A SunShine Girl's encounter with Donald Trump
By
Jenny Yuen, Toronto Sun
First posted: Saturday, October 08, 2016 05:11 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, October 08, 2016 06:24 PM EDT
It appears Donald Trump developed an aversion to cross-border relationships decades ago.
It’s a pain a former Sunshine Girl Tracy Champagne knows all too well. Except, at the time, she likely never expected to be jilted by a man who — nearly 20 years later — would be Republican candidate for U.S. president.
But since then, she’s fallen off the public radar.
As Trump ramps up his Republican campaign against opponent Hilary Clinton for the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 8, the Toronto Sun is encouraging Champagne to come forward.
Their chance meeting began when Trump was in Toronto in July 1997 — lobbying to run a casino in Ontario — when a bikini-clad Champagne appeared on the front of the Sun, cooling off in a downtown fountain.
Her picture captured the attention of the wealthy New York developer.
“What’s her name?” he confided to a Sun photographer. “I’d like to meet her,”
And he got his wish.
The Sun set up the casual encounter between the pair outside the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
“So, this is the girl on the front of the paper,” Trump said after seeing the then-25-year-old struggling public relations grad in the flesh. “You’re really something.”
They each autographed and exchanged copies of the Sun newspaper with Champagne adding a note on the second page to “Call me” and included her phone number.
And less than a week later, the phone rang — long distance from Manhattan.
For 20 minutes, Champagne and Trump chatted about family, the Molson Indy and their mutual interest in Niagara Falls. But as quickly as the sparks flew, the fire fizzled out.
“He was going to get back to me, but never did,” Champagne said at the time. “I think he’s the kind of man I could have learned a lot from.”
Trump’s assistant said he chose not to pursue the relationship as he was “very busy.”
Numerous attempts to track down Champagne turned up fruitless. Is there even a possibility Champagne is still carrying a torch for Donald?
“He seems to like young blondes,” she once said, after Trump ghosted her.
Maybe she still has a thing for older blondes as well?
The women of Donald Trump:
•Ivana Trump: Married April 1977 and had three children together: Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric. They divorced in 1991 as he was having an affair with his next wife, Marla Maples.
•Marla Maples: Has one daughter, Tiffany, with Trump. They married two months after her birth in December 1993, but the couple formCally separated in May 1997, with their divorce finalized in June 1999.
•Melania Trump: A Slovenian-born model who married Trump in January 2005. They have a son together, Barron William Trump.
•Carla Bruni: The couple shared a brief, but rocky relationship in 1991 after the supermodel and French singer/songwriter was still torn over her ex, Mick Jagger. Trump later said: “[Carla] was trying to get me to leave Marla, something I had in mind anyway, and she was using every psychological trick in the book. In the end, Carla became a woman who is very difficult to even like.”
•Princess Diana: Trump was said to have “bombarded” Princess Di with expensive flowers after her 1996 divorce from Prince Charles, and has said that he would have liked to court that “genuine princess.”
•Kara Young: In 2001, Trump was involved in a love triangle with the supermodel, who had also seeing gossip columnist A.J. Benza. Trump and Benza insulted one another on the Howard Stern Show.
•Jackie Siegel: In 2013, the star of the documentary Queen of Versailles, said she went on “a couple” of dates with Trump after he invited her to his parties. “He’s a really great person,” she said. “So much charisma. I’m so glad that we’re still friends.”
•Sandra Taylor: In August 2015, former Penthouse Pet Sandra Taylor told the Daily Mail Trump had a secretary track her down for a date after spotting her on the cover of New York Magazine. She told the tabloid Trump was “amazing” in bed.
Rejection can hurt more from a high-powered mate
Rejection from anyone hurts, but being cast aside by a high-power mate such as Donald Trump can be especially challenging from an evolutionary perspective, according to sexologist and relationship expert Jess O’Reilly.
It may not even be someone you will remember in 20 years, but it’s the feeling of rejection that many people have difficulty coping with, she said, adding it takes a toll on one’s sense of self and self-esteem.
