Power Trip
Two for the Price of One
Power couples throughout history: from the Ceaușescus to the Clintons… to the Kushners?
It goes without saying, and yet it must be said: Donald and Melania Trump are not a power couple. A couple is not a power duo merely by virtue of living in the White House. A true power couple is something else: a single unit, more powerful than the sum of its parts; a team, erotically bound up in each other’s success and failure. Co-advisers, coequals, co-parents, co-presidents, they live in two worlds: the one they are remaking in their own image and the intimate one they share.
A power couple does work in the White House — but it’s neither the first nor the First. Once merely a New York real estate and high society pairing, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have brokered their way into dual White House roles, the “de facto first couple” and “ultimate Jewish power couple.” Meanwhile, another ambitious duo is on their heels. The self-titled “Donberly Bunch,” former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle’s partnership with Don Jr. has been repeatedly described as the classic “power couple.” It’s not her first such union, though. Guilfoyle’s previous political relationship was on the left, a marriage to then San Francisco mayor (now California gubernatorial hopeful) Gavin Newsom, who has been…
