Donald Trump has five children, but there's only one he calls
"Daddy's little girl." The president's bond with his oldest daughter, Ivanka,
has only strengthened as she's grown older. What's there to know about this dad-daughter
duo? Here's the truth about Ivanka Trump's relationship with her father.
A young Ivanka could always count on her father to answer her phone calls, no matter who he was
meeting with in his office at the time. During a 2016 interview with CNN, Ivanka recalled phoning
Donald up at 10 years old by "[calling] collect to the Trump Organization" from the janitor's closet
at school, and hearing him put her on speakerphone in front of his peers. Ivanka explained,
"It was colleagues, it was titans of industry, it was heads of countries. He'd always tell everyone
in the room how great a daughter I was and say cute things and ask me about a test I took."
Discussing Donald's parenting style in the early years of growing his business, she added,
"He always made us his top priority. [...] He
wasn't always physically present but he was always available."
Ivanka previously told a similar story to Harper's Bazaar, recalling how she'd
call Donald from boarding school and listen to her father describe her as
"the smartest [and] most beautiful" to his important guests. She said,
"There's no doubting my father values beauty. But in my formative years,
I never thought he valued it to the point that it should make me uncomfortable."
As Ivanka grew older and became a public figure associated with her father's empire,
Donald took more liberties in how he referred to his daughter in public,
often joking about her beauty and figure. In 2016, CNN unearthed several examples of Donald making
eyebrow-raising comments about Ivanka's appearance on Howard Stern's syndicated radio show. It began
in 2004, when Donald agreed with Stern about his daughter being, quote, "a piece of ass."
In a subsequent 2006 appearance on The Howard Stern Show, the host asked,
"Did your daughter get breast implants? [...] She looks more voluptuous than ever."
In response, Donald said,
"No, she didn't get them. [...] She's actually always been very voluptuous,
she's tall, she's almost six feet tall and [...] she's an amazing beauty."
Donald kept the praise coming in a joint appearance with Ivanka on The View that same year.
Commenting on the possibility of Ivanka posing for Playboy, he told the hosts,
"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…"
"stop it, oh it's so weird."
Donald echoed these claims nearly a decade later in a 2015
Rolling Stone interview, saying of Ivanka,
"Yeah, she's really something, and what a beauty, that one.
If I weren't happily married and, ya know, her father..."
Before attending business school, Ivanka had pursued a modeling career.
"I model because I love to model, and that's really all there is to it."
Donald welcomed his daughter into his business fold as a protege of sorts,
where she worked for a decade at his side at the Trump Organization.
She joined the Organization in 2005, joking to Harper's Bazaar two years
later that she and her father had been spending "way too much time together."
Working as a vice president of real estate development and acquisitions alongside her dad and
brothers, Ivanka also joined Donald on his reality competition show The Apprentice in 2006. As she
told GQ in 2007, she had "no interest in being a television star," but rather agreed to appear
on the show to, quote, "advance [her] ultimate goal of becoming a great developer." She added,
"I'm not a clone, and I'm not a minion. But I really believe I have this incredible
opportunity to take a brand that's so strong - and it's so strong because
of [my father] - and take it to the next level. That's why I did The Apprentice."
Ivanka remembered how Donald would test her to make sure she actually wanted to
follow in his footsteps, telling Harper's Bazaar,
"Even though he knew I always wanted to go into real estate, when I got an offer
to work at an incredible fashion magazine, he would be like, 'Oh, that's so cool. Are
you sure you don't want to go and do that?' For a while, I was getting a little discouraged!"
Beyond Ivanka's featured role on The Apprentice, Donald had plans to turn his daughter into a bona
fide TV star. In 2016, Jezebel uncovered details of a reality show called Trump Tower Girls,
which was greenlit in 2013 by E! and developed by Trump Productions.
The show would feature real estate brokers of Trump International Realty alongside beauty queens
who competed in Trump International's beauty pageants, with Ivanka at the show's center.
The series' aim was allegedly to give Ivanka her own reality TV vehicle,
just like her dad. With the prize being a job at Trump International,
promo materials reportedly claimed the women would do:
"Whatever it takes to win the week's payday. [...] Anything from a chartered plane to Monaco
to a seven figure commission."
The Ivanka-centered series never aired after the Trump family withdrew
their involvement with the project, with a source alleging to Jezebel,
"They felt like their team was too small and they didn't have enough
characters who were interesting enough to follow."
When Donald ran for president in 2016, Ivanka emerged as an important asset
to her father's campaign, with the reality star-turned-politician going on to win the race.
When he the met cries of sexism on the campaign trail,
Ivanka publicly touted her father as a feminist to The Sunday Times, claiming,
"People talk about gender equality. [...] He has lived it,
he has employed women at the highest levels of the Trump Organization for decades, so I think
it's a great testament to how capable he thinks women are and has shown that his whole life."
She also appeared in television ads selling her father to voting moms, saying,
"The most important job any woman can have is being a mother, and it shouldn't mean taking
a pay cut. [...] Donald understands the needs of a modern workforce."
"My father will change outdated labor laws so that they support women and American families."
Ivanka would go on to enthusiastically stump for her father at the Republican National Convention,
targeting female voters in her speech. She told the crowd,
"As president, my father will change the labor laws that were
put in place at a time when women were not a significant portion of the workforce.
And he will focus on making quality childcare affordable and accessible for all."
