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Ivanka and Jared 3: Treason Barbie and Ken


GreyhoundFan

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  • 2 weeks later...
43 minutes ago, SPHASH said:

They deserve to be ostracized for their complicity in the disastrous Trump presidency, but I fear their children will also be affected, and the kids have had no say in any of this.  If anything, those children need decent role models.

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Aww, I'm so sad for them.  Maybe some of daddy's followers will invite them hunting to NASCAR.  I really would like to see it happen.  Hint, hint, Donny could be a great reality show for your new network.

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I have absolutely no sympathy for them: "Jared and Ivanka are poised to return to a Manhattan social scene that no longer welcomes them"

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New York (CNN)If the celebrations that spilled into the streets of New York City in the wake of Joe Biden's victory made one thing clear, it's that the Trumps aren't welcome here.

For the President, who changed his primary residency last year to Florida, that's perhaps no major loss, but for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the block parties celebrating the demise of the Trump administration may provide a glimpse of what awaits them once they exit the White House.

Now that their political lives in Washington are over -- the question for this once-golden power couple is what their time in the political spotlight has meant for their brand, particularly in their old Manhattan stomping grounds.

"[The President] was so awful and divisive about New York, saying it's a nightmare or that it's empty, or a has-been," said Jill Kargman, a writer, Upper East Side resident and daughter of the former chairman of Chanel who has socialized at events with the couple in the past. "No one here is going to forget that. To even come back here after everything he's said, it's not going to work."

In the days before they were denizens of the White House, Kushner and Trump inhabited a rarified slice of New York society.

They frequented the Met Gala, she in a strapless royal blue gown one year and a backless scarlet jumpsuit the next, and the Vanity Fair party for the Tribeca Film Festival. She made the rounds at fashion events, attending Carolina Herrera runway shows, a Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts celebration for Italian designer Valentino and the Glamour Women of the Year Awards.

Now, though, they may not like what they find if they return.

A glimpse of what likely awaits them was on display in Times Square last month where the anti-Trump Lincoln Project took out ad space on a pair of Times Square billboards showing their smiling faces alongside coronavirus death statistics and an illustration of body bags. When the couple threatened to file a lawsuit, the group also placed the image on a barge to circle Mar-a-Lago and on trucks that circled Trump Tower, according to tweets from the project co-founder.

New York isn't the only place to call home, of course. While the couple has been tight-lipped about where they intend to reside post-White House, they have kept their sprawling Upper East Side apartment, an East Wing official said, and they are eyeing the possibility of spending more time in New Jersey, according to a source familiar with the couple's thinking.

Two sources who have worked with the couple believe they may end up in Florida, specifically the Palm Beach area. Trump has accumulated a number of acquaintances in the state, both socially and politically, and in recent months she visited Florida at least five times, hosting campaign events in Republican areas such as Sarasota, but also making appearances in Miami. A Florida home-base would not only provide Trump a platform should she eye a future political career there, and it would also keep the couple clear of facing New York.

Mar-a-Lago is not an option for their permanent residence, however, according to a source with knowledge of the family dynamics. Though Ivanka Trump has a private guest house there, Mar-a-Lago is the preferred home of the first lady and she and the President's daughter have a frosty relationship.

Washington, meanwhile, may no longer hold much appeal. "They only know the DC of being in power," said one senior Republican. "Wait until they realize no one is taking their calls."

Indeed, inside the White House, according to sources, the expectation is high for them to return to Manhattan -- even if it means an inhospitable homecoming for the pair.

For one thing, either may decide to return to their respective family businesses, where they each worked before the White House. Representatives for Ivanka Trump and Kushner Companies did not respond to requests for comment on this story. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization referred calls to the White House.

A White House official said of Kushner that "there are a wealth of opportunities for him to explore," pointing to his involvement in criminal justice reform and the Olympics, among other matters. The official added, "There will be plenty of available opportunities, and right now it's premature to speculate."

Financial obligations could be a factor

Kushner was previously CEO of Kushner Companies, the real-estate firm founded by his father, Charles Kushner. The company is largely family-run, in part because the Kushners prefer it that way, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

Charles Kushner is likely to expect his son to return to the business, this person said, and with the relationships Jared Kushner has established in recent years with leaders of deep-pocketed Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, he could potentially leverage those connections going forward in the family business or other business ventures.

Trump, too, left her position at the Trump Organization upon moving to Washington, but she retained passive stakes in the business. She receives fixed guaranteed payments for some of her assets as well as a financial interest in the Trump International Hotel Washington, DC, for which she played a key role in closing the deal, and which is home to the first "Spa by Ivanka Trump." She reported $3.9 million in income from the hotel in 2019.

And though she has sought to position herself as a sunny, polished figure who is distinct from her father's brash ways, she is valued at the company for her ability to channel his whims and preferences.

Several months before the 2016 opening of the DC hotel, she made an impression with staff by comparing three identical-looking shades of gold painted on the ornate filigree atop one of the arched doorways in the hotel's ballroom and declaring one the obvious choice for a Trump property.

While the couple remains wealthy, their financial obligations could factor into their post-White House decision making.

While working at the White House, Kushner has taken out two loans from Bank of America, one in 2017 and one in 2019, each ranging between $5 million and $25 million, according to his financial disclosure form. Both loans, which were taken out jointly with limited liability companies, are due in 2022.

The family business, which owns residential properties with hundreds of tenants, will also likely face challenges from the pending housing crisis. One $285 million loan, taken out in 2016 for a Times Square retail complex, is underwater after one tenant filed for bankruptcy, according to TreppWire, a real estate data analytics firm.

For her part, Trump shut down her namesake fashion brand in 2018, and while the apparel line had performed well the year of the election, it suffered in the aftermath as anti-Trump boycotts of her line took hold.

And they face legal headaches back in New York, where Trump is being sued in federal court, along with her father and two eldest brothers, for allegedly collaborating with a fraudulent marketing scheme to prey on vulnerable and financially struggling investors, claims they have denied.

Kushner, too, has faced his share of legal concerns back home, where Brooklyn federal prosecutors were examining his family company's use of an investment-for-immigration program, although that probe doesn't appear to have been active in about two years.

Political ambitions

One wild card is whether Trump's taste for politics will stick as she has gotten a sense of her power to generate big political dollars. Since August, she headlined 38 events in multiple states and hosted nine fundraisers, garnering more than $35 million for her father's campaign.

She has offered an alternative to the massive crowds, chants of "lock her up" and throngs disco-dancing to "YMCA" at her father's rallies. At political events, she often sticks to speaking about matters she feels her father has succeeded in advancing, including job growth, economic stability, family tax credit and entrepreneurship.

