Ivanka Trump: The anti-Donald and her father’s greatest asset
IT’S what sets her apart from her name and background that makes Ivanka Trump so valuable to her dad’s presidential run.
SHE’S smart, savvy, and “nothing like her father”, but despite their differences, Ivanka Trump might just be her dad Donald’s greatest campaign asset.
The 34-year-old businesswoman featured heavily in the early stages of her Republican father Donald Trump’s nomination campaign, while she was in the later stages of her pregnancy.
After she took only a brief break from the campaign trail, her new baby and the presidential hopeful’s youngest grandson, Theodore, was welcomed to the world only on Sunday.
Already, Trump campaigners are eagerly awaiting the now mother-of-three’s return to the trail.
Like her father, she has the proven business sense, charisma, and the weight of a multi-billion dollar empire behind her. But it’s what sets her apart from her name and background that makes the former model so valuable to her dad’s presidential run.
She stands by her father’s side when he needs her to — multiple times during his nomination bid he’s beckoned her into the spotlight with him. But she also knows when to keep her distance and inject some sense alongside some of his more outrageous statements, and take over as the sensible Trump.
Ivanka has been labelled “the anti-Donald”, and the real Donald knows that’s just what he needs.
WHO IS IVANKA TRUMP?
Ivanka was born into the glittering, eccentric, scandal-ridden world her father created, and had to figure out how to cope with that from a young age.
While Mr Trump was carrying on a highly publicised affair with actor Marla Maples, cheating on her mother, Ivanka became used to being accosted at the gates of the exclusive primary school she attended in Manhattan.
As she told GQin a 2007 interview, that experienced helped her to “build up a certain callousness”.
The trying experience of growing up in the spotlight as the offspring of a tabloid mainstay, Ivanka said, also taught her to keep her guard up and “not trust anyone”.
She built a certain toughness and was determined to carve out her own identity and conquer her own exploits — first by becoming a model as a teenager, then an entrepreneur.
This was all in preparation for eventually bringing her entrepreneurial success back into the family fold — joining the Trump Organisation, where she now serves as an executive — with “something to offer beyond my last name”, as she wrote in her book.
In her husband Jared Kushner’s view, that unique childhood left Ivanka with an excellent bulls*** filter.
“There’s not a lot of bulls*** in Ivanka’s life. Living through everything that she saw as a kid, she has a very good filter on what’s real, what’s not, what’s worthwhile, and what’s not,” he told Town and Country.
ON HER FATHER
Like most kids, Ivanka has admitted to occasionally feeling a little embarrassed by her father’s more outrageous antics over the years.
But unlike most kids, her dad has a huge public platform which he uses to voice his opinions, loudly. As a presidential candidate, he also has the potential to hold a lot more power.
Rather than focusing on his semi-regular slip-ups or publicly cringing at his comments about women that are at odds with her own brand, Ivanka prefers to speak publicly about how proud she is of her father, Donald.
It was Ivanka who introduced her dad when he first announced his intention to run for president, and she’s been more visible on the campaign trail than her stepmother and possible future first lady, Melania.
She’s defended his views on women saying he “100 per cent believes in equality of gender” using her own success as proof.
“If he didn’t feel that women were as competent as men, I would be relegated to some role subordinate to my brother,” she told Town and Country in an interview earlier this year.
But Ivanka doesn’t always defend her dad, and this must be where that BS radar that Mr Kushner was on about comes in.
When her father was out publicly challenging Chinese business leaders for “sucking us dry”, Ivanka took to Instagram to share a video of her four-year-old daughter singing a Chinese New Year song in Mandarin, the Washington Post observed.
During his attempt to publicly embarrass Senator Ted Cruz by sharing an unflattering picture of the candidate’s wife on social media, Ivanka wasn’t buying into it, eagerly tweeting out recipes and feel-good family shots from her lifestyle website.
Mr Trump has many times used his daughter’s pregnancy to court voters, telling both Iowa and South Carolina supporters he would love for his new grandchild to be born in their home states. Ivanka, however, refused to politicise her pregnancy and instead announced the happy birth on Twitter like any other proud mum.
She says “of course” she disagrees with her father from time to time — that’s what daughters do — but in a political capacity, she’s all about support.
MORE LIKE A FIRST LADY
Although she insists she’s not officially part of the campaign, Ivanka appears to have taken up a role that is “more of a proxy wife” than the younger, relatable, millennial-friendly “cool” daughter she was expected to play.
Introducing her father at events and often sharing the spotlight with him, Ivanka is taking on a very different role in this campaign than her friend Chelsea Clinton.
Ivanka also appears more comfortable in the spotlight that Melania, who has already copped harsh criticism and has been the victim of ridicule over her looks and even her accent throughout the Trump campaign.
Ivanka, on the other hand, has so far managed to avoid any damage in the storms of controversy her name invites, and even balanced out some of her father’s more incendiary comments with some more sensible musings of her own.
HER OWN FUTURE IN POLITICS?
Ivanka’s performance throughout Trump’s journey towards the White House has so far been so ambitious it’s prompted the question of her own political future.
Could the next political dynasty carry the Trump name, like so many products and business ventures American people know and love?
While she’s focusing on her father’s political career right now, Ivanka hasn’t ruled out her own bid for the White House further down the track.
“It’s not something I’ve ever been inclined to do, but I’m 34, so who knows?” she said.
“At this point I would never even contemplate it, but that doesn’t mean that when I’m 50 I won’t have a change of heart.”
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