Missing in action: Ivanka at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July. Trump’s oldest daughter and former top aide has become a nearly silent observer in her father’s current campaign. — Photos: ©2024 The New York Times Company
IVANKA Trump has been surfing. She has posed in front of the Eiffel Tower, and attended a Formula One party in Miami in a race car-red dress. She took a dip with her children in a hot tub, hung out with socialite Kim Kardashian in Malibu, and smiled alongside her husband, Jared Kushner, at the Acropolis.
The one place Ivanka has not been, however, is the campaign trail.
And though she has been upfront about her absence, politically speaking, it remains somewhat mysterious.
During former president Donald Trump’s last two bids for office, Ivanka appeared at rallies, in television ads and on national convention stages, often with the implicit role of appealing to female voters.
But nearly two years ago, as her father started a third run for the White House, Ivanka announced that she and her husband would be stepping back from politics to prioritise their children and family life.
“While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena,” she said.
So it is in her father’s fiercest and potentially final campaign that Ivanka – his oldest daughter, one of his former top aides and perhaps his closest family member – has become a nearly silent observer, with seemingly no intention of boosting his candidacy in any public way.
That decision to separate herself from her father’s politics comes as Trump has faced the prospect of four separate criminal trials, including one in her – and his – former home of Manhattan, where he was convicted of 34 felonies in late May, and one in Washington, in connection with the Capitol riots of Jan 6, 2021.
One of Ivanka’s most prominent appearances during the 2024 race has been at Trump’s civil fraud case in autumn 2023, when she testified that she was not “privy” to her father’s finances.
Ivanka, 42, declined to be interviewed, asking instead that Kushner speak for her and her family.
And when asked the chances that she might rejoin the campaign fray in the final stretch of the race, Kushner was blunt.
“Zero,” he said.
Kushner, 43, added that Ivanka “made the decision when she left Washington that she was closing that chapter of her life. And she’s been remarkably consistent”.
He went on to suggest that the outcome in the contest between Donald Trump and US Vice-President Kamala Harris may change little for their family.
While “obviously the world is different for us over the next four years if her father is president”, Kushner said, he didn’t see “a major shift in terms of what we prioritise”.
“We’re rooting for him – obviously, we’re proud of him,” he said. “But, you know, either way, our life will just continue to move forward.”
Ivanka with her husband, Jared Kushner, as Trump boarded Air Force One for his last time as president at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland in 2021.
Critics of the couple, however, said that even if Ivanka remains outside of the government, she and her husband could stand to benefit financially if her father is re-elected.
Kushner, who served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House, now runs a US$3bil private equity fund bankrolled by the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as by Terry Gou, the Taiwanese billionaire and founder of Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer.
It is an endeavour that has already earned his firm at least US$112mil in fees.
If Donald Trump returns to the White House, there will be a steady stream of questions about whether she and Kushner are getting special treatment in any new deals they are making, particularly when the transactions directly involve foreign governments, as is the case in several projects that Kushner and Ivanka are already working on.
“He says it sort of self-effacingly, but at the end of the day, he’s sitting there directing traffic all around the world,” said Vicky Ward, the author of Kushner Inc, about the couple’s various businesses, who suggested Kushner could wield influence behind the scenes as a kind of “shadow Secretary of State” or “Kissinger 2.0”.
“They don’t need to go into government,” she said. “They’ve already proven, in a way, that government is really good business for them.”
The Other Women for Trump
Ivanka’s low-to-no profile at other significant events in her father’s life has also been conspicuous: Unlike her brothers Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., she did not attend her father’s trial in Manhattan, where he was convicted of 34 felony counts. And though she did briefly appear at the last night of the Republican National Convention in July, she did not speak – a stark contrast with the two previous conventions, when she introduced Donald Trump.
Ivanka was also not in the audience this month at an all-female town hall-style meeting held in Georgia and hosted by Fox News, nor was Melania Trump, the former first lady, who has also largely kept her distance, save for rare appearances, like at her husband’s rally at Madison Square Garden.
