She's blonde and by all acounts brainy. And, because her dad is Donald Trump, she's an automatic big deal at this week's Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Ivanka, right?
Wrong. It's Tiffany Trump who'll be in the spotlight Tuesday evening. The 22-year-old honorary Georgian (her mother is Dalton native Marla Maples, who was Donald Trump's second wife) will address the convention right after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and before the general manager of her father's Virginia winery, according to the official convention schedule (which is subject to change).
It will be a massively public unveiling for Tiffany Trump, who's only done a couple of joint interviews with other family members up until now. Here's what we know about The Donald's younger daughter, who primarily grew up in California after her parents divorced in 1999. She came East for college – to the University of Pennsylvania, where she apparently was so dedicated to her studies that she had to miss seeing her mom compete live for the first time on "Dancing with the Stars" back in March, Maples told Fox News.
But it clearly paid off. In May, Tiffany graduated from the Ivy League college with a double major in sociology and urban studies (fun bit of trivia: One of her classmates there was Naomi Biden, granddaughter of the current Democratic vice president). No word yet on her post-college plans, but her official RNC convention bio describes her as "a fashion model, singer and influential presence on social media."
Indeed, she currently has 160,000 followers on Instagram where she recently posted a Happy Birthday wish to her father that featured photos of her in his arms as a toddler. And a few years back, Tiffany released an electronic pop song. "Like a Bird." It's available for streaming on Amazon Prime for the rather un-Trumpian low, low price of 99 cents.
At the Penn graduation were Donald and Melania Trump and their young son Barron; big sis Ivanka, and Maples, who thanked her ex-husband on Instagram for hosting a pre-ceremony gathering at the Trump National Golf Club in Philadelphia.
Maples and Trump's glitzy 1993 wedding at the Plaza Hotel (more fun trivia: Rosie O’Donnell, O.J. Simpson and Howard Stern were among the 1,000 guests) came two months after Tiffany’s birth — and after some three years of very public, soap operatic-like coverage of their relationship, which saw hordes of reporters descending on the Dalton area, where Maples’s divorced parents both still lived. Trump, who divorced his first wife, Ivana, in 1992, spent time here too: A photo in the AJC archives shows him entering the 1996 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony in Atlanta accompanied by Maples, her mother and little Tiffany.
By all accounts, Tiffany is quite close to her half-siblings. She was a bridesmaid at Ivanka's wedding to Jared Kushner in 2009. And back in April, she took part with Ivanka and her two siblings, Eric and Donald Jr., in a Trump family "town hall" on CNN.
While Ivanka gave "Independent" as her political affiliation, Tiffany said she was a registered Republican in Pennsylvania. And she passionately defended her father against charges of sexism:
“Since I’ve been a little girl he’s always just inspired me and had so much faith in me to just be the best person I can be, the best woman I can be,” Tiffany said. And, you know, every time I speak to him on the phone, whether it be at school or when I'm with him in his office, or, you know, in Palm Beach, it's just -- he wants us to do the best and he has the utmost faith that we can accomplish whatever we set our minds to just as well as men, if not better.”