“Being exiled from a group in hunter-gatherer societies put you at physical peril (you couldn’t survive on your own), so it can be even more distressful,” she said. “On the other hand, knowing that Donald Trump relishes in belittling and rejecting people (“you’re fired’!) should serve as a reminder that she really shouldn’t take it personally.”
O’Reilly said women who are rejected by Trump — or other Trump-like partners — should spend some time to look at the situation rationally.
Many people in positions of power may enjoy exploiting their stature in relationships, said O’Reilly, who added it takes one who is “self-aware” to not manipulate that.
She added when someone doesn’t call, it can be more painful, as you’re left to imagine all the (usually unrealistic) reasons for the rejection.
jyuen@postmedia.com
SunShine Girl Tracy Champagne is pictured with Donald Trump in Toronto during the summer of 1997. (Toronto Sun files)
A SunShine Girl's encounter with Donald Trump | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto S
A dog and phony show
By
Mike Strobel, Toronto Sun
First posted: Saturday, October 08, 2016 03:46 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, October 08, 2016 04:37 PM EDT
Once a hound, always a hound?
Donald, you dog.
A young blonde SUNshine Girl in a fountain in 1998. A young blonde soap opera star in 2005. Can you spot a trend?
“He seems to like young blondes,” SUNshine Girl Tracy Champagne shrewdly observed in the halcyon summer of ’98.
Donald Trump, in town on business, had drooled over our front-page photo of bubbly Ms. Champagne, beating the heat by frolicking in a fountain. Our photographer introduced them. They swapped autographs. They talked of family, car racing, Niagara Falls. “You’re really something,” he said. “Call me,” she wrote.
But — sigh! — he never did. All talk, no action.
Far as we know, the Donald never hooked up with Days of Our Lives star Arianne Zucker, either, though a hot mic recorded him slobbering at the prospect as he rode in a bus to meet her with TV host Billy Bush.
Trump and Bush got “very lewd,” as the very liberal Washington Post described it. Clearly, no one at the Post has ever been in a hockey locker room or a dive bar after midnight.
In those loud, smelly places, loud and smelly words are spoken, mostly by men who are all talk, no action.
If you are male, even a liberal male, who claims never to have leered, lusted or debated the female anatomy in unscientific terms, well, have a good day, Your Holiness.
We men have a sneaking suspicion that you women, too, can get “very lewd” in similar settings, though we’re not sure, since we’re never invited.
Certainly, no hound dog ever occupied the White House, right?
Other than Bill Clinton and John Kennedy, I mean. And those two Casanovas weren’t just talk.
Both foisted themselves on White House interns. Kennedy, patron saint of liberal America, once wrote to a college buddy:
“I can now get my tail as often and as free as I want, which is a step in the right direction.”
That’s pretty much what Trump told Billy Bush on the bus in 2005, though with modern variations of “tail.”
But, lo, the moral outrage on Saturday after the tape was unveiled by the Washington Post. Organizers of Sunday’s Trump-Hillary Clinton debate must be slavering over the ratings windfall.
This was raw T-bone steak for the stop-Trumpers and the holier-than-thou crowd. Cue the dog and phony show.
CNN anchors — none of whom has ever in their lives said anything remotely ribald — rolled their eyes and rolled out tapes of Trump being raunchy on Howard Stern’s radio show, as if to say, “what a pig!”
Howard Stern?! Clearly no one at CNN has ever listened to Howard. Thus they missed Bestiality Dial-a-date.
Meanwhile, Billy Bush, a total twit on the tape, apologized. Then Trump apologized. He had to. Locker-room banter or not, that tape does not play well in 2016.
It is primo ammo for the political elites of both American parties who view Trump as an alien.
We live in preachy times. Soon it will be taboo to look sideways at a member of the opposite sex. (While true sexism, career inequality, remains far from fixed).
Bad-boy boasting can return to bite you in the tail even a decade later.
Nor do we run photos of blondes in fountains any more, no matter how steamy the weather.
Donald Trump has changed, too. Look at his wife, Melania.
She’s a brunette.
Strobel’s column usually runs Monday to Thursday.
mstrobel@postmedia.com
http://washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/3bf16d1e-8caf-11e6-8cdc-4fbb1973b506
A dog and phony show | STROBEL | World | News | Toronto Sun