Ivanka Trump is no stranger to the limelight.
Though she started her career as a model, after her father became president,
her role in his administration thrust her into the international spotlight.
As she's not exactly a trained diplomat, sometimes it can lead to some seriously awkward situations.
Sometimes, when you're the daughter of the president and an unofficial foreign advisor,
it's hard to know exactly where you fall in the photo-op pecking order.
This was especially apparent at the 2019 G20 summit in Japan, when Ivanka Trump,
Donald Trump, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lined up for a photo with South Korean president
Moon Jae-in. As seen in this video from CNN, Ivanka opted to stand right next to Moon's wife,
which would presumably have been the place of the American first lady.
Since Melania Trump wasn't at the summit, Ivanka appeared to assume she should be
standing in the first lady's spot. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Pompeo was left awkwardly
shuffling behind the lineup, relegated to the second row while Ivanka took the limelight.
Eventually feeling Pompeo's nudge at her back, Ivanka realized she was in the wrong spot,
and she somewhat reluctantly moved aside so the secretary of state could take his rightful spot.
The rest of the photo-op went off smoothly, but it certainly served as a reminder that
Ivanka doesn't always remember where she falls in line, somewhat literally.
Have you ever been at a party talking with three or four of your best friends when some
person nobody invited stands around you desperately trying to butt in?
Yeah, now imagine your crew consists of the prime ministers of the UK and Canada,
the president of France, and the director of the International Monetary Fund, and that
party crasher is a fashion model-turned-unofficial diplomat. To say that collection of leaders looked
massively confused as to why Ivanka Trump was at the 2019 G20 summit would be an understatement.
It was so painful that the French presidential palace even released a video of it, presumably to
give the public a taste of the kind of awkwardness the assembled world leaders were dealing with.
Donald Trump's detractors didn't waste a minute pouncing on the incident either, with tweets like
one quipping that this was, quote "the very reason there's a table for adults and one for children."
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde's side-eye got plenty of online love as well.
It didn't take long for Ivanka Trump to realize interview questions in the political world hit
a little harder than they do when you're simply the daughter of a reality TV star. We can only
speculate that when Ivanka agreed to an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine in September 2016,
she wasn't exactly expecting Diane Sawyer. But Cosmo's Prachi Gupta brought the heat,
grilling the then-34-year-old on why Donald Trump's paid maternity leave
plan did not include help for male same-sex couples.
Gupta also asked about Donald's 2004 assertion that pregnancy is, quote,
"inconvenient" for a business.
"It's certainly an inconvenient thing for a business."
Ivanka responded,
"I think that you have a lot of negativity in these questions,
and I think my father has put forth a very comprehensive
and really revolutionary plan to deal with a lot of issues. So I don't know how useful
it is to spend too much time with you on this if you're going to make a comment like that."
Ivanka then cut the interview short after a series of flustered answers, saying,
"I'm going to jump off, I have to run. I apologize."
A couple days later, she tweeted,
"[Cosmopolitan], your readers do & should care about issues
impacting women & children. Keep the focus where it belongs — advocating change."
After years as a fashion model and arbiter of style, it only stands to reason that Ivanka
Trump's next move would be ... canned beans spokesperson? This would have seemed to be
the case in July 2020, when Ivanka tweeted out a picture of herself holding up a can of Goya black
beans with the caption, "If it's Goya, it has to be good." And though she did it to support
Goya in the wake of a political controversy related to Goya's CEO supporting her father,
she looked about as natural holding the can as an elephant holding a pastry brush.
Late-night talk show hosts piled on, naturally.
"I'm not sure if Ivanka's trying to promote Goya
or she's auditioning to be a model on The Price is Right."
Seth Meyers was slightly less diplomatic.
"Look at that. That's the closest she's ever gotten to working. You
just know she's sore today. 'Oh, my bicep!'"
The tense relationship between First Lady Melania Trump and her step-daughter Ivanka Trump is no
secret, but it came to a head just days before the 2020 Republican National Convention when
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady
hit the shelves. Wolkoff, who claims to have been close to the first lady, alleged that Melania had
actively tried to prevent Ivanka from appearing in pictures at the 2017 inauguration. Wolkoff wrote,
"Yes, Operation Block Ivanka was petty. But in our minds,
Ivanka shouldn't have made herself the center of attention in her father's inauguration."
In case there was any doubt, her disdain appeared readily apparent soon after at the RNC,
when the first lady appeared to roll her eyes after the president invited Ivanka up
onstage. Again, Twitter had a lot to say. One tweet read,
"Melania Trump gives Ivanka Trump that look that 'I like you only because I have to.'"
The hip-touch seen 'round the world still stands as one of the oddest greetings ever
seen at a political convention, when Donald Trump greeted his daughter Ivanka Trump after
she introduced him at the 2016 Republican National Convention by putting his hands,
well, where plenty of critics thought they did not belong.
Twitter reacted as you might expect. One tweet read,
"What is wrong with this man." Another asked, "Ok, so did anyone see Trump checking out Ivanka?"
Body language expert Patti Wood told Us Weekly,
"He patted her in a sexually dismissive way. [...] I want to be clear that is not even a
pat you would give to a child under the age of 5. You would pat them higher up on the back."
