How do you solve a problem like Ivanka?

[heyjude]

Ivanka Trump Makes Donald Even Scarier

Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump
Donald Trump with Ivanka Trump in Scotland, July 30, 2015.
Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Ivanka Trump achieved her status as the best reality television character the genre has ever produced on her father’s NBC program Celebrity Apprentice. This was an arena in which the likes of Tom Green, Dennis Rodman, Andrew “Dice” Clay, and other reanimated wax figures from the Museum of Déjà Vu would vie to create a winning entry for the Schwan Food Company’s LiveSmart frozen food line or the catchiest jingle for Chicken of the Sea, and where Melissa Rivers might be spotted screaming “Whore pit vipers!” at her fellow female contestants. And there would be Ivanka, as grave, groomed, and expertly briefed as a dignitary at a disaster site, checking in on how a team’s dog food commercial was coming along or gently arbitrating a screaming match between Lisa Lampanelli and Lou Ferrigno or smiling gamely as a shirtsleeved Piers Morgan tried to flirt with her. No matter how grisly the post-celebrity carnage at her feet, Ivanka radiated warmth and star wattage—but her charisma was a protective force field, not a beckoning flame. She evinced a holographic ability to be in her surroundings but not of them, fully possessed of her poise and glamour even when forced to dress down Gene Simmons, her throaty boarding-school voice and diction in service of a gleaming mental apparatus that never misfired. Imagine watching old WrestleMania footage and suddenly realizing that “Rowdy” Roddy Piper’s corner man was Jacqueline Kennedy. That’s kind of what it was like to watch Ivanka on Celebrity Apprentice.

And it’s kind of what it’s like to rewatch her introductory speech from when her father formally announced his presidential candidacy at Trump Tower in New York City on June 16, 2015. “My father is the opposite of politically correct,” declares the Wharton graduate, executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization, and head of the Ivanka Trump lifestyle brand. “He says what he means, and he means what he says.” A practiced giggle laps at her delivery; in the upper balcony, a rabid fan lets rip a “YEEAAAHH!” Ivanka gazes up placidly and drops a barely murmured “Thank you,” much as she would drop a linen towel into a washroom attendant’s basket. That “Thank you” is amazing. It is the verbal equivalent of the hologram starting to flicker and fade out.

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However much her father’s campaign might frighten you—for the blunt-force racism and nativism of his electoral appeals, for his ghastly misogyny, for the escalating violence he has encouraged at his rallies, and for the terrifying strain of white-supremacist resentment he has activated in his constituents—the fact that Ivanka is beside him through it all makes it one degree more frightening. Against every prevailing trend among the adult children of obscenely rich narcissists, Ivanka and her brothers Don and Eric seem to have emerged from the Trump family’s gold-plated crucible—and from their parents’ spectacular 1990 divorce—as decent, thoughtful, level-headed, and hard-working people. In Born Rich, Jamie Johnson’s grim documentary about variously sad and gross scions of bazillionaire families, wry and merry Ivanka is cast as the Normal. Jonathan Van Meter, author of a scathing 1989 Spy takedown of her mother, Ivana Trump, referred to Ivanka and her brothers in a 2004 New York family profile as the “Trump parenting miracle.” But there is one piece of evidence that casts this miracle into doubt: the affection and loyalty that all three children demonstrate toward their horrific father. Far into her last trimester of pregnancy (she is married to fellow real estate scion Jared Kushner; their third child is due any day), Ivanka stumped for her father everywhere from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina. At the Republican debates, she is often the person he huddles with. He is her “great mentor,” Ivanka says, and she is his “character witness,” as Cosmopolitan put it, invoking her top-tier position in the Trump Organization as proof of her father’s commitment to gender equity. She is “his unofficial campaign spouse,” per the New York Times.