Trump, however, recognizes that her future -- now more than ever -- is tied to her father, said a person familiar with the matter, adding that she came into the White House as Kushner, but now she has gone "Full MAGA."

Several people told CNN in recent months that Trump is considering her own potential political future, which may be driving the more nuanced positions she has taken in contrast to with her brothers' strident remarks on matters like immigration and, more recently, alleged voter fraud.

Since Election Day, the couple has kept a low profile, although a White House official tells CNN that both Trump and Kushner have been working at the White House.

Kushner, CNN has reported, has been part of the team tasked with fomenting a legal path forward for Trump's baseless fight against the outcome of the election, while privately attempting to cajole the President into accepting his inevitable loss.

While ballots were still being tabulated in battleground states, three days after Election Day, Trump tweeted that legal votes should be counted, but "every illegally cast vote should not."

But she added, "This is not a partisan statement," noting, "free and fair elections are the foundation of our democracy."

Earlier this week, she appeared to validate the vote counting that has continued well past Election Day by celebrating media organizations declaring that the President won in Alaska after a flurry of outstanding ballots were counted.

It struck a softer tone than her father's nonstop baseless railing against what he has called a "fraud" and "hoax" voting process.

Returning to a changed social circuit

Despite their presence at Manhattan society events pre-White House, including parties thrown by the Kushner family-owned New York Observer newspaper, which drew the likes of Rupert Murdoch, Padma Lakshmi, Chuck Close, Katie Couric and Michael Bloomberg, the two have never been known to maintain an extensive circle of friends in New York, people familiar with the matter said, instead spending much of their free time with family and acquaintances from their Orthodox Jewish community.

And while Kushner is close with his brother, Joshua Kushner, as well as a friend from Harvard, financier Nitin Saigal, and Trump remains friendly with Murdoch's ex-wife Wendi Deng, according to people familiar with the matter, some of their other New York pals have hit hurdles in recent years.

Kushner's friend Adam Neumann resigned as CEO amid disarray at the company he founded, WeWork. And Ken Kurson, a close friend of the couple, was arrested on federal cyberstalking charges in late October.

Outside of their immediate social circle, they are unlikely to receive the types of invitations they scored pre-White House. Vogue Editor-in-Chief and Condé Nast Artistic Director Anna Wintour has made no secret of her distaste for the President and his politics, and Wintour's preferences determine invitations to the Met Gala.

Trump's currency as a glossy fashion magazine feature star -- which she last flaunted in Harper's Bazaar in September 2016, during the thick of the campaign, wearing a $6,990 Carolina Herrera gown while perched on a ladder overlooking the Manhattan skyline -- has declined as well.

One former editor at a prestigious magazine who remains an in demand stylist said Trump will struggle with reentering the fashion orbit. "The fashion industry is a very liberal, Democratic leaning group," he said, "and I just don't see them welcoming them back -- professionally or socially -- with open arms."

New York tabloids, which helped propel the President to fame and chronicled the social rise of his children broke in recent days from promoting the administration's agenda, with even the New York Post urging the President to end his "stolen election" complaints.

Their New York neighbors, meanwhile, may have similar gripes. Co-inhabitants of their apartment complex include the President's former -- and now estranged -- lawyer Michael Cohen and his daughter Samantha, who has described Trump snubbing her in their building's lobby, despite having come over to dine on her dad's "famous" lasagna.

"One time she told on me after she saw me smoking cigarettes outside of our building," Samantha Cohen told Vanity Fair. "It was so lame."

They may find some support close to home -- a US Secret Service source said the two have been a favored assignment because they are "very good to their detail." They get to know them, he said, and ask after their families.

Other employees on the family payroll say they are caring employers. One nanny (there have been up to three employed at once, per a source familiar) has been with them for several years, and "is treated like a member of the family," said a hair stylist who counted Trump as a client and who often witnessed her interactions with others.

But New Yorkers broadly aren't exactly aligned with the couple's political leanings. In 2016, about 9 out of 10 Manhattanites voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. With more than 60% of the state's votes counted as of Thursday night, Biden is projected to win Manhattan by a similar margin.

That may portend reactions like the one Kargman said she could foresee displaying if she encounters Trump back in Manhattan.

"I would yell 'Shame!' at her, like to Cersei Lannister in 'Game of Thrones,'" Kargman said. "Just yell, 'shame, shame, shame,' at her, in that same rhythmic pattern."

 

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A good one from Frank Bruni: "Was It Worth It, Jared and Ivanka?"

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Just five short years ago Jared and Ivanka were dinner-party royalty here in Manhattan. It’s that kind of place. They had money, they had youth, they had celebrity. They were thin. I’m told that their manners were impeccable, so you’d never know that his father was an actual felon and her father a de facto one. Besides, you can’t hold family against someone, can you? We don’t choose how we’re born.

But from then on, we do make choices, and we’re accountable for those.

Jared and Ivanka are about to be held accountable.

They chose to tether their fortunes to her father’s, chose to go along for the ride, chose to see how far it could take them, because what if it took them all the way? What if Ivanka became the first female president, something that Manhattan acquaintances of hers assured me that she fantasized about, a giddy possibility that her father floated out loud.

With that crowning adventure — that climactic branding opportunity — dangling before her, she and Jared rationalized her father’s tantrums, fed his delusions, laundered his cruelty and kept her Instagram aglow with images from their fabulous new Washington life.

Down there, near the border: migrant children in cages. Over here, near the Potomac: Javanka in their gilded tableaux.

They are the Faustian poster couple of the Trump presidency, the king and queen of the principle-torching prom at which so many danced alongside them, although in less exquisitely tailored attire.

They are Mitch McConnell after a makeover, Ted Cruz gone to charm school, Mike Pompeo with a more rigorous fitness regimen, Lindsey Graham with less time on the links. They are Mike Pence and Nikki Haley and scores of others in and out of office, so entranced by power, so enchanted by perks, so primed for future prizes that they junked values that they once supposedly held and downgraded decency to something ornamental, a sprig of parsley on a fish fillet.

Tell me, Jared. Be honest, Ivanka. Was it worth it?

It’s a question for the whole shockingly populous court of collaborators around President Trump. Time will tell. Trumpism isn’t ending. Trump himself isn’t going away. He’ll have his PAC, maybe he’ll have his new media venture, there’s that rumor — I’d call it a threat — that he’s eyeing 2024. A wagon hitched to his may not be veering into the ditch just yet.

But the wagon that belonged to Jared and Ivanka was different from the others. It didn’t fit neatly into the Trump administration’s motley caravan of expedience and ambition: They were glossier grifters. That dissonance brought them special derision, because it was a particularly unsettling illustration of the tradeoffs that people are willing to make, the compromises that they can talk themselves into.