In the past, the Trump women have tried to pitch Donald Trump as a champion for women and framed his presidency as uplifting for women in the workforce, particularly during moments when his comments and behavior were under scrutiny.
Susan Del Percio, a Republican political strategist, said it was unclear whether – after several political campaigns in which Trump has alienated and insulted women – either his daughter or his wife could be an effective surrogate in the race. Their absence, however, was telling, she added.
“The positives that she could make on the trail is marginal, but the fact that she and Melania are not on the trail could be significant,” Del Percio said, noting that issues like reproductive rights were motivating many voters.
Trump’s businesses – and political career – have always depended on and heavily involved his family. And in place of Ivanka and the first lady, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, has taken on a larger role, since he lobbied to install her as the co-chair of the Republican National Committee in March.
Lara appeared at a recent “Team Trump Women’s Tour” event, and has more scheduled in the final days of the race. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr, has appeared at campaign stops and fundraising events.
Lara Trump and her husband, Eric at a rally for Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trump's also occasionally been accompanied by more controversial female supporters, including Laura Loomer, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who was at the September debate with Harris, and Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who boasted about killing a dog in her memoir released in April, stood by the former president’s side during an awkward rally-turned-dance party this month.
Ivanka's name periodically crops up in Trump’s public appearances and stump speeches, often in almost wistful ways. At a Moms for Liberty event in August, Trump suggested he had once wanted to make her the nation’s ambassador to the United Nations, but she had refused.
“She could have done anything,” the former president said. “Great student, great beautiful girl, beautiful everything.” (When reached for comment, Trump’s campaign directed a request for comment to Ivanka.)
Trump also mentioned his daughter in a segment at the women-focused Fox News event this month, praising her support for a larger tax credit for children.
“You never heard of Ivanka, right?” Donald Trump said, drawing a laugh from the audience. “My daughter drove me crazy on this. We had the simplest, most beautiful time.”
Leaving Washington
Ivanka’s withdrawal from her father’s side has been discreet.
She and Kushner left Washington DC for the Miami area in 2021 with their three children – a move that some interpreted as a kind of forced exile from New York City, where they had lost the affection of former friends and acquaintances because of their work in the Trump administration and in the wake of Jan 6.
The family moved to an oceanside condo in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, before buying a mansion in Indian Creek Village, a gated island community in Biscayne Bay sometimes known as Florida’s “billionaire bunker”.
The area consists of only a few dozen homes, including those reportedly belonging to Tom Brady and Jeff Bezos, and comes with its own private police force.
Accessible only via boat or a single, well-guarded bridge – and with a country club at its centre – the village is perhaps Miami’s most exclusive location.
The move there, Kushner said, was a result of New York’s schools being closed for Covid-19, adding that Miami is “a city on the rise”, and “it’s a lot safer than being in New York right now”,
Observers say that Ivanka and Kushner – or “Javanka,” for short – have flourished financially, freed from governmental ethical rules.
“They’re much richer than they were before they went into government,” Ward said.
“And now he’s got a Rolodex of world leaders who are on the phone to him. And when he puts the phone down, he can call his father-in-law.”
To be sure, some of Kushner’s deals have drawn intense scrutiny, including a US$2bil investment in his equity fund from an investment fund controlled by the Saudi government – known for its abysmal human rights record – shortly after they left Washington.
Plans for two high-end developments in Albania – one of which Ivanka is helping to design – have also raised questions, with the couple facing accusations of benefiting from a government looking to curry favor with the former, and perhaps future, president.
A representative for Kushner disputed trading on their influence and connection with Trump to help their business interests, saying that he was “proud of the many great relationships he has built over the course of his life in both the private and public sectors.”
‘Super Happy with the Lifestyle’
Ivanka’s New York roots were deep, having grown up in Trump Tower, attended the Chapin School on the Upper East Side, and danced as a child ballerina at Lincoln Center.
And from a young age she was entwined with her father’s ventures. She worked for her father after college and often guest starred on his reality television show The Apprentice as she worked on building her own business selling clothes and jewellry.