Ivanka and Donald Trump
Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump during a 1991 event at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
Ron Galella/WireImage

The Times’ formulation is as apt as it is uncomfortable. Ivanka was seated beside her father in 2006 when he told The View, “She has a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” (He liked this quip so much that he effectively repeated it to Rolling Stone last year.) Of course, Ivanka, then 24, laughed it off on The View, making sly eye contact with her hosts as if to say, Would ya get a load of this old lunk? As it turns out, this exchange foreshadowed a key dynamic of the 2016 election season. Because the Trump campaign derives so much of its energy from schoolyard taunts—about Carly Fiorina’s face, Marco Rubio’s height, Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle—the most important quality in Trump World is to be in on the joke, no matter how grotesque and insulting the joke might be. An entire decade ago, Ivanka was showing us how.

It may be simple filial piety that demands Ivanka’s efforts on behalf of her father’s campaign. Still, it’s notable that she has stuck by his side for most of her adult life, even though it was clear from her teens onward that she had other options. While still a student at Choate, she launched a much-derided modeling career, appearing on runways for Thierry Mugler and Marc Jacobs; at one point, she turned down an out-of-the-blue job offer from Anna Wintour at Vogue. Back then, Ivanka left her surname off her business cards because, she told the Mail on Sunday in 2000, “I want people to choose me for me.” In the years since, she has disavowed that sweetly adolescent sentiment. Choosing Ivanka, she has decided, means choosing Trump. “I made a specific choice not to call my collection Ivanka,” she told the New York Times in 2013 of her affordable, office-friendly line of clothing, shoes, and handbags. “There’s so much value in the Trump name. And there’s such a deep connection to luxury and success.” One of the prouder moments recounted in her 2010 memoir–cum–business-advice book The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life, she writes, was “during the 2009 season of Celebrity Apprentice, [when] I managed to integrate my role at the Trump Organization with my television persona in such a way that it reinforced my jewelry brand.” What do you call this particular trump card? “Call it what you will—but I call it synergy.”

You might have called it synergy last fall when, as her father’s candidacy barreled toward a psychotic legitimacy, Ivanka launched the #WomenWhoWork campaign in support of her apparel and accessories brand. When CNN’s Poppy Harlow, in primary-season mode, asked Ivanka about Pew research that shows rising numbers of mothers leaving the workforce due to child care costs, Ivanka performed the following pirouette:

We’re all working really hard at architecting the lives that we want to live and lives that are consistent with our personal priorities. And I do think there is this unfortunate prevailing depiction of the working woman as wearing a black pantsuit and being solely focused on her professional role and that’s just not true and hopefully I can be a small part of changing the narrative around what it looks like to be a woman who works.
Ivanka Trump, unofficial campaign spouse, is not interested in discussing proposals for child care tax credits. Ivanka Trump just wants to sell you some shoes. And she understands how the gravitational pull of her father’s public profile can both help and harm her in that endeavor. As New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported in August,

Ivanka Trump Pregnant
Donald Trump pats his expecting daughter Ivanka Trump while celebrating victory in the South Carolina primary in Spartanburg, Feb. 20, 2016.
Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

According to three sources close to the campaign, Ivanka was troubled by her father’s comments that Mexican immigrants were rapists. “She’s close to her father and is sensible enough to know a problematic situation,” a friend of Ivanka’s told me. … At one point, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter, Ivanka submitted several drafts of a statement … to walk back the quotes, but he refused to have them published.
It’s not impossible that Ivanka will continue to embrace her family’s name and capitalize on its resources while somehow maintaining a firewall of genteel graciousness between her own brand of Trump style and her father’s coerced-wet-T-shirt-contest-at-the-neo-Nazi-roadhouse brand of Trump style. But her complicity in her father’s crusade, like so much else about the Trump campaign, has gone from merely embarrassing to outright alarming—not least because nobody understands better than Ivanka Trump how well her father bears up amid bloodthirsty mayhem. In Playing the Trump Card, she recalls the ill-fated 1988 heavyweight boxing championship in Atlantic City, where 6-year-old Ivanka and her family had ringside seats to watch Mike Tyson knock out Michael Spinks in just 91 seconds. “The place went crazy. Not in a good way,” she writes. “It felt for a few tense moments as if a riot were about to break out. … People started yelling that the fight was fixed and demanding their money back.” Amid this bedlam, she recalls, her father had the presence of mind to enter the ring and speak calming words to the crowd.