How big a leap was it, really, for Don Jr. to go from hunting big game in Africa to haranguing the political bigwigs whom Daddy dubbed RINOs? No one in Junior’s old crowd was going to be surprised or appalled.

Same old menace, new prey.

Pence’s and Pompeo’s fellow evangelicals didn’t and won’t begrudge them their worship of Trump, because all of them found that twisted religion together. And no serious observer is disillusioned by McConnell, because no serious observer had any illusions about him in the first place. He does what he must to maximize his impact.

But what of Jared and Ivanka? They epitomized the very entitled, elite class of Ivy-groomed, Davos-bound Americans that her father mocked. They were sanctioning the savaging of their soon-to-be-former friends. You could say that they defected. But are they really going to be content in their new social homeland, now that 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is no longer its clubhouse?

Where, geographically, will they alight? That was a question prominently explored over recent days in Vanity Fair and CNN, which portrayed them more or less as Vuitton vagabonds.

Washington won’t work, not even a suite at the Trump International Hotel, because there’s nothing more pathetic than lingering at a party once the music has stopped.

Mar-a-Loco makes questionable sense. It’s Melania’s sandbox, and she and Ivanka play together about as sweetly as Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio do. New Jersey is where the Kushners have their roots, but Javanka is accustomed to more glitz than that. At this point they’re Aspen, not Asbury Park.

I have suggestions. North Korea, for one. Ivanka has met its ruler and been to the Demilitarized Zone. She wouldn’t have to ask for directions. Saudi Arabia. Jared and Prince Mohammed bin Salman are spiritual twins, conjoined by their sense of superiority.

Russia. Yes, Russia! It would be the poetic choice, bringing the Trump family’s presidential adventure full circle.

But it’s New York City, where Javanka still own an apartment, that’s surely drawing their gaze. And that’s, well, awkward. The Trump administration did label it an “anarchic jurisdiction” as part of an attempt to deny it as much as $12 billion in federal funds. Javanka would have some explaining to do.

They might not find many people willing to listen. “Everyone with self-respect, a career, morals, respect for democracy, or who doesn’t want their friends to shame them both in private and public, will steer clear,” one unidentified former acquaintance of theirs told Emily Jane Fox for her Vanity Fair article.

Another said: “Ivanka is no Princess Margaret and Jared is not the Duke of Windsor regaling guests with amusing bon mots to a captive audience. No one wants to hear about Sarah Huckabee’s pies or Steven Bannon’s shirts.” A snob like that actually deserves a dynamic duo like them (and may shed light on how President Trump found the traction in the heartland that he did).

Javanka can’t protest that they moderated the president, not after his past immoderate weeks of raging against democracy and conniving to subvert it. They can’t retroactively claim some profound but strangled ambivalence about his reign, not after her fangirl phantasmagoria at the Republican convention.

No, they have made their bed. Lucky for them, the sheets have a serious thread count.

 

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Yeah she is as awful as her daddy. No wonder she is his favorite. 

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As her father clings to the remnants of a sad coup, Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner are apparently over their West Wing life, with the soon-to-be-former first daughter reportedly busy laying the groundwork for a return to Manhattan’s ultrawealthy art scene. While some predict a difficult transition back into New York high society, as one PR executive recently told the New Republic, complete pariah life for them appears unlikely: “Recent history has taught me that’ll only happen if they go broke.”

But if their ghoulishness within the Trump administration won’t make a difference in their social standing, perhaps a reliable tell-all, chock full of ugly details revealed by a former best friend, will. That’s what we have from Lysandra Ohrstrom in Vanity Fair today, in an essay filled with gossipy anecdotes extending from their days together at the elite all-girls’ school Chapin to their partying when they were in their early 20s. There was the time young Ivanka trashed a necklace that had Arabic writing—“It just screams, ‘terrorist,'” she allegedly said. Then there was Ivanka’s literary criticism of Richard Russo’s Empire Falls. “Why would you tell me to read a book about fucking poor people?”

I am so ready for that family to go away - especially if it involves prison time for some of them. 

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Ooh, Ivanka's former BFF has spilled some tea:

 

Of course Twitler was (and is) a disgusting piece of work.

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She is so much like daddy, grifting at every turn:

 

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21 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Ooh, Ivanka's former BFF has spilled some tea:

 

Of course Twitler was (and is) a disgusting piece of work.

I brought the article here in case it's behind a paywall or you don't want to be bothered to subscribe.  I put it under spoilers because it's fairly long:

 

Spoiler

 

IVANKA TRUMP WAS MY BEST FRIEND. NOW SHE’S MAGA ROYALTY
We met at an all-girls school on the Upper East Side and were inseparable for more than a decade. Gradually, though, our differences divided us—“Why would you tell me to read a book about fucking poor people?” she once asked—and I watched her blow up her carefully curated image of refined privilege to embrace her father wholesale.

By Lysandra Ohrstrom
November 17, 2020

Ivanka Trump was my best friend growing up. We first met when I joined her seventh-grade class at Chapin, an all-girls school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that had a reputation for attracting a blue blood, feminine, but ambitious cohort of young girls, not unlike its most famous alumnus, Jackie O. After spending the previous four years in social isolation in the suburbs, I was eager to land on the popular side of the classroom, ruled over by Ivanka and about five other wild, entitled, precocious preteens. It was the grunge era, so we moshed around the classroom in performative angst, wearing our uniforms of green plaid kilts (tailored shorter the more popular you got) and stacked-heel Steve Madden loafers as the dystopian wails of Nirvana blared from a boom box. By that time most of us were allowed to roam freely around Manhattan above 57th Street by bus or taxi before dark, and we rebelled by taking the subway to Patricia Field’s in the Village or dyeing our hair with blue Manic Panic from Ricky’s. Some of us even went to Sheep Meadow to “dye our hair green,” which was the code used by the entire classroom in reference to a certain forbidden activity. 

Of course, the scene was anything but grungy, especially among Ivanka’s cohort, most of whom not only lived in palatial townhouses or duplexes scattered between 60th and 64th streets between Fifth and Park, but retired to equally palatial country houses for the weekend, usually with a friend or two in tow. Below Ivanka’s group in the Chapin pecking order were about a dozen other slightly less cool girls, most of whom lived further uptown in Carnegie Hill and the 10028 zip code. 

Ivanka and I hung out occasionally at first. I got a last-minute invite to her 13th birthday party, where about 15 of us caravanned to Atlantic City in a trio of limos and camped out in the penthouse suite of the Taj Mahal for the weekend under the supervision of two wary members of her dad’s security team. She called me to pose in a photo spread for Sassy magazine because none of her usual group was available. I remember swinging by her dad’s office at Trump Tower so she could borrow his credit card to go shopping. When we were not in our uniforms, the look was baby tees and Carpenters from Urban Outfitters; floral, boudoir numbers from Betsey Johnson for the interschool Goddard Gaieties dances, or the sixth floor of Barneys if we were splurging. 

