The man turning Donald Trump into a global deal machine

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“The president alone closed the Boeing deal with Uzbekistan Airways for 22 Dreamliner aircraft during his September 5 2025 call with President [Shavkat] Mirziyoyev,” a U.S. state department official told the FT. “The president has assembled a robust team dedicated to implementing his vision to put America First and advance our national interests.”

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Zampolli also touted a recent deal to open “Donald J Trump Park” in Romania’s capital of Bucharest to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s independence.

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Like the U.S. president whose style he emulates, Zampolli is not big on the particulars and quick to downplay the mechanics of his deals. “I bring people together, global partnerships. Then there are the details… that’s when the secretaries step in.”

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But the logic of his diplomacy is simpler and more revealing.

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“Whenever people see me, they want something. They want access to the president,” he said. “I tell them: ‘Buy Boeing.’ If you want to make the president happy, buy Boeing. It’s the simplest thing in the world.”

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Boeing declined to comment. The White House referred a request for comment to the state department.

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Zampolli does not make a secret of his role. Much of his work as an envoy is documented on his Instagram feed, a running highlight reel of meetings and handshakes and deals.

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Long before he was cutting deals on behalf of Washington, Zampolli was a fixture of New York’s late 1990s nightlife and modelling scene — a swaggering impresario whose confidence often outpaced his English.

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An October 2001 profile in Vanity Fair captured him in full, both mocking and marvelling at his improbable influence over the city’s social and fashion circuits.

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“Zampolli’s presence on ‘Page Six’, the gossip column in The New York Post — where he is always identified as a ‘model mogul’ — is surpassed only by ‘hot-blooded hotel heiress’ Paris Hilton’s,” wrote Vanity Fair in a roughly 3,000-word profile titled Ze-e E-e-en credible Paolo!, an irreverent, if not entirely politically correct, portrait.

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Around that time, Zampolli — scion of an Italian family with roots in steel and railways who claims to have distant ties to the Agnelli business dynasty and even a pope — struck the deal that would define his life. He has said that in 1998 he introduced a young Slovenian model, Melania Knauss, to Trump at a fashion week party.

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Zampolli’s role in the first couple’s origin story spilled into public view in recent days, after Melania Trump held a surprise press conference in which she denied any ties to Jeffrey Epstein and said the late child sex offender played no role in her introduction to her husband.

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Shortly after, Ungaro, Zampolli’s former partner, alluded on X that Melania Trump had a connection to Epstein but later deleted the posts.

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Zampolli, characteristically, brushed it aside. “And what does Jeffrey Epstein say [about me]? ‘He’s trouble stay away.’ And sure enough, he hated me. It’s not like the Epstein files revealed, ‘If you want hookers, call Paolo,’ or ‘Paolo is on the island.’ No he never invited me to the island.”

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In a Trump administration that prizes loyalty and results over process, Zampolli embodies a kind of parallel diplomacy: informal, personality-driven and all about the deals.

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The effect is the collapse of distinctions that have long underpinned U.S. foreign policy: between statecraft and salesmanship, public office and private network, diplomacy and dealmaking.

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For Zampolli, there is no contradiction. The pitch remains the same, whether delivered in a Budapest ministry or a Central Asian capital: big numbers, quick timelines and a clear message about how to get what you want.

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“Buy American,” he says.

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If that doesn’t work: “US$20 billion in 20 minutes.”

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Additional reporting Alex Rogers in Washington and Christian Davies in New York

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© 2026 The Financial Times Ltd

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