On July 20 the once-famous power couple arrived separately. He with a protected detail. She in a casket.
My wife is convinced that Ivana Trump, the 73-year-old former wife of the 45th President was murdered.
The New York City Medical Examiner’s Office ruled on July 15 that her death was an accident involving “blunt impact injuries” to her torso. An official said the circumstances of her death were consistent with a fall on the stairs.
Still, my wife is suspicious that her death was ruled accidental. So is a public relations executive who lives in the same Miami high rise where Ivana spent her winters. The PR lady pointed out that people of Ivana’s standing have live-in staff. And, “Whenever I called her New York residence … the same woman answered. Where is she now? Why would Ivana live alone in a large, multi-level townhouse? I find that strange.”
Born Ivana Zelníčková in communist Czechoslovakia in 1949, the former model and competitive skier married Donald Trump in 1977. She partnered with him on some of his most well-known real estate projects. During the eighties, they were known as New York's most prominent power couple. The two divorced in 1992, the result of his tabloid affair with Marla Maples -- who would become Donald Trump's second wife and mother of their daughter, Tiffany. After the divorce, Ivana Trump married and divorced two more times while retaining a jet-setting, globe-trotting profile.
The list of suspects is long, but my wife’s first thought was that it was her ex-husband, the election-results-denier-in-chief, President Donald Trump. If he didn’t personally push her down the stairs, he hired someone to do it, she says. Trump’s motive? Divert attention away from the Congressional hearings into the events of January 6th. Trump would be seen grieving at the funeral, a distraction he and all Republicans would welcome.
But now, my wife isn’t so sure. Maybe it was the maid who Ivana caught stealing a tiara or an assistant she discovered was listening in on her phone calls.
Other tantalizing suspects include her own children, Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr. And what about their half-sibling, Tiffany? Any of them might have acted alone or in concert. Also, there’s Melania, the jealous current wife, and Rudy, Trump’s personal lawyer. Not to mention a random guest with a decades-long grudge who once stayed at the Plaza, the hotel Ivana managed after her husband bought it. Or maybe a stranger transitioning from male to female who followed Ivana into the lady’s bathroom at a chic Manhattan nightclub, then stalked her all the way home.
Looking closer at the Trump children, it could have been any of them, who in an act of matricide due to unfavorable changes in the will, kicked Ivana down the stairs before being disowned. Or maybe the three Ivana-Donald children decided to do away with Tiff to increase their proportions in the inheritance, and when Ivana got wind of the scheme, she had to be silenced.
Or Melania, who was so fed up with Ivana’s weekly phone calls to her husband, that she went disguised as an old woman to Ivana’s townhouse to tell her to knock it off. That turned into a pushing match, and Ivana fell down the stairs. And has anyone investigated Barron, Trump’s only child with Melania? He may be only 16, but he’s already 6′ 7″.
Or the unnamed guest at the Plaza, who in the eighties, was miffed that a housemaid left a chocolate mint that had melted on the pillow and blamed Ivana for hiring incompetent help.
Or Cindy Adams, the gossip columnist, who despite building her career on Donald and Ivana’s fame, their subsequent breakup, and his marriage to Marla, never got over the fact that Ivana once leaked a juicy item to her arch rival, Liz Smith.
In any case, my wife and others think there’s more to the story than an “accidental” tumble down the stairs. People are saying.
If Donald Trump’s legacy is that it’s alright to fib, then the death of his first wife will increasingly be clouded in mystery. As more people commit their theories to social media, the truth about how Ivana Trump died will get ever more muddled. Minions will be following the money from here to Mar-a-Lago.
I’m not saying that it was the butler, but truth be told, I wouldn’t rule it out.