Mr. Trump always handed over the credit card after a little feigned outrage about how much money he was giving her mother. He would barely acknowledge me except to ask if Ivanka was the prettiest or the most popular girl in our grade. Before I learned that the Trumps have no sense of humor about themselves, I remember answering honestly that she was probably in the top five. “Who’s prettier than Ivanka?” I recall him asking once with genuine confusion, before correctly naming the two girls I’d had in mind. He described one as a young Cindy Crawford, while the other he said had a great figure. 

Though he never remembered my name, he seemed to have a photographic memory for changes in my body. I’ll never forget the time Ivanka and I were having lunch with her brothers at Mar-a-Lago one day, and while Mr. Trump was saying hi, Don Jr. swiped half a grilled cheese sandwich off my plate. Ivanka scolded him, but Mr. Trump chimed in, “Don’t worry. She doesn’t need it. He’s doing her a favor.” Conversely, he’d usually congratulate me if I’d lost weight.

Ivanka and I really bonded the July before our freshman year of high school when a group of Chapin girls went to Paris for a language program in what would be the first of many trips she and I took together. That summer, we delighted in breaking the rules in harmless ways. When we took field trips into the city, we pretended to get lost on the metro and went to the movies on the Champs-Elysées or the Picasso museum instead. Once, we all decided to wake up at dawn, sneak to London on the Eurostar for the day, and make it home in time for the 11 p.m. curfew, but everyone got scared and bailed except for me, Ivanka, and one other girl. After that trip, Ivanka and I were inseparable.

We remained that way for more than a decade, more sisters than best friends. Sure, she loved to talk about herself and was shamelessly vain, but she was also fun, loyal, and let’s face it, pretty exciting. In our late teens and early 20s, it felt like Ivanka and I were always on the same page or up for the same adventure, whether it was leaving Bungalow 8 early to watch a Lifetime movie, or horseback riding from a surf village in Costa Rica to a town in Nicaragua because we had never been there before. After college, we started moving on increasingly divergent tracks. I went to Beirut for my first reporting job, and Ivanka experimented with her own form of post-collegiate rebellion: commuting to Brooklyn for a job with real estate developer Forest City Ratner. Still, we remained close. Then in 2009, shortly after I was one of two maids of honor in Ivanka’s wedding, our friendship finally broke under the weight of our differences. 

It was easy to ignore the dozens of press inquiries that flooded my inbox when Donald Trump announced his candidacy because I didn’t think he had any chance of winning. Then, when Ivanka joined her dad’s administration, I was sure she would step in to moderate her father’s most regressive, racist tendencies—not out of any moral commitment, but because caging young children and ripping up global climate agreements was not a good look in the halls of Davos. The Ivanka I knew spent her career developing and embodying a more polished and intellectual offshoot of the Trump brand, which blended the language and look of white millennial feminism with the mythical narrative of the business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit she claimed to have inherited from her dad. Her objective was always a more refined brand of celebrity than the bombastic, nouveau riche variety her dad had perfected—the kind that allowed her to be graciously received by the B&T and Maidstone set, invite Blake Lively over for a girls’ dinner, and vacation on the yachts of tech billionaires, but also serve as an inspirational example of a “woman who works” to the middle-class housewives to whom she peddled her fashion brand. 

Instead, I’ve watched as Ivanka has laid waste to the image she worked so hard to build. In private, I’ve had countless conversations with friends who also grew up with Ivanka about how appalled we are that she didn’t publicly oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, or any of her dad’s especially repugnant policies. But in public, we’ve stayed silent because that’s what we are taught to do. I told myself it wouldn’t make a difference if I shared my bird’s-eye view of the first family because the public had long ago grown inured to the run-of-the-mill instances of misogyny, elitism, and poor character that I could recollect. In reality, I was afraid I’d lose friends and get skewered from all sides as a hypocritical, privileged elitist looking to capitalize on her Trump connection. My disgust with the Trumps was outweighed by my fear of being dragged through the mud, dismissed by the family as a nasty loser. Even now, as self-proclaimed former friends vow that Ivanka can never show her face in Manhattan again, few of these detractors are quoted by name in the many takes about her future.

A few weeks ago, after I voted early against her dad, I sat down at my computer and began to write about my friendship with Ivanka with no eye toward publication. But the more I wrote, the surer I became that I did not owe her my silence. Although friends and family have warned that this article won’t be received the way I want, I think it’s past time that one of the many critics from Ivanka’s childhood comes forward—if only to ensure that she really will never recover from the decision to tie her fate to her father’s.

As she’s touted the achievements the Trump administration has made for the middle class while not-so-covertly pursuing a massive wealth transfer to corporate America, I’ve been reminded of a phone call we had in our mid-20s. Ivanka always solicited book suggestions from me, and I had recently recommended Empire Falls, Richard Russo’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about the life of a diner manager in a working-class community in Maine. “Ly, why would you tell me to read a book about fucking poor people?” I remember Ivanka saying. “What part of you thinks I would be interested in this?”

When Eric Trump posted a photo on Twitter of a mansion supposedly belonging to Joe Biden and wondered how a politician could afford such a house, I thought about how Ivanka used to point out inconsistencies between a character’s profession and their lifestyle when we went to the movies. “Since when can a teacher afford a BMW?” she would ask, munching on her usual small popcorn, coated in what would be an unpalatable amount of salt to a normal person. Or, “Why is a police officer living in a house like that?”

Another memory that often occurs to me is of Mr. Trump delivering a toast to a room full of diners at Mar-a-Lago, who watched him as devotedly then as his red-capped followers do today. They laughed when he addressed them as the richest Jews in the world, complimented the array of luxury sports cars in the parking lot, and gleefully recounted the fight he was waging against the Waspy club across the street, which he dismissed as a dump. Beneath the taunting, it was obvious that Mr. Trump was insecure; back then, Palm Beach’s old-guard communities were among the few not seduced by his wealth. 

In contrast, it took no time for Ivanka to be embraced by old money. During summers in high school she would usually come visit me in Newport, where I grew up in a Waspy beach community frequented by many of the same sort of people who patronized the club across from Mar-a-Lago. This set also used to deride people like the Trumps, but Ivanka won everyone over. She was polite, refined, and fun to be around. She subscribed to The Atlantic and spoke ambitiously about her lifelong dream of leaving her mark on the Manhattan skyline. After every conversation, strangers would marvel at how she had turned out so unlike her parents. There was a moment at the end of college or just after when it seemed like this more understated life of wealth and privilege might appeal to Ivanka—like she might actually veer off the track her dad had laid for her.

