Ivanka Trump, despite existing for years in positions of great public prominence, unmissable thanks to the shenanigans, crimes, and presidency of her
Ivanka Trump, despite existing for years in positions of great public prominence, unmissable thanks to the shenanigans, crimes, and presidency of her father, Donald Trump, is something of an enigma. The once-and-future first daughter, who served as a senior adviser during Dear Old Dad’s first term, rarely gives interviews but sat for nearly two hours with the Skinny Confidential’s Him & Her podcast, published Monday. She managed to stress how wonderful it was to work in the White House during the first Trump presidency, while also making it abundantly clear that she wants abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with that place this time around.
“When my father was elected, I had no intention of serving,” Trump said of her role during her father’s first stint in the White House. But, oops, sometimes you just trip over your nepotism and fall right into a job. (Trump and husband Jared Kushner did not draw White House salaries, but did rake in up to $640 million from outside interests during their time there.) According to Ivanka, Pere Trump asked her and Kushner to join. “This was not what I set my life up for. I loved the life I was building for our young family in New York. I had an 8-month-old son when we arrived in Washington and two children not that much older.”
But, you know: FOMO.
“I feel a tremendous sense of privilege for having been given the opportunity. I’m so happy that Jared and I were able to be there to help him,” she told hosts Lauryn Evarts Bosstick and Michael Bosstick. “This time, it’s so different because so many people are raising their hands and I’m so grateful to them.”
The Bossticks, a married couple who run the lifestyle blog and woo-woo “wellness” brand The Skinny Confidential, as well the overarching Dear Media brand, proved to be an unsurprisingly sympathetic audience for Trump. They’ve signaled at conservatism in the past: Michael is the son of JetBed founder Gary Bosstick, a longtime Republican donor, and Lauryn (who considers a “don’t tread on me” flag popular with the MAGA crowd tasteful home decor) in 2020 shut down a popular Facebook group she ran for her blog when things got “too heavy,” in her words. That “heavy” content included discussion of Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and more. The 60k member-strong group had become, in Lauryn’s opinion, a “hateful and negative space.” She just wanted to talk about mascara, y’all!
After four years of “recalibration,” as Ivanka put it, and mapping out her goals, Trump has FOMO no mo’.
“I’ll be in Florida,” she said, working on being “the best freaking mom I could be.”
When President Trump first took office, the youngest of Ivanka’s three children, Theodore, was under a year venerable, a famously uncomplicated age for both parents to have demanding West Wing jobs. She explained that though her “highest, most core value is family, my kids were much younger [then], so it was easier to not be present.” She insisted that while she loves making an impact, “I hate politics,” adding that “there is a darkness to that world that I don’t really want to welcome into mine.”
“I feel super great about this decision,” she said of her planned role in the second Trump presidency, which, she revealed, will be that of occasional human presence with which to watch TV. “Like, watch a movie with him or watch a sports game, to know that he can be with me and be himself and just relax and for me to be able to provide that for him in a very loving way as his daughter.”
Which, luckily for her, means she’s less likely to have the Ethics Committee all up in her business, on the hunt for conflicts of interest, not to mention congressional investigations. Let’s leave that to people like her father-in-law, Charles Kushner, the designated ambassador to France. Maybe he and Donald bonded at some large family dinner over both of them being convicted felons, a classic of the genre. The elder Kushner was among those Donald pardoned in 2020 on his way out the door of his first term, granting him clemency for the 18 federal counts he pled guilty to in 2004, mostly related to filing false tax returns.
Trump also displayed a remarkable knack for serenely dropping absolute zingers, and not acknowledging any discordant irony. Unlike many with media jobs, the Bossticks didn’t take those opportunities to follow up.
For example, Trump mentioned reading with her kids and picking up books from teen daughter Arabella’s school reading list, including the classic anti-fascist tome Fahrenheit 451. The Ray Bradbury book is always relevant, but is invoked especially often in the Trump Era, its depictions of self-delusion in the face of tyrannical rule feeling very familiar. Instead of offering thoughts, she moved on to how much fun she was having rereading the Animorphs series.
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