Donald Trump’s power women: The First Lady to his daughters
Ivanka, Tiffany and First Lady Melania are the powerful women in Donald Trump’s life. This is the influence they have on his election campaign.
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From the First Lady to his daughters, White House confidants and the niece that claimed he was a liar and sociopath, Donald Trump has been a polarising figure when it comes to women.
The US President – who is campaigning for a second term in the White House ahead of the November 3 election – has a string of powerful women in his life, and not all of them agree with him.
Some are part of his inner circle – such as his daughter and White House adviser, Ivanka Trump – others, like his niece Mary Trump, are among his biggest critics.
This is what some key female figures in Trump’s life have been up to since his first term in office and the connections that have made them key figures in his election campaign, for better or worse.
MELANIA TRUMP
Slovenian-born former model Melania married Trump in 2005, and gave birth to the couple’s son, Barron Trump, in 2006.
Melania has been the subject of a string of controversies since becoming First Lady, from her fashion choices (wearing a jacket with the slogan “I really don’t care, do you?” to a facility for migrant children) to ripping off a speech by Michelle Obama.
There was also her poorly-received redesign of the White House’s Rose Garden, a bizarre rumours suggesting she had a double for public appearances, leaked recordings criticising the press, and seemingly refusing to hold Trump’s hand while disembarking from Air Force One.
Wearing a military-style khaki jacket, Melania held a rally in Pennsylvania this week to support Trump’s campaign for re-election. There, she admitted did not always agree with him.
“I don’t always agree the way he says things, but it is important to him that he speaks directly to the people he serves,” Melania told the Make America Great Again-clad supporters, where she described her husband as “a fighter”.
She has shown a dignified restraint in the face of critics, including when her former friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff wrote a tell-all memoir about their friendship, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady. Though she tweeted that the book was “delusional” and dismissed it as “malicious gossip”.
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Melania has been credited with softening Trump’s image at times, showing a compassionate site through education initiatives.
In May, she launched BE BEST described as an “awareness campaign focused entirely around the wellbeing of children”. She also has read books to school-aged children, including Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and The Little Rabbit.
IVANKA TRUMP
The President’s daughter Ivanka Trump is one of his official advisers, whose husband Jared Kushner, also works for the Trump administration.
Featuring on Time’s 100 Most Influential list and Forbes’ World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, Ivanka was a judge on Trump’s reality TV show The Apprentice, a businesswoman, Wharton School graduate, and fashion designer, Ivanka has been front and centre in Trump’s campaign for re-election.
When her father was elected in 2016, she was touted as a progressive figure in the White House, who was thought to appeal to young women.
“I recognise that my father’s communication style is not to everyone’s taste, but the results speak for themselves,” Ivanka said at the Republican National Convention – in remarks that echoed those made by her stepmother, Melania.
“I’ve watched (him) take on the failed policies of the past and do what no other leader has done before,” Ivanka said.
Like her father, Ivanka is moving in circles with the major power players. In 2019, a video of her “inserting” herself into a conversation with world leaders went viral.
At the G20 in Japan, Ivanka appeared awkwardly alongside then British Prime Minister Theresa May and International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde, prompting the hashtag #UnwantedIvanka.
TIFFANY TRUMP
Trump’s youngest daughter Tiffany Trump is a social media personality (she has 1.2 million Instagram followers), dabbled in a singing career (she released a song, Like a Bird), and graduated from Georgetown University’s law school this year.
She is part of a high society New York clique dubbed the rich kids of Instagram, and recently partied in Miami nightclubs on her birthday.
The Upper East Side resident has appeared with her siblings at Trump campaign events, where she has – on occasion – been a speaker.
Her boyfriend is billionaire Michael Boulos, whom she met on holiday in Greece.
While she usually stays out of the Trump family’s public drama, Tiffany made headlines this month when she gave a trainwreck speech at a Trump Pride event.
“You, unfortunately, see social media and you see these fabricated lies, it saddens me,” Tiffany told the audience in Tampa. “I have friends of mine who reach out, they make up stories, they say, ‘How could you support your father? We know you. We know your best friends are gay, we know your best friends are this, this, and this.’ I say, ‘It’s because my father has always supported all of you.’”
She faced a major backlash when she referred to the LGBTQ community without the letter “T”. “Prior to politics, he supported gays, lesbians, the LGBQIA+ community,” Tiffany said.
MARY L. TRUMP
His niece Mary L. Trump penned a scathing memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, which included detailed criticisms of her uncle – the President of the United States.
“He’s going to burn it all down, sow more chaos and division because that’s where he succeeds,” Mary told The Guardian last week.
“He knows that he’s losing – he’ll deny it mightily – and at some level, he understands what’s at stake. If he loses, he’s probably going to prison. So, if he’s going down, he’s going to take us all down with him.”
Released in July, the Trump family took legal action to try and block her from publishing Too Much and Never Enough – they lost, and the book sold more than one million copies in its first week.
Mary – who is the daughter of Trump’s late older brother, Fred – also leaked the Trump family’s tax returns to The New York Times.
In her book, Mary said, for her estranged uncle, that “lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandisement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was”.
“Nothing is ever enough,” she wrote. “This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be.”
“The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviours so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuro-physical tests, that he’ll never sit for.”
LARA TRUMP
She is Trump’s daughter-in-law, married to his son Eric Trump since 2014.
She earns a reported $US15,000 per month as an official advisor on Trump’s re-election campaign.
After studying communications at North Carolina State University, Lara undertook a degree in pastry arts at New York’s famed French Culinary Institute.
Part of the Trump family’s inner circle, Lara left her role as a producer for Inside Edition during Trump’s 2016 campaign. “When they’re reporting on your family on the show you work for, it’s a little challenging,” mother-of-two Lara said, according to Yahoo.
“We managed to keep everything pretty even-keeled for the duration of this whole thing, but certainly it’s nice to not have to worry about that from day-to-day.” She has made US TV appearances, and appeared on Trump’s Real News Update channel on YouTube.
In 2017, Trump announced that Lara was pregnant with her firstborn at one of his White House press conferences.
“Eric’s dad was so excited, that we were worried he’d blurt it out at a press conference,” Lara told People magazine.
Originally published as Donald Trump’s power women: The First Lady to his daughters