,” Goldberg said to theNew York Post. “Our purpose was to send a message that she was playing close to the fire. That should slow her down.”
.. “It’s the sign of real insecurity that Donald Trump feels the need to authorize his mouthpiece to strike out against an ex-wife who he has basically been holding financially hostage. ”
.. Meanwhile, Maples’ lawyer, Beslow, took a last shot at Trump.
“Ms. Maples left Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump did not leave Ms. Maples,” Beslow said.
Overlooked Influences on Donald Trump: A Famous Minister and His Church
“They said, ‘We understand this is where Marla Maples met Donald Trump,’” recalled the choir director and organist at the time, Kevin Walters, “‘so we thought we’d come and see if we could hook up with a billionaire, too.’”
.. He describes himself as a Presbyterian, but Marble is not a Presbyterian church — it is part of the Reformed Church in America,
.. the Trumps were prominent parishioners at a church close to their home, First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens. Like Marble, it is a church with a history: It describes itself as the oldest continuously worshiping Presbyterian congregation in the country.
.. But in the 1960s, the Trumps gravitated to Marble. The lure was Dr. Peale, a household name since the publication of the 1952 best seller that transformed “the power of positive thinking” into a national catchphrase.
.. “Everything he does is about winning,” Gwenda Blair, the author of “The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate,” a biography of the family, said in a recent New York Times podcast. “It’s only about winning and losing — those two are the only principles that are involved. That’s a very Norman Vincent Peale notion — that notion of success above all.”
.. Richard M. Nixon worshiped at Marble after he lost to Kennedy, and Dr. Peale supported him even as the Watergate scandal doomed his presidency.
.. “I don’t respect Mr. Trump very much,” he was quoted as saying. “I don’t think the image of Norman Vincent Peale that comes through Donald Trump is any connection to the idea I have of him.”
.. Mr. Trump said that contrary to what the two women had told the usher — and contrary to a famous tabloid headline, “They Met in Church” — his first encounter with Ms. Maples was not at Marble. But as the relationship developed, so did the awkwardness for some at the church.
.. This was really embarrassing, that this man was married and having this big-time affair and the church was connected with it.”