But in private, rougher, more Trumpian edges still occasionally poked out. Ivanka would regularly relay stories of teachers or observers who had commented that she had the most innate talent they had ever seen for whatever new pursuit she was taking up. She never wore a Halloween costume that wasn’t flattering, which means she usually showed up at costume parties looking beautiful and boring. She always stopped at McDonald’s for cheeseburgers. She cursed. And of course, she had the Trump radar for status, money, and power, and her dad’s instinct to throw others under the bus to save herself. 

One of the earliest memories I have of Ivanka from before we were friends is when she blamed a fart on a classmate. Some time later, she goaded me and a few other girls into flashing our breasts out the window of our classroom in what has since been labelled the “flashing the hot dog man” incident in Chapin lore. Ivanka had basically been the ringleader, but she pleaded her innocence to the headmistress and got off scot-free. The rest of us were suspended. 

While Ivanka was laying the foundation for her conquest of Manhattan, I was experiencing a new reality in Lebanon as it was rocked by a string of political assassinations and bombings and a decimating war with Israel. The gulf between us became increasingly apparent. During my first two-year stint in Beirut, Ivanka regularly emailed me messages like, “When are you getting your ass back to NYC? You’re going to be replaced.” I remember her being the only person I knew who didn’t ask me what the war was like. By the time I did return home, she had started dating Jared Kushner, whose family was Orthodox Jewish, and my pro-Palestinian stance began to chafe. Since 2007, I’ve worn a necklace with my name written in Arabic, and Ivanka grew increasingly irritated by it. Sometimes, she would randomly say, “I hate that thing.” Then one night in the middle of dinner, she glanced at the necklace and said, “How does your Jewish boyfriend feel when you are having sex and that necklace hits him in the face? How can you wear that thing? It just screams, ‘terrorist.’” 

But Ivanka was skilled at blunting her more Trumpian comments with equally typical acts of generosity. Once, she lent me her apartment for about six hours during a trip home from Lebanon so I could rendezvous with my boyfriend during one of his layovers. She connected me with Peter Kaplan, the late editor of the New York Observer, who hired me as a freelance writer between 2007 and 2009. When I was single, she and Jared often tried to set me up with a roster of eligible bachelors in what I always felt was an effort to elevate me to the ranks of people they wanted to socialize with. When I was an intern at Al Jazeera English, I ended up on an awkward date with a close associate of Rupert Murdoch’s; I sat through a group dinner while Jared, Wendi Murdoch, and the New York Post higher-up they had their eyes on for me discussed the expendability of journalists in the digital age and ignored me completely.

One time, we were driving to Manhattan from Bedminster, and I think we were having some sort of disagreement about affordable housing in Manhattan. I distinctly remember Ivanka saying something along the lines of, “Ly, I can’t talk about this stuff with you anymore because you’ve really turned into a Marxist.”

Still, Ivanka asked me and one other friend to be in her wedding party in 2009, along with some relatives and Wendi Murdoch’s daughters as flower girls. The months between her engagement and wedding to Jared were a flurry of activity in which I was honored to participate. When I started a new job in a different field the day after their wedding, however, I expected my best friend to ask how it was going. After what could have been a few days or weeks, I remember sending her a text that said something like, “Hey, I started a new job the day after your wedding, and you haven’t asked me a single question about it.” 

I don’t remember her exact reply, but it was something along the lines of, “Ly, I’m too busy for this shit.” 

That was more or less the end. She still sent presents on my birthday and invited me to her Halloween birthday parties at Trump SoHo. When my son was born, she sent me a gold-plated bracelet engraved with his name. She was never impolite, but we no longer belonged to each other’s inner circles.

For the past four years I have tried to tune out the conversation that dominated international media, but it is nearly impossible to ignore when the person who used to pluck ingrown hairs from your bikini line suddenly appoints herself to the role of unelected public official and begins to torch democracy. When Ivanka recently posted a photo of herself on stage with her children at a Trump rally, I wondered to another friend from the Manhattan private school world what her endgame might be. Ivanka had deigned to dress Middle American housewives when I knew her, but did not pretend to want to hobnob with them. Predictably, as she began moving with the real power brokers of the world, Ivanka became increasingly certain that she and the rest of the capitalist elite had better solutions to the plight of America’s struggling working class than elected officials and the creaky bureaucracies they presided over. But aligning herself with her dad’s banana republic-style administration made no sense to me, until my friend suggested that Ivanka took her kids to the rally to show them that they are American royalty. This explanation seemed most plausible. What is more royal than presiding over subjects that you disdain?

I’ve been a good Wasp and kept quiet until now, even as I’ve grown increasingly repulsed by Ivanka’s ability to aid and abet her father. I’ve been comforted by the certainty that the backlash from those whose respect she craves most must sting. Still, I miss my old friend. I miss going to Green Kitchen on First Avenue at 1 a.m. for “mozzarazza,” hailing down a gondola in Amsterdam for a tour, belting out “Anna Begins” and songs from Les Mis on a road trip. But most of all, I miss the time when the Trump family quest for power was not dangerous to the country. 

A day before Biden finally declared victory, I saw Ivanka issue a tepid statement about how “Every legally cast vote should be counted,” presumably at her father’s behest, still clearly hoping that she can be enriched and adored by the public she exploits even as she’s embraced on the slopes of Aspen. “Goodbye @IvankaTrump,” reads one reply to her tweet. “You will be loved by the people you disdain and disdained by the people you want to be loved by. There will never be a Met Ball for you again. You are fated to live out your years as an aging, corrupt, villainous Barbie; paying the price for what you did.”

Though I do hope that fantasy comes true—the damage the Trump family has done is unforgivable, even if perpetrated by my childhood best friend—I expect Ivanka will find a soft landing in Palm Beach instead, where casual white supremacy is de rigueur and most misdeeds are forgiven if you have enough money. It’s the perfect spot for her to lie low, shielded from the economic and social consequences of the policies she pursued for the past four years, the backlash against them, and from having to interact with her MAGA following. Surely Ivanka will still market whatever branded products she can sell them, and many whisper that she will harness their loyalty in a future run for president. 

Whether Ivanka is able to rehab her stained image or not, I hope she wasn’t able to drown out the applause of the city she once aspired to rule, cheering and celebrating her political downfall. I was with them, crying with relief, matched only by the regret and shame I feel for not holding my former friend to account sooner.

Lysandra Ohrstrom (@LysandraO) is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist who covers the U.S. and the Middle East. 

 

 

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10 hours ago, Flossie said:

when the person who used to pluck ingrown hairs from your bikini line suddenly appoints herself to the role of unelected public official and begins to torch democracy.