“I remember thinking he was so brave, so confident, so charismatic, trying to take control like that,” Ivanka writes. “I imagine it was a scary scene, but it never occurred to me to feel afraid because my father was there, taking charge and doing his best to give the audience what they wanted.” Now, nearly 30 years later, her father is still there, giving the audience what they want, and one wonders if it ever occurs to her to feel afraid.

[claudiajean]

I don't see how she legitimizes him in anyway. She's on his payroll - she was competent in Celebrity Apprentice, but I think calling her the best part of the show is overkill and is only to make a point in this article.

[derp]

Do I have to give up her shoes? Pleeeeeeease say it isn't so.

[Deleted]

Mar 14, 2016 14:57:06 GMT -5 derp said:

Do I have to give up her shoes? Pleeeeeeease say it isn't so.

LOL. My friend just told me today she saw a cute Ivanka Trump dress as TJ Maxx this weekend but couldn't bring herself to buy it.

[debatethis]

Mar 14, 2016 14:57:06 GMT -5 derp said:

Do I have to give up her shoes? Pleeeeeeease say it isn't so.

CEP really does ruin everything.

[elleblue]

Personally I'm thrilled I've never bought any of her clothes or shoes. And now I absolutely never will.

[CheeringCharm]

"It’s not impossible that Ivanka will continue to embrace her family’s name and capitalize on its resources while somehow maintaining a firewall of genteel graciousness between her own brand of Trump style and her father’s coerced-wet-T-shirt-contest-at-the-neo-Nazi-roadhouse brand of Trump style."


I think it is. The worse he gets, the worse she looks because she stands by all of it. No one is asking her to publicly disavow him but it's natural for people to raise an eyebrow at what she is doing in his campaign. I'm not going to pretend to know the dynamics of their personal relationship. If they are close I'm sure it would be a hard decision but for the sake of her business and her brand, you'd think she'd want to distance herself form his political career. Other adult children of celebrities do it for various reasons. People would understand.

[sfy]

Mar 14, 2016 15:14:11 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Personally I'm thrilled I've never bought any of her clothes or shoes. And now I absolutely never will.

Ditto this.

[heyjude]

Who wouldn't want to wear shoes designed by Eva Braun?

[Velar Fricative]

Honestly, I can't criticize her for not disowning her father for his comments. Parent-child relationships are complicated. That's her father and apparently they have a good relationship so she's going to publicly support him. It is what it is.

However, depending on how much worse his campaign gets, she may start distancing herself but not necessarily disavowing her father. Having a baby any day now helps build an excuse for her to not have to go out and campaign for him if she decides she wants to distance herself for other reasons.

[derp]

</3

[elleblue]

Mar 14, 2016 15:25:10 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Honestly, I can't criticize her for not disowning her father for his comments. Parent-child relationships are complicated. That's her father and apparently they have a good relationship so she's going to publicly support him. It is what it is.

However, depending on how much worse his campaign gets, she may start distancing herself but not necessarily disavowing her father. Having a baby any day now helps build an excuse for her to not have to go out and campaign for him if she decides she wants to distance herself for other reasons.

Publicly supporting him, like responding in the affirmative when asked if she will be voting for him is one thing. She's actively assisting in his campaign and introducing him before his speeches, etc. I definitely judge her for that and I judge her twice as much if she's doing this while privately disagreeing with his hate speech. 

[sparrowsong]

You remember that feeling when you were 15 yrs old and eating at a restaurant with your parents and your dad is wearing socks with his sandals and shouting at the waitress because she speaks with an accent so apparently she must be deaf too and you're more embarrassed then you've ever been before and people are looking at you and you just want to crawl under the table and die?