The oddly inappropriate train just kept on chugging along with Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump,
making a stop at a North Dakota rally where the president was giving a speech
on tax reform. Though he didn't delve into why exactly Ivanka needed to be present,
Donald did give the crowd a bit of clue.
"C'mon up, honey. She's so good. She wanted to make the trip. She said,
'Dad, can I go with you?' She actually said, 'Daddy, can I go with you?' I like that. Right?"
Ivanka was 35 at the time, we might add, and mostly ignored the comment. Instead,
she gave some brief comments to the energy workers assembled at the rally. Predictably,
Twitter had a lot to say about it, with one user tweeting,
"So the moral of the story is that [Ivanka] doesn't have anything to do
so she wants to ride on the big airplane with her daddy."
Ivanka Trump was interviewed by Fox News in February 2019 on her
thoughts regarding the Democrats' Green New Deal and what it means for Americans.
"I don't think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something."
The heiress to the Trump empire continued, without a hint of irony,
"People want to work for what they get. I think that this idea of a guaranteed
minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job.
They want the ability to live in a country where there's the potential for upward mobility."
Never one to let stunning irony go unnoticed,
Green New Deal co-author Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted,
"As a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life, instead of having to
learn about it 2nd-hand, I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to live."
Always one to have his daughter's back, Donald Trump told a gathering of American governors a few
days later that his daughter was responsible for the creation of "millions of jobs," as reported
by CBS News. He did not elaborate on what, exactly, those jobs were, or how she secured them.
There is nothing quite like the pain of posting a big,
gushing video about someone and getting... crickets. Just ask Ivanka Trump, who was
apparently very excited for her supermodel sister-in-law Karlie Kloss' debut as host of
Season 17 of Project Runway. The night of the premiere in 2019, Ivanka tweeted a giddy video:
"Gosh, Karlie, it's happening! Amazing!"
Kloss, however, left her hanging — no like, no mention.
It wasn't the first time Kloss had dissed the wife of husband Josh Kushner's brother.
When Kloss announced her engagement on Instagram, Ivanka commented,
saying she was looking forward to creating happy memories as a family.
But Kloss didn't respond, and the comment has since been deleted.
As of the making of this video, Kloss doesn't follow Ivanka on any platforms,
and she has diplomatically said in interviews she prefers to distance
herself from the first family. She told Vogue UK,
"It's been hard, but I choose to focus on the values that I share with my husband, and those
are the same liberal values that I was raised with and that have guided me throughout my life."
Though Ivanka Trump has proven herself to be an adept public speaker, she didn't exactly leave
'em in stitches at the 2019 Gridiron Club Dinner. For the unfamiliar, the dinner is basically a big
bi-partisan banquet with reporters and politicians taking lighthearted jabs at each other. Think
White House Correspondents Association dinner, but less biting, and without the TV coverage.
Presidents have attended all the way back to William McKinley, but in 2019, Donald Trump asked
daughter Ivanka to fill in for him. Ivanka opened her remarks by saying she'd just been asked to
speak that afternoon, in fact, so she didn't have much time to prepare. Ivanka reportedly quipped,
"I figured the funniest thing I could do was read excerpts from the Green New Deal."
Alluding to AOC's previous Twitter comments slamming her, she continued, saying,
"The press seems to think it's ironic that I, born of great privilege, think people want to work for
what they are given. As if being Donald Trump's daughter isn't the hardest job in the world."
Though we were not in attendance, we can imagine just a single laugh,
a cough, and clinking water glasses could be heard in the background.
We've all had that unfortunate moment when you think you've got your look absolutely nailed,
you walk outside, and a big gust of wind instantly undos an entire morning of styling.
But, hey, at least you weren't standing next to the vice president of Colombia in
front of hundreds of international photographers.
Such was the fate of Ivanka Trump when she set out on an official visit to Colombia
to promote the Trump administration's Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative.
While the trip was successful and Ivanka got to meet the group's first participants,
as noted by Newsweek, her work was collectively pushed to the back burner
when the military-green dress she wore got caught in a blast of wind during a photo-op.
The bell sleeves popped all the way back to her shoulders, prompting The Daily Beast's Molly
Jong-Fast to dub it on Twitter, "the dress that launched a thousand gardening jokes."
That was one of the nicer ones. Jong-Fast also joked that Ivanka was "reforesting the Amazon
one couture dress at a time." Writer Steve Silberman quipped,
"Ivanka Trump Snared by Venus Fly Trap in Unfortunate Botanical Incident."
Donald Trump's frequent comments about daughter Ivanka Trump's appearance have been
fodder for media commentary since long before he entered the political sphere. Way back in 2006,
Donald was on a different kind of campaign trail, hitting the talk show circuit to promote the
first season of The Apprentice. He and Ivanka appeared on The View and host Star Jones cut
right into the awkwardness by asking what Donald would do if Ivanka were asked to pose for Playboy.
"I don't think Ivanka would do that inside the magazine. Although she does have a very nice
figure. I've said that if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."
Ivanka flashed a nervous smile while the hosts and audience laughed. Host
Joy Behar compared Donald Trump to Woody Allen. Ivanka just kept on smiling.
Trump's PR team later issued a statement saying he was joking and simply making a
self-deprecating comment about his tendency to date younger women.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more List videos about your favorite celebs are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.