Ivanka used to do what!!!!:whaa-serious:

Never would I ever have my BFF  get all up in my business like that.  What the hell is wrong with these people? 

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My favorite part of the article was when DJT would talk to that middle school girl and ask her about the bodies of other middle school girls and the attractiveness of alllll the middle school girls.

 

GOSH Biden kisses his grandkids. He's SOOOOOO CREEEPY!!!!!!!!!

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The fact that NY is going to ensure that the whole corrupt family is going down fills my heart with glorious schadenfreude.

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"As Their D.C. Days Dwindle, Ivanka and Jared Look for a New Beginning"

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WASHINGTON — Town officials in Bedminster, N.J., have the plans for a possible Trump family future, or at least the blueprints: a major addition to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s “cottage” on the grounds of the Trump National Golf Club, four new pickleball courts, a relocated heliport, and a spa and yoga complex.

As Manhattan awaits word of the Trump family’s return, the first daughter and her husband appear to be making preparations elsewhere: a Garden State refuge behind guarded gates, perhaps, or Florida, where President Trump is renovating his Mar-a-Lago estate.

But New York now seems inhospitable and nowhere in their plans.

“In an odd way, they will even have a harder time than Trump himself” in New York, said Donny Deutsch, a brand management mogul in Manhattan and no-holds-barred critic of Mr. Trump on cable TV. “He’s despicable but larger than life.”

“Those two are the hapless minions who went along.”

Sam Nunberg, a short-lived Trump campaign adviser, said he would never presume to offer the couple advice, but “I’m moving to Florida next year for taxes and lifestyle.”

Wherever they alight, Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner seem poised for a quick departure from Washington, where they always struggled to fit in. The couple had already expanded their “cottage” in New Jersey by 2,500 square feet in 2016, adding a basement and a fireplace sitting room, all documented by Ms. Trump on Instagram. The new plans before Bedminster Township call for an expanded master bedroom, bath and dressing room, two new bedrooms, a study and a ground floor veranda, making it more comparable to the $5 million house they rent for $15,000 a month in the gilded Washington enclave of Kalorama.

Plans also call for adding five more “cottages” of 5,000 square feet each to the property, and a recreation complex with spa treatments and a “general store.” A friend of the family said Tuesday that the renovations have been going on for a while, but Trump representatives are set to present the plans to the township on Dec. 3.

When Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner moved to the nation’s capital, they had convinced many observers that they would be a moderating voice in the West Wing.

It has been a turbulent social ride since then, captured best by their experience with the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital. In 2017, the couple enrolled their elder two children in the private elementary school.

The small student body leans heavily toward the progeny of public servants and diplomats derided by Mr. Trump as the “Deep State,” and the Kushners’ enrollment created the kind of heated divide that has trailed the Trumps over the past four years. Some parents lobbied to refuse them admission; others urged tolerance for children not guilty for what they saw as the sins of their grandfather.

Once in, Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner tended to violate the unspoken rule of the Washington private-school world, that parents with heavy security details keep disruption to a minimum, four parents said. At schoolwide events, the family and its entourage often occupied the front two rows, standing to greet administration well-wishers, said one irritated parent.

Three people, including two who were present, spoke about a birthday party Mr. Kushner decided to attend with his children. He then requested the hosts’ Wi-Fi password so he could work in the living room.

The tension came to a head this fall, after the White House event to announce Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, which featured few masks, no social distancing, a rash of coronavirus infections and the president’s subsequent hospitalization with Covid-19. With parents up in arms, school administrators approached the family about the potential exposure of students, the youngest of whom had been attending in-person classes. According to a person familiar with the discussions, talks faltered on the couple’s reluctance to answer basic questions, including when their children were last exposed to Mr. Trump.

The family withdrew from the school on Oct. 19 and enrolled in another Jewish elementary school in the Washington suburb of Rockville, Md.

Carolina Hurley, a White House spokeswoman, has issued the same blanket response since early this month when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported the children’s withdrawal: “Unnamed sources attacking a family’s decision about what is best for their kids in the middle of a pandemic is shameful. As is true for all families, schooling choices and education are deeply personal decisions and they owe no one, especially idle gossips seeking press attention, an explanation.”

The school has stuck to its official statement as well: “Our school community has made extraordinary efforts to provide a safe and supportive learning environment during these challenging times. As is our longstanding policy, we do not discuss individual students and families.”

So it has gone in Washington for the family, whose neighbors include the Obamas and Jeff Bezos. The Daily Mail, a gossipy tabloid, installed a lone paparazzo, Matthew D’Agostino, on the street outside the family’s house. Liberal neighbors or their guests passed the photographer’s car trading news tips, murmuring that taxpayers were footing the bill for the Secret Service to stay in a nearby apartment, dishing on which Middle Eastern diplomats were visiting the Jordanian ambassador’s house across the street.

Mr. D’Agostino passed word to editors more interested in “full-length shots; they want the dress, the shoes, the bag,” or a photo of the cheap bottle of wine that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a multimillionaire, brought to dinner.

The family’s home had once been occupied by Shirley Temple Black, the movie star turned diplomat, her presence noted on a bronze plaque. “What plaque is going to be here when they’re gone?” Mr. D’Agostino said he would wonder over a beer in his car out front. “The answer’s, like, ‘none.’”

The home was near the family’s synagogue. Observant Jews, they would frequently walk there according to Sabbath tradition, tailed by about 15 Secret Service agents.

“Outside the building they may be one of the most famous couples in America, but inside the synagogue they are just a young Jewish couple trying to raise their children in the Jewish tradition,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) and spiritual leader of their congregation, TheSHUL of the Nation’s Capital in Kalorama.

One of Ms. Trump’s contributions to Washington’s cultural community was unwitting. In 2019, a Washington conceptual artist, Jennifer Rubell, created “Ivanka Vacuuming,” in which a 16-year-old look-alike of Ms. Trump vacuumed up crumbs tossed by onlookers onto a pink carpet.

“I truly did not intend the piece to be only a critique of her. I thought it was just as indicting of the viewer and all of us in our perception of her,” Ms. Rubell said in an interview. “I invited her to see the show. I was so naïve — I thought she would think it was kind of funny.”

Instead, Ms. Trump tweeted: “Women can choose to knock each other down or build each other up. I choose the latter.” Conservative commentators and Ms. Trump’s brothers denounced Ms. Rubell’s work. The artist said she received death threats.

To the artist and her colleagues, it was a turning point in Ms. Trump’s real-life persona, from perceived moderating influence to conservative culture warrior.

By the time the 2020 campaign was in full swing, all the liberal hopes that Ms. Trump carried with her to Washington were long gone.

