Diana had greeted him and other major donors earlier at the reception. She’d already met the tycoon several times, mostly at charity functions, but didn’t know him well, although he’d offered her complimentary membership of his Florida country club, Mar-a-lago — an offer she declined.
She was certainly well aware of his reputation with women, though he had never made a pass at her. For his part, Trump had noted Diana’s qualities in some detail.
As he wrote in his book, The Art Of The Comeback, published in November 1997, three months after her death: ‘I couldn’t help but notice how she moved people. She lit up the room. Her charm. Her presence. She was a genuine princess — a dream lady.’
Totally unaware of how he felt, you can imagine Diana’s surprise soon after she and Charles were divorced in July 1996 — six months after that Manhattan dinner — to receive a huge basket of flowers from Trump.
They were for her 35th birthday. Clearly the lascivious billionaire was making the princess an exception to his locker-room maxim that ‘it’s checkout time’ for women once they reach the age of 35. (Of course, history then could have taken a very different course. If they had hit it off, she might now be about to move into the White House as America’s First Lady — never having dated Dodi Fayed with such tragic consequences.)
This week, however, it emerged how, two months after Diana was killed in that car crash in Paris, Trump talked about her with rather less respect than he showed in the book. Rather, she was a potential sexual target.
At the time, he was a guest on an American radio show presented by ‘shock jock’ DJ Howard Stern and he boasted, on air, that he ‘could and would’ have slept with Diana.
‘You could have nailed her,’ suggested the DJ crudely, to which Trump replied: ‘I think I could have . . . She had the height, she had the beauty, she had the skin.’
She didn't want to sit beside Trump at the charity dinner
Nothing, notice, about what it was that he thought might make him attractive to her.
For these were the obnoxious thoughts of a rich man whose own marriage was beginning to crumble and who believed his charm, fortified by his money, could buy him just about anything, or anyone. Two years later, his marriage to Marla was over after just six years.
The truth is Trump hadn’t said much to Diana that evening in New York. In fact, the one person Diana was really hoping to meet didn’t show up.
Young JFK Jnr was told later that he ‘missed a treat’ — Diana was so bewitching that she was described as having ‘won America’.
The Princess was presented with the Humanitarian award at a dinner where Donald Trump said she 'moved people'
As for Trump, his remarks at the Hilton gala were confined to expressing his admiration for the way Diana handled a woman heckler who interrupted her speech.
It happened when the princess was talking about people in need, especially referencing parents with small children, when a middle-aged woman shouted out: ‘Where are your children, Diana?’
‘At school!’ shot back the princess, and she moved seamlessly on.
Trump, then aged 49, was seen nodding his approval at the way Diana had handled the tricky situation. He was impressed, adding somewhat threateningly about the heckler: ‘I would have liked to have had a word with that woman.’
No doubt he would have liked to have had more than a few words with the princess, who that night was sitting between two of the most respected figures in America, the celebrated veteran statesman Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell, the U.S. Army four-star general who later became Secretary of State under President George W. Bush.
The vain Trump clearly assumed he could be in with a chance. After all, the princess had then been separated from the Prince of Wales for more than three years and had been enjoying the company of another billionaire American.
He was Theodore ‘Teddy’ Forstmann, private equity pioneer, philanthropist and legendary ladies’ man who was also one of the richest men in America. She spent time with the bachelor — skiing with him in Colorado, playing tennis at Martha’s Vineyard, the exclusive island off Massachusetts, and borrowing his ultra-luxury Gulfstream V private jet (Forstmann owned Gulfstream) to fly from New York to Washington.
Dailymail cullage
Dailymail cullage
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