Battle to be First Lady: Will Melania Trump let Ivanka shine?

Will Melania Trump take a back seat and let Ivanka shine in Washington?

Donald Trump embraces Melania, left, and Ivanka at his inauguration.

Last northern summer, on the 25th floor of the Trump Tower New York, I was sitting opposite Ivanka Trump.

At the time, probably only she was confident that her father would get to be the 45th President of the United States.

She’s always believed in him and he in her. But she’s more than your usual daddy’s girl. She’s a dazzling presence. Tall, elegant, smart, determined — and a perfect foil for her father.

Whereas Donald thrives on saying the first thing that comes into his head, Ivanka manicures her thoughts. Sometimes you see her thinking.

Looking back on that meeting, one moment sticks in my head. When I asked her how she would feel about being the first daughter, there was a pause. “I’m an adult now, so obviously it would be a different experience than if I were a child … but I’m still a daughter.”

At the time I thought she was being a little bashful, coy, but now I think she was working on redefining the role of first daughter.

So many people felt that Ivanka’s presence, her elegant determination and superhuman work ethic helped her father not only to become the Republican candidate but to go all the way to the White House.

Last March she gave birth to her third child, Theodore. One week later she was back at her father’s side on his campaign train and on the podium, looking poised, pragmatic and super-slim.

What happened to the baby belly? What happened to exhaustion? All under check. She said at the time, “As a young girl growing up, my father told me I could do anything that I set my mind to.”

And that’s exactly what she did. She was briefly a model before graduating from the Wharton School of Business, studying economics. She is a mother of three small children and was executive vice-president of development and acquisitions at the Trump ­Organisation.

She stepped away from her position at the company and her ­apparel and accessories brand and delayed publishing her book Women Who Work so that she could move to Washington to be close to her father. While she’s settling her three children into their new life, her husband, Jared Kushner (chairman of Kushner Companies and of Observer Media Group), is now a close and valued aide to Trump.

So, of course, speculation is rife that Ivanka, 35, would assume the role of first lady while Donald’s wife, Melania, 46, a former model, has already said she will be, for the short term at least, remaining in New York to look after their son, the 10-year-old Barron.

So Melania Trump not moving to Washington and Ivanka reserving the first lady’s office as her office in the White House looks to most people like a power move. Ivanka, respectfully, has said, “There’s only one first lady …”

Stepping away from her business was “emotional. But I can be there to support my father and support those causes I’ve cared about my whole ­career.”

Ivanka is a feminist of the post-postmodern variety and her wearing of a white pant suit at her father’s inauguration symbolised to many the colours of suffrage mixed with the style of Hillary Clinton and seemed to suggest in Ivanka’s circumspect way that she was there for the women. And speaking of dresses, Melania’s powder-blue Ralph Lauren number smacked of ridiculous appropriateness. She was channelling Jackie Kennedy. She was claiming that first lady role through a dress. I hated the dress but I was shouted down by my male friends who said there was not a heterosexual man in America who didn’t lust for Melania in that dress.

Certainly, Melania raised her game, but the night-time ball belonged to Ivanka, who showed off her athletic figure in a long white gown. It embraced her feminism and her prowess.

Ivanka thinks she is very much a feminist, but she also thinks her father is a feminist, despite him liking to grab pussy and his easy ­objectifying of women, and all those women who marched wearing pink, with pink banners saying things like ‘Women are powerful and dangerous’ and ‘Our pussies are not for grabs’.

Joshua Kushner, Ivanka’s husband’s brother, marched with them. He is a Democrat and his supermodel girlfriend, Karlie Kloss, has posted a picture of herself with her ballot paper, telling her six million social media followers “I’m with her” (ie Hillary).

But in Ivanka’s mind Clinton is not necessarily synonymous with feminism. “I believe 100 per cent in gender equality so by definition that makes me a feminist, which I’m very proud of.”

And she really thinks Dad is a feminist? “I do, yes and it’s a big reason I am the woman I am today. He always told me and showed me that I could do anything I set my mind to if I married vision and passion with work ethic.

“He’s also surrounded me with strong female role models who have done just that since I was a little girl. People talk about gender equality. He has lived it. He has employed women at the highest levels of the Trump Organisation for decades, so I think it’s a great testament to how capable he thinks women are and has shown that his whole life.

“Both my parents really loved what they did professionally and they shared their passion with us so it’s no coincidence that my brothers (Donald Jr, 38; Eric, 32) and I like showing up for work. That’s what they modelled for us. The number one thing my father said to me is that you need to find out what you’re passionate about because life’s too short to do something you don’t love.”

She believes, and this I feel is integral to her thinking, that her attitude towards raising children, towards work, is very different from her mother’s generation. “There used to be a work life and a home life, now there’s just one life. No one I know has a work wardrobe any more or an area of their closet that’s designed just for work. We transition through roles more fluidly. Technology has been a huge enabler of that because it became normal to respond to work emails at 11 o’clock at night and therefore permissible to pick up the phone when your child was calling at the end of the school day.

“Deconstructing the boundaries of work and home life and it becoming one life is new to our generation and I think this has been facilitated by the smartphone. I don’t do it all myself. I’m very fortunate to have childcare to help me while I am at work, but yes, I reject the concept of having it all because that’s the wrong way to look at things. It implies there’s one definition for personal and another for professional success and I don’t believe that to be true. And I think people are trying to cast women as uniform and one-­dimensional.