“For the first time in a long time, we have a president who has called out Washington’s hypocrisy, and they hate him for it,” she declared on the White House grounds at the Republican National Convention. “Dad, people attack you for being unconventional, but I love you for being real.”

Days before the election, she declared, “I am pro-life, and unapologetically so.”

Such pronouncements appear to have made Manhattan re-entry all but impossible, at least for now.

“As soon as she ditches the District of Columbia for the old pad she owns with Kushner at Trump Park Avenue in Manhattan, she’ll beg to be back on the scene,” Artnet News warned on Nov. 6. “In 2017, the art world organized a series of social media campaigns, protests, and performative actions under the banner ‘Dear Ivanka,’ urging her to push back against her father’s hateful and divisive platform. That, um, did not work.”

Not everyone expects such turbulence. “I think she’s a wonderful, smart person, and she’s handled the situation really, really well,” Georgina Bloomberg, whose father, Michael Bloomberg, spent more than $1 billion of his fortune to defeat Mr. Trump, told The Daily Beast this month. “At the end of the day it’s her father, and she’s very quick to get a lot of criticism that she doesn’t deserve.”

Business-wise, Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner will not lack for options, given the Kushner family money. Two people who know the couple said Ms. Trump might be able to resurrect her jewelry and clothing brands, retargeted to her new conservative fans, but two more say that line would not sell.

“Kushner’s in the real estate business,” Mr. Deutsch said. “You can do real estate deals, and if he’s doing anything with the Trump name he can monetize it in red areas.”

Nobody rules out politics for Ms. Trump, either as candidate or king maker.

“If I’m trying to keep my Senate seat or I’m running in the governor’s races in Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, not only do I want President Trump, I want all the Trumps there,” Mr. Nunberg said.

“I think Ivanka is able to live in two worlds: Trump-conservative populist and — I don’t say this in a derogatory way — Nikki Haley-country club-Jeb Bush Republican,” he said.

Manhattan society is a different story. Christopher Buckley, a comic author who satirized the Trump administration in the novel “Make Russia Great Again,” said, “Washington tends to be more tolerant of fellow swamp creatures, who are continually in and out of favor.”

That does not extend to “Manhattan, where ‘in’ and ‘out’ lists are sacred tablets,” he added, concluding, “There might be more Grubhub than La Grenouille in their dining future.”

 

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1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

Jared is going to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Why? What's he up to?

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Or he's going to plead with them to delay payments of the debts he and Trump owe them. 

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Come on, be nice,  Jared's got a job to do, it's not like those state secrets will sell themselves. 

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On 11/30/2020 at 11:41 AM, AmazonGrace said:

Come on, be nice,  Jared's got a job to do, it's not like those state secrets will sell themselves. 

I just came across a Sarah Kendzior thread on Twitter.  Kendzior has a doctorate in Anthropology and specializes in authoritarian regimes, specifically the breakup of the USSR.  Her take is that Jared Kushner is by far the most dangerous of the entire Trump Crime Family Syndicate, by a large degree and is the force behind the throne.  

I'm going to get her book, Hiding in Plain Sight, soon.  She has been prescient about calling out what's getting ready to happen with Trump in terms of authoritarianism, and I mean warning years ahead.  

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From the WaPo: "MAGA-ite in Manhattan?: Ivanka Trump’s political ambitions seek new home after the White House"

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Ivanka Trump has always been a business executive with a keen eye for marketing — whether that be real estate, moderately priced shoes or handbags. After she leaves the White House with her father, those who know the family say she could soon embark on a new venture: selling herself to American voters.

It’s unclear where exactly Ivanka Trump and her husband — Jared Kushner, who like Ivanka is a senior White House adviser — will physically land after they are expected to leave Washington in January. Some anticipate the couple will return to their old home of New York, while others speculate they may relocate to a “cottage” at the president’s Bedminster golf course in New Jersey.

But former friends, colleagues and associates of the couple believe wherever they live, the first daughter will be contemplating how to maximize her political capital — whether that means an actual run for office, or a gauzier influence in Republican circles in a world where President Trump still holds enormous political sway.

It’s clear that some in and fallen from Trumpworld in New York — where “Not Wanted” fliers have cropped up around the city and Lincoln Project billboards in Times Square caused the couple to threaten a lawsuit — don’t want to see that happen.

“I am happy to shed light on them to keep them as far away from our political realm as possible,” said Marissa Velez Kraxberger, a film producer and the former creative director at Ivanka’s now-defunct namesake company, who called the president’s elder daughter “identical” to her father and who voted for Joe Biden.

“I think she’d want to be the [first] female president,” Kraxberger said, reflecting on her two years working with Trump. “I don’t think she’s actually ever had any interest in fashion, but everything was an angle to gain more power in whatever possible way.”

Ivanka Trump has dodged questions about whether she plans to run for a political office. But over her four years serving as a senior White House adviser, she has completed a stunning transformation from a publicly liberal New Yorker who some hoped would serve as a restraining influence on her father to an “unapologetically” “pro-life” advocate of the Make American Great Again agenda — a “proud Trump Republican,” as she told Fox News earlier this year.

Interviews with over a dozen sources painted a picture of a woman who, much like her father, is interested in leveraging the platform and global relationships she gleaned from her starring role in Washington.

“I think she’s impressive and most people see she’s impressive and if she wants to stay involved with politics, people will take her with open arms. But staying involved with politics is different than running for office,” a former White House official remarked.

The White House did not respond to a request for an interview with Ivanka Trump. “While the media seems only interested in covering trite topics and perpetuating idle gossip, Ivanka continues to focus on her policy priorities fighting for American workers and their families,” deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement.

Nonetheless, Trumpworld could be seeking the next heir apparent once the president leaves office, though he is still baselessly insisting the election he lost to Biden was somehow rigged.

President Trump has expressed an interest in running again in 2024, though that would probably be from his perch at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. But the next generation of Trumps could also eye the throne, including both Ivanka and her brother Donald Jr., who was popular on the road at MAGA rallies.

Earlier in the Trump administration, Ivanka Trump denied interest in a 2024 presidential run, but pollsters have included her name in surveys for a hypothetical Republican presidential primary pool excluding her father. She notched four percentage points among likely 2024 general-election voters in a McLaughlin & Associates-Newsmax poll released at the end of last month, falling behind Vice President Pence, Donald Trump Jr., Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

Others who know and have worked with the family warn that Ivanka Trump would not easily be able to shed the baggage of her father’s presidency. That became clearer after the New York Times reported Tuesday evening that the president is discussing with his advisers whether to grant preemptive pardons to his children, his son-in-law and his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Ivanka Trump isn’t known to be a part of any federal investigations; such a presidential pardon would not apply to state probes.

But any whiff of legal trouble could stand as a roadblock to a political future.

