Ivanka Trump spent her whole adult life working for her father.
When Donald Trump was a real estate magnate, she began planning his next hotel. She was in his televised boardroom while he was on a reality show.
She was on the campaign trail while he was running for office. During his presidency, she held an office in the West Wing.
However, in January 2021, for the first time since she was 23, she left Washington–and his employment.
Ivanka Trump has announced that she is leaving politics and will not return.
“I care deeply for my father. This time around, I’ve decided to prioritize my young children and the private life we’re building as a family.
“I do not intend to be involved in politics,” she stated in a 2022 social media post, following her father’s announcement of his third presidential run.
That assertion will hold true after Donald Trump’s 2024 triumph, according to sources close to Ivanka Trump, as she and her husband, Jared Kushner, seek a relatively private life in Miami, Florida, where they have spent the past four years mainly out of the public eye.
It’s a remarkable turnaround for one of the former and future president’s closest advisers, but it was planned after four tumultuous years in the White House.
Ivanka Trump was constantly scrutinized and criticized for her father’s policies, which she was unable to fully influence or moderate.
She was ostracized by certain liberal acquaintances in her New York social circle, and she closed down her relatively successful namesake clothing and accessory line due to ongoing ethical concerns.
Her exit from politics means that her father is no longer her employer, and she is carving a new route with a decidedly different lifestyle, made feasible by her family’s companies benefiting from proximity to the presidency and the resulting relationships.
“Politics is a really dismal realm. “There’s a lot of darkness, a lot of negativity, and it’s just really at odds with what feels good for me as a human being,” she said “The Lex Fridman Podcast” in a three-hour interview this July. “And you know, it’s a pretty tough business.
So, for me and my family, it feels appropriate not to engage,” she said in her most serious public reflection on her time in Washington and life afterward.
Still, a private life may be difficult as a high-profile member of America’s future first family, with a carefully managed personal brand and enormous influence, revered by many of the president-elect’s fans and despised by many of his adversaries.
According to a source close to Trump, she is still very close to her father, with whom she communicates on a regular basis. According to CNN, she will likely continue to advise him informally on a variety of matters behind the scenes.
“She’s still his daughter, and a trusted voice, so in that sense an informal adviser, as we all are with our family members,” said Maggie Cordish, a longtime friend who worked with Trump in the West Wing for a year on paid family leave issues.
During her stay in the White House, staff and advisers made an effort to showcase her accomplishments and guidance to the president.
Over the course of four years, there was a concerted public relations campaign to ensure she received credit for her achievements while also staying away from unpopular ideas.
She publicly maintained a well-tailored West Wing portfolio, shifting her focus to less divisive causes such as criminal justice reform, human trafficking prevention, and job development.
“Ivanka proudly spearheaded the White House’s efforts and promoted the administration’s success” on these programs, a Trump representative told CNN.
Her attempts to pass paid family leave legislation and provide a child tax credit for working families may have had the most impact on Republican politics.
“She brought up Republican issues. “They were not Republican issues,” stated a former coworker.
This time, according to reports, her suggestion to her father will likely go unnoticed.
According to a source familiar with her thinking, if Trump chooses to weigh in and exert influence during her father’s second term, “It’s never going to be something that people are going to see publicly.”
Kushner, for his part, is declining a formal post in the upcoming government, but is likely to play an important role as an outside adviser to Donald Trump’s Middle East endeavors, drawing on his intimate contacts with regional leaders. He also has a substantial financial stake in the region.
In addition, Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, has been appointed US ambassador to France, demonstrating the president-elect’s implicit trust in his family.
From ‘heir apparent’ to jiu-jitsu
Toward the end of Trump’s first term, Ivanka Trump had emerged as a more belligerent figure, adopting a posture similar to her father as she lambasted what she called “partisan investigations.
” She declared herself as “unapologetically” opposed to abortion rights, and others projected a future candidacy for political office, with one source who dealt with the Trump family stating that Donald Trump saw his daughter as the “heir apparent.”
However, the end of Trump’s first term signaled a necessary change for the family: Her father was largely exiled from Washington following January 6, 2021, and they departed the drama of the nation’s capital for sunnier skies and Florida’s more accepting political climate.
Her choice to leave politics may possibly have been influenced by increasingly difficult personal experiences during the last four years. Her loving mother, Ivana Trump, died unexpectedly at her New York City home in July 2022.
