In alphabetized indexes of Trump biographies, Paolo Zampolli can be found way down under Z: a Milanese former modeling agent who introduced Melania Knauss to Donald Trump at a New York Fashion Week party in 1998.
But it turns out that the cosmopolitan businessman-diplomat with slicked-back hair kept a foot lodged in the gates of Mar-a-Lago, absorbing—or infusing—the more exotic policy views of Trump World. Way back when I first met Zampolli, in 2016, to hear his thoughts about the Trump campaign, he told me about his idea to convert Gaza into a Mediterranean Riviera with high-rises and shopping malls. Or as he explains it now, “Let’s make it like Dubai, but with no golden faucets.”
I was reminded of that conversation when Trump turned this notion into his own official U.S. policy, announcing a plan to take over the Gaza Strip and build a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
“You see, maybe I am not completely dumb after all,” Zampolli said merrily when I reached out to him. He was obviously delighted about the Mar-a-Gaza project but careful to emphasize that he had nothing to do with the new policy, which involves “very geopolitical stuff” discussed at a different level.
Trump’s decision was not made in a vacuum. The plan echoed his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s remarks about the potential value of “waterfront property” in the Strip and aligned with the family’s business ventures across the Middle East. The Trump Organization is currently developing luxury apartments and golf courses in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai. It’s no surprise that Trump picked Steve Witkoff, a developer, as his envoy to the Middle East. Every element contributes to the realization of “one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on earth,” as the president put it.
Back when Zampolli first trotted out his high-rise solution, we were having lunch at his gilded, Trump-esque Midtown apartment. He had a bunch of ideas scribbled on crumpled slips of paper spilling out of his pockets. While reading aloud, he tossed the notes around like the old-school host of a late-night talk show. At one point, he casually announced that he had figured out the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He said he saw the light during a visit to Nebi Samuel, the traditional burial site of the prophet Samuel on the West Bank. There, he spotted a fancy apartment complex called Little Manhattan and concluded that the main obstacle to peace and safety was the prevalence of crumbling two-story buildings.
“Let’s make it like Dubai, but with no golden faucets.”
His plan: develop high-rise buildings in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Palestinians lived miserably, crammed into small, impoverished homes, he noted, when they could live comfortably in newly developed skyscrapers. If their housing conditions improved, he reasoned, they might give up fighting against Israel. One of the most intractable conflicts in human history had a real-estate solution.
Real estate and connections helped Zampolli land the position of Dominica’s ambassador to the United Nations in 2013. He has dual Italian-and-American nationality, but he is not a citizen or resident of that small Caribbean island; nor is his Brazilian ex-girlfriend, who once served as a U.N. ambassador to Grenada. Last week Trump fired almost the entire board of the Kennedy Center, but Zampolli, who was made a trustee by Trump in December 2020, is sitting pretty.
Zampolli describes himself as an anti-fentanyl advocate and a biodiversity warrior. He is also a serial selfie-taker with the beautiful and the powerful. His personal Instagram account (@paolozampolli) is filled with gorgeous models, heads of government, and ambassadors; his official Instagram account (@ambassadorzampolli) features gorgeous models, heads of government, and ambassadors. He takes an interest in Greenland, favoring independence over the more menacing options Trump has repeatedly evoked. Tom Dans, a former commissioner of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and an informal adviser to Trump on Greenland, praised Zampolli’s diplomatic work on the issue in an interview with Corriere della Sera. Zampolli declined to describe what he did exactly.
In her memoir, Melania described Zampolli—then co-owner of Metropolitan Models in New York—as a “straightforward and serious” professional. He takes credit for having helped her secure the H-1B non-immigrant visa that recently divided MAGA and pitted the ultra–America First anti-immigrant wing against Elon Musk, a South African immigrant who favors letting in highly skilled foreign workers. Musk won.
After his modeling business declined, Zampolli briefly worked for the Trump Organization as director of international development, becoming one of the few Trump hires at a time when his boss was known mostly for firing people on The Apprentice. The partnership didn’t last long, but they remained in sync. Zampolli’s next move was to establish a real-estate business known for recruiting former models as brokers.
Trump may have been onto something when he told The New York Observer in 2005 that his old friend had a great imagination—the quintessential quality for a developer. “In real estate, if you don’t have an imagination, it’s not going to work.”
These days, Zampolli is busy cutting deals and making introductions at the court of a president he admires and whose taste for hyperbolic accolades he shares. “Just in the first week,” Zampolli said, “he’s done more than anybody in the whole of humanity could have done.”
Mattia Ferraresi is the managing editor at the Italian newspaper Domani