She hobnobbed with the likes of Chelsea Clinton and Rupert Murdoch, hit the Met Gala more than once and, in 2009, married Kushner, whose purchase of the money-losing The New York Observer had given him entree to the city’s media elite.
Much of that social life was put on hold, however, after the couple’s departure for Washington. In 2018, Trump shuttered her fashion business, after being dropped by a number of major stores and after having been forced to step away because of DC’s ethical rules, leaving the business – which she said was profitable – in an untenable holding pattern.
“My focus for the foreseeable future will be the work I am doing here in Washington,” she said at the time.
Now, Ivanka is self-employed, but is investing in businesses, according to friends and advisers, though she has not announced which ones.
She also volunteers, recently helping victims of Hurricane Helene with CityServe, a Christian-faith-based organisation.
Her daily life sounds both commonplace and charmed: She cares for her three children as well as her 98-year-old grandmother – Marie Zelnickova, the mother of her mother Ivana, who now lives with the family on Indian Creek – along with two dogs and a hamster named Chester.
And complicating the notion that she’s been exiled, Trump has also somewhat reemerged in the social scene. She was spotted at Kardashian’s birthday last fall in Beverly Hills, California, Art Basel in Miami Beach in December, Bezos’ 60th birthday in Los Angeles in January and the extravagant Ambani wedding in India over the summer. On occasion, Trump has popped up in New York, too, including for a September party hosted by the designer Geraldine Guyot-Arnault, the wife of Alexandre Arnault, an heir to the LVMH fortune.
Whether she will ever be fully accepted back into New York’s fashionable circles is another question. Her brother-in-law Joshua Kushner, and his wife, model Karlie Kloss, have seemingly stepped in where Javanka have left off, right down to purchasing their own struggling publication: Life magazine.
But Holly Peterson, a journalist and author who has long chronicled the ways of the wealthy, said that Trump and Kushner’s place in New York’s upper echelon was overstated to begin with.
“They were simply not part of New York society, ever,” Peterson said, adding that the couple lacked the sense of civic duty that often accompanied New York’s prominent families. “Anyone will tell you that Ivanka – from school drop-off to fashion shows to galas to book parties to cocktails in honor of someone who was launching something – was never around. I never saw her in person.”
Ivanka’s friends counter that these days she is less concerned with being seen, and more focused on quality of life, for her and her children: Arabella, 13; Joseph, 11; and Theodore, 8. They attend a private Jewish day school near their home; the family walks to synagogue for services on Saturday. (Trump converted to Judaism before the couple married.)
“Miami really feels like home now,” said Julie Brawn, who has known Ivanka for two decades and lives near the couple. “She’s super happy with the lifestyle.”
Avoiding a ‘Blood Sport’
Though Ivanka has largely avoided the spotlight over the last couple of years, she made a recent exception for a podcast appearance. The host of that podcast was Lex Fridman, an MIT scientist whose segments have recently featured polarizing, conservative figures such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as Trump himself in September.
In a wide-ranging three-hour interview with Fridman in July, Ivanka touched on everything from architecture to The Apprentice, with detours into Michael Jackson to Dolly Parton. (She said Parton reminded her of her mother, Ivana, and leads with “a lot of love and positivity.”)
She also reiterated that her decision to step away from politics was a calculation involving what being away from her children could mean for them emotionally. “I’m not willing to make them bear that cost,” she said.
She also, more pointedly, called politics “a blood sport” and “one that you also can’t dabble in.”
Kushner said that he and Ivanka were still close with Trump, speaking to him regularly by phone. During the summers, they live side by side in Bedminster, New Jersey. They see each other less frequently during winters in southern Florida, where they live about 60 miles apart.
“If he calls her for advice or help on something, we’re always there,” Kushner said.
Depending on the result of the election on Tuesday, that line to Trump could soon run straight to the White House, and the couple’s distance from Washington may quickly evaporate once again. Still, asked directly if the couple would ever reenter the political sphere in a second Trump administration, representatives for the pair pointed to Kushner’s comments and to her interview with Fridman.
“I think you have to either be all in,” Ivanka said in that interview. “Or all out.” — ©2024 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