When Donald assumed the presidency, Ivanka joined her father's administration as an advisor.
Despite their status as one of the most powerful father-daughter duos in the world,
they still used pet names to refer to each other. On the 2016 campaign trail,
Donald told attendees at an Iowa rally about a child care plan Ivanka had been pushing. He said,
"She is the one who has been pushing for it so hard. [She said,] 'Daddy,
daddy we have to do this.' And it's true, she's very smart and she's right."
Footage later circulated of the president speaking in North Dakota in 2017,
where he again cited his adult daughter's "daddy" nickname.
"She's so good, she wanted to make the trip. She said, 'Dad,
can I go with you?' She said actually, 'Daddy, can I go with you?' I like that, right?"
Joking about the speech afterwards on The Late Show,
host Stephen Colbert cracked about that Donald's comments,
"Not weird at all. All of Trump's advisors call him 'daddy.'"
He namechecked the then-press secretary:
"Sean Spicer was actually the one who started it."
A 2019 profile of Ivanka in The Atlantic further shed light on the
affectionate terms Donald and his daughter shared,
noting that the president sometimes calls Ivanka "baby" in meetings they attend together.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ivanka's relationship with her stepmother, Melania Trump,
allegedly isn't perfect - and Mary Jordan's unauthorized biography, The Art of Her Deal:
The Untold Story of Melania Trump, detailed their sometimes-tense dealings in 2020.
According to the biography, Ivanka has allegedly referred to Melania
as "The Portrait" - a reported reference to how
she rarely spoke - while Melania supposedly shot back by calling Ivanka "The Princess."
Furthermore, when Melania initially stayed behind in New York City following Donald's election win
and move to Washington, Ivanka allegedly used the official First
Lady's Office - attempting to rename it the "First Family Office" - before
her stepmother arrived at the White House and took control. Jordan wrote,
"Some said she treated the private residence as if it were her own home. Melania did not like it.
When she and Barron finally moved in,
she put an end to the 'revolving door' by enforcing firm boundaries."
Another book about the first lady, Kate Bennett's Free, Melania: The Unauthorized Biography,
contained the claims that Melania thought Ivanka was "invading her turf."
Remember Melania's infamously controversial "I don't really care, do u?" jacket?
That was reportedly a subliminal message directed at Ivanka.
While serving as a valuable advisor and representative of President
Donald's administration, Ivanka has publicly advocated for his policies,
while occasionally standing up for him in interviews.
However, Donald's efforts to elevate his daughter into a world leader was met with ridicule in 2017,
when Ivanka sat in for him in a meeting at the G20 summit.
Among the critical voices was Democratic Representative Maxine Waters,
who slammed the administration's decision to send Ivanka as a replacement, telling MSNBC,
"Here you have the president of the United States at the G20 summit of
international leaders, representing us as the leader of the free world,
and so he's going to play politics and give his daughter a chance to have a place in the sun
and to be seen at a very important meeting that she knows nothing about."
Following the incident, Donald defended his daughter on Twitter, writing,
"When I left Conference Room for short meetings [...] I asked Ivanka to hold seat. Very standard."
Ivanka later experienced another icy welcome at the 2019 G20 summit,
when video emerged of the first daughter inserting herself into a circle of world leaders,
including the French President, the British Prime Minister,
the Canadian Prime Minister, and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
At the time, Ivanka's counterparts appeared to look uncomfortable with her presence.
Ivanka is rarely a voice of public dissent within her father's presidential administration,
but that doesn't mean she always agrees with Donald's policies. She told Axios that,
amidst her father's repeated attacks on America's free press, she did not view the media as the
"enemy of the people." Later, Donald responded to Ivanka's statements on Twitter, writing in part,
"She correctly said no. It is the FAKE NEWS, which is a large percentage of the media,
that is the enemy of the people!"
In another Axios interview, Ivanka was asked about the administration's
controversial policy of separating migrant families at the U.S./Mexico border,
calling it a "low point" in her White House tenure. She said,
"I feel very strongly about that. And I am very
vehemently against family separation and the separation of parents and children."
Amid criticism that she was complicit in her father's controversial policies,
Ivanka told CBS News,
"I would say not to conflate lack of public denouncement with silence. I
think there are multiple ways to have your voice heard.
So where I disagree with my father, he knows it, and I express myself with total candor."
President Donald is undoubtedly close with his oldest daughter, with experts breaking down
the many ways that Donald and Ivanka appear to communicate their trust and affection in public.
Speaking to Refinery29 in 2018, body language expert Patti Wood observed
that the first daughter frequently signals that she wants approval from her father, claiming,
"We see her desire to connect with him in many of the photos of them."
While Donald sometimes reportedly "[asserts] power over her,"
Wood claimed that Ivanka has often responded in ways that indicate,
quote, "she believes she has a certain power in the relationship."
According to body language expert Judi James,
Ivanka and Donald also appear to mimic each other's actions, saying,
"It's a dynastic look, with some frequent mirroring between them to suggest like-minded
thinking in professional scenarios and the respect looks as mutual as the affection."
James went on to say,
"There seems to be an emphatic sense of 'public' posing between Trump and Ivanka,
defining them as something of a 'power duo' and reflecting the important role
Ivanka holds in the president's White House team. [...] [This] seems to signal
this idea of him displaying a direct heir that he trusts, promotes and endorses."
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