Where’s Ivanka Trump?

Miami: Ivanka Trump has been surfing. She’s posed in front of the Eiffel Tower and attended a Formula 1 party in Miami in a race-car red dress. She took a dip with her children in a hot tub, hung out with Kim Kardashian in Malibu and smiled alongside her husband, Jared Kushner, at the Acropolis.

The one place former president Donald Trump’s oldest daughter hasn’t been, however, is on the campaign trail. And although she has been upfront about her absence, politically speaking, it remains somewhat mysterious.

During 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 Kushner 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 – 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 his politics comes as Donald 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 January 6, 2021.

One of Ivanka’s most prominent appearances during the 2024 race has been at Trump’s civil fraud case last autumn, when she testified that she wasn’t “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 about the chances that she might rejoin the campaign fray in the final stretch of the race, Kushner was blunt.

Ivanka Trump arrives at New York Supreme Court in November last year.Credit: AP

“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 the outcome of the contest between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris might 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”.

Critics of the couple, however, said that even if Ivanka remained outside the government, she and her husband could benefit financially if her father was re-elected.

Kushner, who served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House, now runs a $US3 billion ($4.6 billion) 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.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner arrive for the funeral of her mother Ivana Trump in 2022.Credit: AP

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 Kushner along with 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, a book 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 Trump’s life has also been conspicuous. Unlike her brothers Eric and Donald Jr, she did not attend her father’s trial in Manhattan, where he was convicted of 34 felony counts. And though she briefly appeared on 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 him.

Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, appeared with him in New York at the ill-fated Madison Square Garden rally.Credit: AP

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, such as at her husband’s rally at Madison Square Garden this week.

Susan Del Percio, a Republican political strategist, said it was unclear whether – after several political campaigns in which Donald Trump had 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 [Ivanka] 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 such as reproductive rights were motivating many voters.

Donald Trump’s businesses – and political career – have always depended on, and heavily involved, his family.

And in place of Ivanka and Melania, his 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 Trump appeared at a “Team Trump Women’s Tour” event on Thursday, and has more scheduled in the final days of the race.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Jr’s fiancee, has appeared at campaign stops and fundraising events.

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 following the January 6 riot.

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, adding that Miami was “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” ffor short – have also flourished financially, freed from governmental ethical rules.

Then US president Donald Trump watches his daughter Ivanka speak at a rally ahead of the 2020 election.Credit: AP

“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.”

‘Super happy with the lifestyle’

Ivanka’s New York roots are deep, having grown up in Trump Tower, attended The Chapin School on the Upper East Side and danced as a child ballerina at Lincoln Centre.

Jared Kushner, daughter Arabella and wife Ivanka Trump pose with billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani at the wedding of Ambani’s son Anant Ambani in India in March.Credit: AP

From a young age, she was entwined with her father’s ventures. She worked for him after college and often guest-starred on his reality television show The Apprentice as she worked on building her own business selling clothes and jewellery.

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 New York Observer had given him an entry 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, Ivanka closed down her fashion business after being dropped by a number of major stores and having been forced to step away because of Washington’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, Trump is self-employed, but is investing in businesses, friends and advisers say, although she hasn’t 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, Ivana Trump’s mother – who now lives with the family on Indian Creek, along with two dogs and a hamster named Chester. She practises ju-jitsu with the Valente Brothers (one of whom, Joaquim, is dating Brady’s ex-wife, Gisele Bündchen) and qigong breathing; she plays guitar, tennis and golf. She also meditates.

And complicating the notion that she’s been exiled, Ivanka has also somewhat re-emerged in the social scene. She was spotted at Kardashian’s birthday last northern autumn in Beverly Hills, Art Basel in Miami Beach in December, Bezos’ 60th birthday in Los Angeles in January, and the extravagant Ambani wedding in India in March.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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