Ivanka Trump Shares Rare Tearful Personal Message
In a podcast appearance, Ivanka Trump shared her first-ever insights into her father’s legal struggles and even shed a tear when discussing her “impossibly glamorous” late mother, Ivana.
In an in-studio conversation with Lex Fridman, the 42-year-old discussed her decision to withdraw from her father’s 2024 campaign and Donald Trump’s protracted legal troubles.
“On a human level, it’s my father and I love him very much, so it’s painful to experience, but ultimately, I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” Ivanka revealed.
In addition to accusations for improperly handling secret documents in Florida, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into election meddling and the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 is leading to charges against Donald Trump.
Furthermore, the 78-year-old Trump is accused of meddling in the Georgian election. On all counts, he has entered a not guilty plea.
Ivanka also became noticeably emotional later in the podcast when she was questioned about her mother, who passed away in July 2022 at the age of 73. Upon being asked if she missed her, Ivanka responded, “So much.” The disruption caused by the death of a parent is unfathomable.
Fighting back tears, she continued, “And I can ask her some of the questions that I would’ve... Sorry. I wanted to ask my own mom, but it’s hard.”
Olympic skier and beauty Ivana Trump wed Donald Trump in 1977 and the two stayed together until 1990. She was called “a remarkable, remarkable woman” by her daughter. As an athlete who grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, a fashion mogul, a real estate executive, and a builder, Ivanka remarked, “She was a trailblazer in so many different ways.”
“Just this all-around trailblazing businesswoman. I also learned from her, aside from that element, how to really enjoy life. I look back and some of my happiest memories of her are in the ocean, just lying on our back, looking up at the sun and just so in the moment or dancing.”
“She loved to dance, so she really taught me a lot about living life to its fullest. And she had so much courage, so much conviction, so much energy, and a complete comfort with who she was.”
“I have these vignettes in my mind, seeing her in action in different capacities, a lot of times in the context of things that I would later go on to do myself,” Ivanka added.
“So I would go almost every day after school, and I’d go to the Plaza Hotel and I’d follow her around as she’d walk the hallways and just observe her. And she was so impossibly glamorous. She was doing everything in four-and-a-half-inch heels, with this bouffant. It’s almost an inaccessible visual.”
From 2017 until 2021, Ivanka served as a senior counselor in Trump’s administration. However, she stated that she is stepping aside from politics and has not been actively involved in his reelection as president. She recently honored her father’s 78th birthday by posting several heartfelt messages on Instagram with her half-sister Tiffany.
When Donald Trump declared his third bid for the presidency in 2022, his eldest daughter publicly announced her decision to miss her father’s 2024 campaign for the first time.
At the time, she declared, “I love my father very much.” The former White House aide said, “This time, I’m choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I will always love and support my father, but I will do so outside of politics moving forward.”
Now that Donald has once again secured the Republican nomination and appears to be the front-runner in November, Fridman pressed Trump for more details about her remarks. “It was a decision rooted in me being a parent, really thinking about what they need from me now. Politics is a rough business and I think it’s one that you also can’t dabble in, I think you have to be either all in or all out.”
Ivanka referenced “the cost” her children would pay from her absence were she to go all in on the campaign trail, adding, “I’m not willing to make them bear that cost.”
“As their mom, I think it’s really important that I do what’s right for them. I think there are a lot of ways you can serve, the enormity, the scale of what can be accomplished in government service, but I think there’s something equally valuable in helping in your own community.”
It is the antithesis of “what feels good for me as a human being,” she added, noting that there is “a lot of darkness, a lot of negativity” in politics.
Fridman had questioned Trump earlier about her well-known father and how his campaign for politics had affected her personal life. “Nothing about our lives had been constructed with politics in mind,” she said of when Donald first told her he was running.
“It was an extraordinary experience, there was so much intensity and so much scrutiny and so much noise. That took, for sure, a moment to acclimate to. I’m not sure I ever fully acclimated to it.”
Ivanka cited “the process” of learning the day-to-day workings of the presidency while on the job as a senior advisor as “the most extraordinary” part of the Washington years.