A new report offers the not-very-surprising news that Ivanka Trump is “warming” to the idea of helping her criminally-charged father campaign for president in the coming months, and she may even consider accepting another job in his administration if he beats Joe Biden in November and returns to the White House.
Ivanka Trump, who served as Donald Trump’s senior adviser during his polarizing presidency, is “privately not ruling out having some sort of role” in his 2024 campaign, a source has told Puck political writer Tara Palmeri.
While it’s not clear what role that could be, the former first daughter is said to be “quietly surveying members of her inner circle about when it might make sense to re-engage with the campaign—and even whether to take a job in the administration if Trump wins,” Palmeri said. This person familiar with Ivanka’s thinking also said: “After a long-standing position of ruling it out, she’s more open to it. It’s getting more real, it’s revving up.”
Former US President Donald Trump (L), his daughter Ivanka Trump (C) and her husband Jared Kushner attend the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) 299 mixed martial arts event at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida on March 9, 2024. (Photo by GIORGIO VIERA / AFP) (Photo by GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty Images)
But if Ivanka Trump re-immerses herself in her father’s MAGA political orbit, what does that mean for her social life?
Does it mean that A-list celebrities won’t want to be seen with her anymore? Will Kim Kardashian still invite her to her star-studded birthday party? Perhaps more telling, will Lauren Sanchez, the fiancée of Jeff Bezos, stop sharing photos of herself with Ivanka at parties? Will Sanchez also refrain from posting public compliments to Trump’s oldest daughter, as she did in December, where her “gorgeous” comment could be seen in the company of “Trump 2024” messages? This question could be especially fraught for Sanchez, after Joe and Jill Biden invited her and Bezos to last month’s state dinner in honor of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Executive chairman of Amazon Jeff Bezos and actress Lauren Sanchez arrive for a State Dinner in honor of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at the Booksellers Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 10, 2024. (Photo by Drew Angerer / AFP) (Photo by DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images)
As is well known, Ivanka Trump lost her A-list celebrity status when she helped her father win the presidency in 2016 and accepted a job in his administration, always trying to be seen as a moderating counterpoint to his controversial rhetoric and policies, which many considered misogynistic, racist and anti-democratic.
Ivanka Trump wasn’t known to be very successful in this regard, though Palmeri pointed out that she and her husband, Jared Kushner, were pretty successful at strategically distancing themselves from her father during some of his presidency’s most controversial moments.
The couple also tried to publicly distance themselves from Trump’s false claims of election fraud after he lost the 2020 election and from allegations that he stoked the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — even after Ivanka joined her father backstage at the 2021 rally that preceded the deadly riot.
As Trump’s loyal daughter, Ivanka Trump suffered a stunning fall from grace after her father was elected. Celebrities ridiculed her as “complicit,” and longtime friends shunned her. By November 2020, a former friend of Ivanka and Jared told Vanity Fair they likely wouldn’t be accepted back into some of the exclusive New York City social circles they once navigated.
Nearly two years later, in November 2022, Ivanka Trump insisted that she was done with politics when her father announced that he wanted to run again for president. She stayed away from his big announcement at Mar-a-Lago, but she issued a “characteristically polished statement,” Palmeri said. Ivanka Trump wrote, “I love my father very much,” but she said that she and Jared wanted prioritize their “young children and the private life we are creating as a family,”
For Ivanka Trump, it wouldn’t have been that hard to say no to a role in his campaign at that time, Palmeri suggested. “Ever conscious of her personal brand,” as Palmeri wrote, Ivanka knew that her father was at a low point politically. He was being roundly blamed for the midterm losses by a Republican Party that seemed eager to move on and pin its hopes on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Palmeri said.
Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump tried to rehabilitate her public image by returning to her socialite roots, as the New York Times reported. Now living in Miami, she attended art openings, hosted the occasional charity event, posted photos of her fabulous vacations and chatted with Prince William at the wedding of Jordan’s Crown Prince Hussein last year.
Still, Ivanka Trump had yet to be invited back to the kind of A-list events at which she used to be a staple, including the Met Gala, the Vanity Fair Oscar party or the front rows at New York Fashion Week, the New York Times said. But she seemed to be on her way to climbing back up the social ladder in October, when Kardashian invited her to her to her 43rd birthday party in Beverly Hills. At the party, Ivanka was photographed posing with both Kardashian and with fellow guest Sanchez. Kardashian and Trump both shared that photo on social media.
It remains to be seen if Ivanka Trump will have to give up that social momentum if she returns to her father’s political sphere. With six months to go before the election, Trump has reclaimed the support of the Republican Party and is running ahead of Joe Biden in national polls. That means he has a shot of returning to the White House — a prospect that Ivanka Trump may find hard to resist, according to Palmeri.
It doesn’t seem to matter to her or to Trump’s supporters that he is on trial New York and faces dozens of criminal charges in three other districts, any one of which could put him behind bars for years, Palmeri said. Trump also has boasted of plans to be a “dictator” if he gets back into office, “outlining his intention to override congressional spending authority, mobilize the military to round up illegal immigrants, deploy the national guard in ‘Democrat-run cities,’ and task the Justice Department with prosecuting his enemies,” Palmeri said.
Those issues may not matter to Ivanka Trump — if it means she can return to the proximity of power. Perhaps a return to her father’s campaign could revive her reported interest in one day seeking political office herself.
For the time being, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are sticking to the official line that they are staying out of her father’s campaign, Palmeri reported. A spokesperson for the couple told Puck: “As they’ve both repeatedly stated, Ivanka and Jared continue to focus on their family and lives in the private sector and do not intend to go back to politics.”
But Palmeri wrote that intentions can change. Ivanka also has been advised to wait until the Republican convention in mid-July to rejoin the campaign, “so as to avoid the news cycle” surrounding her father’s hush-money trial in Manhattan. If nothing else, reports about her interest in rejoining the campaign could be “a trial balloon, of sorts,” Palmeri wrote, a sign of her “gradual re-entry into Trump’s political orbit.” As the source told Palmeri, “She’s not like ‘Hell no’ anymore.”