“There’s too much potential dirt that she doesn’t want released,” Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney who pleaded guilty in 2018 in two separate criminal cases related to his work for the Trump campaign and organization, said of the speculation. “It’s easy to say, 'I‘m doing this, I’m doing that,’ but it’s different to put your entire life out there for the media to excoriate you.”

“Everyone is saying that she’s running for office, and that’s the ultimate compliment for her,” said a person who runs in the couple’s New York social circle. “Her recent stance as pro-life was making her ambitions very clear that she is laying the groundwork” for a political future in Republican politics, the person said.

This person added there “will definitely be a power struggle between [Ivanka] and her brother [Donald Jr.], who is obviously more connected to the base” and one of the GOP’s top fundraisers.

Several of those interviewed described watching Ivanka Trump’s speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention as a moment they recognized her full potential, as she called herself “the proud daughter of the people’s president” before describing her father as an empathetic and bipartisan leader.

“I think from a personality profile, she’s just like her dad and has a high opinion of herself and they tend to be ambitious, regardless of what they do,” a Trump campaign source added.

If the couple return to Manhattan, there could be an opportunity to run for the 12th Congressional District, which covers parts of the Upper East Side, against Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), who narrowly defeated a primary challenger to hang on to her seat, the person close to the couple noted. Other sources close to the Trump campaign and White House, however, dismissed the notion that Ivanka Trump would consider running for Congress.

Trump’s former 2016 deputy campaign manager Rick Gates wrote in his book, “Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed and America Lost,” that the president had floated his daughter as his running mate to a group of his top campaign advisers.

Women’s economic development, job creation and paid family leave were among some of the policy issues adopted by Ivanka Trump during her father’s tenure. She notched a legislative victory after successfully lobbying for an expanded child tax credit in the GOP tax cut bill passed at the end of 2017. A source close to the couple called Ivanka the “perfect bridge to conservative women” and insisted that eventually people will come to the conclusion that “she was not bad.”

If “Javanka,” as Ivanka Trump and Kushner are known, does return to New York, their welcome could be harsh. Spoofs playing out imagined scenarios of the couple’s return to the city — and desperate attempts to secure an appointment at a hair salon or a front-row seat at New York Fashion Week — have become a viral comedic genre.

“Any credible gallery and any credible artist will not sell to them,” scoffed New York Magazine’s senior art critic Jerry Saltz about the couple, who like to collect art.

Lysandra Ohrstrom, Ivanka Trump’s former friend and a bridesmaid at her wedding, wrote a scathing tell-all account in Vanity Fair describing Ivanka Trump as having “the Trump radar for status, money, and power.”

There are still plenty of New Yorkers who remain loyal to Javanka, and willing to publicly associate with the pair. “A lot of collectors are Trumpists and Republicans, and that art world will probably go on just hunky-dory,” Saltz added.

See Bloomberg heiress Georgina Bloomberg, who told the Daily Beast that Ivanka Trump has “handled herself wonderfully over the last four years.” And Andy Stein, a longtime Trump friend from New York, doesn’t think the couple will lose sleep over their post-White House social status.

“I don’t think that they particularly care anymore — they’ve had the world as their stage for the past four years,” Stein said. “Whether or not they go to Anna Wintour’s thing? I don’t think it matters. They’ve been glamorous enough with every world leader.”

Trump’s former makeup artist Tina Turnbow, who did Ivanka Trump’s makeup for high-profile events including the presidential inauguration, described her as a “kind and smart woman,” “a creative visionary” and a “beautiful canvas to paint.”

“Some of the people in my business are like, ‘I can’t believe you touched that face,’ ” said Turnbow, who voted for Biden. “And that’s just a shame. I still have a tender spot in my heart for her. I hope the best for her. And Jared was always so nice.”

The person who runs in the couple’s New York friend group remarked the family will “do just fine” anywhere north of 57th Street in Manhattan. But that person also warned some of the legal issues swirling around the first daughter could cause other kinds of headaches.

There are currently two New York state fraud investigations into President Trump and his businesses, which have expanded to investigate consulting fees that may have been paid to his daughter, as reported by the New York Times. Ivanka Trump is not the focus of the investigations.

“That’s the type of thing swaying people. … People have been wondering, ‘Do you really think they can go to jail?’ Suddenly there’s a criminal taint,” the person added. “It’s so much more than the Met Gala and there’s so much more at stake.”

“This is harassment pure and simple,” Ivanka responded on Twitter, parroting a tone usually reserved for her father’s Twitter account. “This ‘inquiry’ by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage. They know very well that there’s nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever. These politicians are simply ruthless.”

That’s not the only investigation hanging over Ivanka Trump’s head: Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and confidante to first lady Melania Trump and a longtime Vogue executive who produced Trump’s inauguration and worked in the East Wing, is a third-party witness for D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine’s (D) investigation into the Trump inaugural committee.

Winston Wolkoff is slated to be deposed next week by the defendants — the Trump Organization, Trump International Hotel and the 58th Presidential Inauguration Committee — according to a source involved in the case.

Racine charged the committee, in coordination with the Trump Organization, with violating its nonprofit status by alleging it overpaid for rooms in the Trump International Hotel for the presidential inauguration. ProPublica reported both the outgoing president and Ivanka Trump were aware of and warned by Winston Wolkoff about the arrangement. Ivanka Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The defendants issued Winston Wolkoff two new subpoenas in November: The Trump Organization and Trump International Hotel hand-delivered her a subpoena the Monday before Election Day, as first reported by Vanity Fair and confirmed by The Washington Post. On Nov. 12, Winston Wolkoff was served another subpoena from the Trump Presidential Inauguration Committee requesting “All Documents Concerning any Communications” between her and “Donald J. Trump, Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., or Eric Trump Concerning the planning or execution of the Inauguration.”

The deadline to respond to both subpoenas was Tuesday and all requested documents were submitted, according to the source involved in the case.

In “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady,” Winston Wolkoff describes an immense effort to block Ivanka’s attempts to assume the role of “acting” first lady while Melania Trump was still living in New York.

“Ivanka rushed in to fill the void as the ‘acting’ First Lady, issuing constant social media posts and press releases galore about her involvement with women’s issues, lobbying Daddy about climate change (alas, unsuccessfully), and attending every meeting she could slink her way into,” writes Winston Wolkoff, who also released revealing audio recordings of her conversations with the first lady.

“From the presidential inaugural fund to violations of the emoluments clause, I suspect a new attorney general — one who is not hand-cuffed by the president — will obtain the truth,” Cohen added.

 

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From now until January 20, there will be zero positive events out of the Trump admin and a relentless avalanche (or tsunami, your choice) of evidence of blatant political and financial corruption. 

The pardon scandal is the tip of the iceberg. 

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