Pageant winner saw it in Trump’s eyes

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS

Rima Fakih knew she had won the 2010 Miss USA title when she saw the look on Donald Trump’s face: It was the same one she’d seen him flash at the winners of “The Apprentice.”

The 24-year-old Lebanese immigrant — Miss Michigan USA to the judges — beat out 50 other women to take the title Sunday night, despite nearly stumbling in her evening gown.

She told reporters later that she believed she had won after glancing at pageant owner Trump as she awaited the results with the first runner-up, Miss Oklahoma USA Morgan Elizabeth Woolard.

“That’s the same look that he gives them when he says, ‘You’re hired,’” on Trump’s reality show, she said.

“She’s a great girl,” said Trump, who owns the pageant with NBC in a joint venture.

Fakih took top honors at the pageant at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip after strutting confidently in an orange and gold bikini, wearing a strapless white gown that resembled a wedding dress and saying health insurance should cover birth-control pills.

Fakih was born into a powerful Shiite family in a village in southern Lebanon that was heavily bombed during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. But she and her sister said the family celebrates both Muslim and Christian faiths and prefer to be referred to as Lebanese, Arabs or Arab- Americans.

She moved to the United States with her family in 1993 and attended a Catholic school in New York. Her family moved to Michigan in 2003.

Pageant officials said historical pageant records were not detailed enough to show whether Fakih was the first Arab-American, Muslim or immigrant to win the Miss USA title.

Fakih told reporters she sold her car after graduating college in Michigan to help pay for her run in the Miss Michigan USA pageant.

In a moment that was replayed during the pageant’s broadcast, Fakih nearly fell while finishing her walk in her gown because of the length of its train.

“I did it here; I better not do it at Miss Universe,” she said. “Modeling does help, after all.”