“Losing a parent is one of life’s most agonizing experiences, and no one is ever totally prepared. It strikes at the center of your existence. And it takes some time to recover from how it dislocates you,” she wrote in an Instagram post reminiscing on her first holiday season since her mother died.
She has also been caring for her maternal grandmother, known as “Babi,” who is 98 years old and resides with the family in Miami.
Her spouse has also dealt with health concerns, saying in his 2022 biography that he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2019 and underwent surgery to remove a tumor on his thyroid. Kushner underwent a second thyroid operation in August 2022, a source close to him told Reuters.
Friends describe Trump’s gradual transition from a more public-facing and aggressive posture to her current position, which began with the family’s January 2021 move to Miami, where they settled into an oceanfront condo in the Surfside area before later relocating to a mansion in the exclusive Indian Creek Island neighborhood.
Multiple acquaintances claim she is at content with her decision to leave politics, telling CNN that she is prioritizing her family, seeking quiet, and pursuing new interests.
“Her children are at a key age, tweens and teens, and it’s very brief. “She enjoys spending time with her children and has found a lot of peace and happiness in her personal life,” Cordish added.
Trump has taken up a variety of new pastimes. Her social media posts feature photos of her and her family farming, practicing jiu-jitsu at the Valente Brothers’ studio, learning to surf at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, playing polo on horseback, riding motocross bikes, and playing board games.
She told Fridman that her decision not to participate in politics “was rooted in my being a parent – really thinking about what they need from me now.”
“I know today the cost they would pay for me being all in, emotionally, in terms of my absence at such a formative point in their life, and I’m not willing to make them bear that cost,” she told me.
Family matters
Trump’s self-imposed exile from public life was briefly interrupted in 2023 when she was forced to testify in a New York civil fraud trial against her father and his company, detailing her role in negotiating loans for Donald Trump’s purchases of the Doral resort in Florida and the Old Post Office building in Washington, DC.
While he was on trial for hush money earlier this year, family members flocked to the courthouse to support him, but Ivanka Trump was noticeably absent.
She went to New York to support her father after his sentencing, but she hid at Trump Tower. He was found guilty on 34 counts of fabricating company records, a felony for which he has yet to be sentenced. Trump has pled not guilty and denied any misconduct in the allegations against him.
Meanwhile, her brothers, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, wholeheartedly embraced their father’s “Make America Great Again” movement, somewhat filling the void left by their sister’s absence from the campaign trail.
Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife, rose to prominence as a prominent spokeswoman and co-chair of the Republican National Committee during her father-in-law’s political comeback.
Since the election, she has stated that she will stand down from the RNC and has expressed an initial willingness to fill an expected Florida Senate seat opening, pending Sen. Marco Rubio’s confirmation as Secretary of State. She withdrew from consideration on Saturday.
The four-year forecast
With the door firmly closed on a return to political life for the time being, Ivanka Trump is expected to use her influence in new ways during her father’s second term, including in the nonprofit sector, with an emphasis on food hunger, farmer support, and disaster relief, according to a source close to her.
“She is choosing to use her influence now on a more personal level” so she can “positively impact her own community,” a source informed me. “Being able to have an impact in that way, while allowing her the time to be prioritizing her young children and their privacy, is where she wants to be.”
She has assisted victims of the Hawaii wildfires and North Carolina hurricanes, volunteered with Ukrainian immigrants in Poland, and filled food boxes for a local kosher food bank.
Dave Donaldson, the president of CityServe, a charity organization where she has helped, praised Ivanka Trump’s “compassion portfolio.”
“She will continue to work with us to assist victims of disasters and wars, but why does someone need to be in government to do so? “The reality is that the majority of compassion work done around the world occurs outside of government,” Donaldson told CNN.
She routinely publishes about her volunteer efforts on social media, presenting a new version of herself to her fans through glossy, polished photographs.
“She is very brand aware, very conscious of wanting to do something positive – and that’s not a bad thing – but has a little bit of reputational buildup to accomplish and reach that bigger goal,” said one crisis communications and reputational management expert.
“I don’t doubt the sincerity, but if I were advising her, I would just encourage her to take a little bit of the polish off.”
Trump and Kushner have also returned to the real estate market, proposing luxury projects such as a 1,400-acre Albanian island that has sparked criticism.
“It’s amazing to bring together all of this talent, and for me to be able to play around and flex the real estate muscles again and have some fun with it,” Trump responded to Fridman.
And she is doing some “quiet investing in certain areas of interest,” according to a source familiar with her thinking, who declined to share any additional information when asked.
