Donald Trump warned graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point to stay away from “trophy wives” on Saturday in a meandering speech.
At one point, Trump began talking about different contacts from the real estate world. He mentioned William Levitt, who was credited with creating what we now think of as the modern suburb, and the “tremendous amount of money” he made. But, Trump bemoaned, when he sold his company and “he had nothing to do,” Levitt ended up getting a divorce and “found a new wife.”
“Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife. It didn’t work out too well. But it doesn’t—and that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t work out, but it made him happy for a little while at least,” Trump said to the crowd of West Point graduates. “But he found a new wife. He sold his little boat and he got a big yacht.”
The president has been married three times—first to Ivana Trump in 1977, then to Marla Maples in 1993, and lastly to Melania Trump in 2005.
During the commencement address to the group of about 1,000 cadets, Trump took credit for the country’s military might, one again said he was investigated “more than the great late Alphonse Capone,” aimed at diversity initiatives and claimed that political leaders in the past were “abusing our soldiers with absurd ideological experiments here and at home,” criticized transgender athletes, and, of course, recalled the time he spoke with Levitt at a cocktail party filled with “the biggest people in New York, the biggest people in the country.”
“I was doing well, I was, I don’t know, I was invited to the party, so I had to be doing well,” Trump recalled of the night. “I was very, very young, but I made a name in real estate.”
Levittown, William’s creation, for decades restricted Black people from moving in. “The tenant agrees not to permit the premises to be used or occupied by any other persons than members of the Caucasian race,” a lease from 1948 read. The Trump family’s real estate business also kept Black New Yorkers out of its buildings, according to two separate 1970s lawsuits by the Justice Department. Trump and Levitt have more in common than their real estate jobs.