“Success looks different for all of us. It was different for me six years ago, prior to having children, and I’m sure it will be different a decade from now. A better way to look at it is, you are the architect of your own life and you have to live in accordance with the things you prioritise.”

I feel that Ivanka is an architect of so much more. Just how she sees the roles of women as more fluid, I believe she sees the role of first daughter and first lady as more fluid. She wants to be in Washington supporting her father and the causes she believes in, yet she is a daughter. Not a child daughter because Trump is one of the oldest presidents on record. Ivanka loves to mix it up subtly. I see her as first l’aughter.

It’s a very specific package with her husband, the first son-in-law, being so very close to the President. He refers to him as “golden boy”. Kushner is a super Jew — full-on Orthodox. Ivanka converted to Judaism when they married in 2009. She reinvented herself from a canape-loving party animal to the woman who learned to cook and keep a kosher kitchen.

It is not a surprise that a lot of pro-Israel Jews voted Republican for the first time and that Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was swift to congratulate Trump and to announce that they would be allies.

Trump was swift to bring in tighter abortion laws, no doubt to keep his running mate, the religious anti-abortionist Mike Pence, in check.

The world has a different opinion of Trump’s feminism than his daughter but yet, from her perspective, he has trusted her to helm his company and I’m sure he’ll entrust her to helm much more. I’m not sure many women would be ready to jump to their ­father’s side and into the international glare just 10 days after giving birth. Was that not hard?

“I try to live my life in accordance with my priorities and my family is always my first priority.”

When we meet, she’s wearing a black fitted dress that flares out and has a coral, floral print. It’s very structured, feminine and in no way overt. She has impressive, toned arms and long, strong legs. Her skin is luminously moisturised, her hair silky, golden and long although less impressive in the world of hair styles than her ­father’s famous swoop-over and her mother Ivana’s beehive. She has a pretty, pouty smile. She sleeps “about 4½ hours a night” and never felt anything but lucky to have Trump as her surname.

Despite what she went through when her parents divorced in 1992 — she was hounded by paparazzi and learned all about her father’s sexual prowess from the actress Marla Maples, who became his second wife — the Trump name, she says, “is a tremendous blessing”.

A large desk sits between us. It’s filled with books, magazine covers and a card with what appears to be the Ivanka Trump manifesto. “We are Determined, Respectful, Engaged, Ambitious, Motivated, Dedicated, Optimistic.”

Of course, she’s all of those things and more. And incredibly capable. Theodore was sleeping through the night at three months, although she said it took Arabella, her eldest daughter, now a five-year-old, and Joseph, aged three, longer. With each child she has halved the time. By this equation the next one will take six weeks.

She says she is “incredibly in love” with her husband and she values their time together as a family as priority.

How is Donald as a grandfather? “Excellent. My kids love him and we spend a lot of time together. It’s very cute that my daughter has picked up little things from him.

“A couple of months ago we were walking down the street in New York City and she spotted a pothole. She pointed at me and looked at it and says, ‘Grandpa would not like that’.’’

That’s the sort of meticulousness that he has. Her eyes light up when she’s talking about her dad.

“My father has tremendous warmth and he’s a fiercely loyal person to his family and friends and he has a wicked sense of ­humour.” It’s this sense of humour, this potty mouth, that has entertained and offended in equal parts. And there was the time that Donald famously said, “Don’t you think my daughter’s hot?” Ivanka was 16 at the time.

Perhaps he shouldn’t joke so much as his jokes can so often be taken the wrong way. She says, “Potentially, but he’s also so authentic. A component of his success has been that people respect the fact that he’s incredibly honest with his opinions and in politics that’s remarkably rare, if not unheard of. So I think that’s a refreshing quality.

“Regardless of whether people agree or disagree with a certain political stance, I do think there’s an appreciation that he is not afraid to say where he stands on a given issue.”

What is so mesmerising about Ivanka is that you’re caught up in the light in which she sees her own father. She sees only the light and not the dark. She rationalises everything so eloquently. She worries I might think she’s too perfect.

“You know, I get very messy. I don’t want to project an image that everything is simple and easy because that’s not helpful to women, because raising children is really tiring and exhausting.

“I sleep very little and I don’t advocate that, but there are things that I want to accomplish so it’s 4½ hours because it’s really important to me to be at home, which means I will leave the office early to have dinner with my kids, put them to bed and get back to work till rather late.

“It’s a choice that I feel good about. I’m OK about losing a little bit of sleep to create a schedule that works for my life.”

Her website ivankatrump.com is full of things such as how to negotiate your severance pay. “I have a great editorial team and our goal is to inspire and empower women. And also to change the narrative of what it looks like to be a modern working woman.”

She feels for women, and despite her privilege she is also empathetic. There are contradictions. She is modern, yet old-fashioned. Girly but tough. She’s a little reserved but has a sparkling charisma that fills a room.

“I’m also of my generation, a millennial woman who is ambitious. I have a lot of things to accomplish professionally. And I swing for the fences.”

I look at her blankly. What does that mean? “It’s a baseball expression. It means I dream big.” And live big? “No, I don’t. I don’t live to excess.”

Indeed. Everything about her mindset and physical appearance is contained, balanced. The opposite to her father, yet at the same time she has his enormous drive.

Sure, she’ll let Melania win in the battle of the dresses, but she will create the millennial version of the first daughter.

This is a revised version of an article that appeared in The Sunday Times and The Australian Women’s Weekly last year.