That's how I imagine it feels to have your dad be Donald Trump running for president. Only x1000.

[Velar Fricative]

Mar 14, 2016 15:28:22 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Mar 14, 2016 15:25:10 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Honestly, I can't criticize her for not disowning her father for his comments. Parent-child relationships are complicated. That's her father and apparently they have a good relationship so she's going to publicly support him. It is what it is.

However, depending on how much worse his campaign gets, she may start distancing herself but not necessarily disavowing her father. Having a baby any day now helps build an excuse for her to not have to go out and campaign for him if she decides she wants to distance herself for other reasons.

Publicly supporting him, like responding in the affirmative when asked if she will be voting for him is one thing. She's actively assisting in his campaign and introducing him before his speeches, etc. I definitely judge her for that and I judge her twice as much if she's doing this while privately disagreeing with his hate speech. 

I get it. I don't judge anyone for disliking her for her actions. I just have a hard time ignoring the whole "well, they're family" thing.

[underwaterrhymes]

I think she has tremendous poise and fucking amazing skin, but that's about it.

She's as dull as a slice of Wonder bread and now I think, just like her father, she probably wants the US to be as white as one, too.

[summer]

I never liked him. I never liked her. I've never bought anything with their names on it because I don't like them. 

None of this is surprising. I would never assume that she would have a different thought process from him just because she is quieter and more demure. I'm sure many a slave and servant would tell you the "demure" missus of the plantation household and the "demure" debutante daughters are the ones you stay furthest away from. 

[ringstrue]

I don't think Ivanka WANTS to leave Donald's side, but even if she did I can't imagine it'd be easy. Look at how he treats the other candidates! In public! Can you imagine what happens in private during a family feud?

[cookiemdough]

Does she have her own money? Cause if the answer is no, then I am not surprised that she is not walking away. She clearly has built her success off of opportunities through her father. He hardly seems like the reasonable type of person who is like, "it is fine dear if you disagree with me and can't bring yourself to campaign with me."

[bronxgirl]

Mar 15, 2016 5:45:10 GMT -5 @choco said:

I haven't liked her since high school based on the stories my friends shared from Choate.

I want to hear more about this.

[starlily]

Mar 14, 2016 15:05:35 GMT -5 @bugginnine said:

Mar 14, 2016 14:57:06 GMT -5 derp said:

Do I have to give up her shoes? Pleeeeeeease say it isn't so.

LOL. My friend just told me today she saw a cute Ivanka Trump dress as TJ Maxx this weekend but couldn't bring herself to buy it.

I have one pair of her shoes. I haven't been able to wear them since Trump started his candidacy.

[gpw]

.....and now the song is in my head. Thanks, guys!

[heyjude]

Mar 15, 2016 14:14:34 GMT -5 gpw said:

.....and now the song is in my head. Thanks, guys!

Someone gets me!!

[saz]

Mar 15, 2016 14:14:34 GMT -5 gpw said:

.....and now the song is in my head. Thanks, guys!

hahaha every time I scroll past this thread it happens!

[sfy]

Mar 14, 2016 15:14:11 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Personally I'm thrilled I've never bought any of her clothes or shoes. And now I absolutely never will.

Still will never buy, but damn it if I didn't just accidentally click on the most gorgeous pair of Ivanka sandals.



I would have bought these in a millisecond if they were from anyone else.  Oh, and they're made in China, obviously. 

[elleblue]

Mar 28, 2016 10:26:38 GMT -5 sfy said:

Mar 14, 2016 15:14:11 GMT -5 elleblue said:

Personally I'm thrilled I've never bought any of her clothes or shoes. And now I absolutely never will.

Still will never buy, but damn it if I didn't just accidentally click on the most gorgeous pair of Ivanka sandals.



I would have bought these in a millisecond if they were from anyone else.  Oh, and they're made in China, obviously. 

No surprise there. And those are some sexy shoes.