Ivanka Trump has not been seen in father’s Donald campaign trail. Where is she?

MIAMI – Ms Ivanka Trump has been surfing. She has posed in front of the Eiffel Tower, and attended a Formula One party in Miami in a race car-red dress. She took a dip with her children in a hot tub, hung out with socialite Kim Kardashian in Malibu, and smiled alongside her husband, Mr Jared Kushner, at the Acropolis.

The one place Ms Trump has not been, however, is the campaign trail.

And though she has been upfront about her absence, politically speaking, it remains somewhat mysterious.

During former president Donald Trump’s last two bids for office, Ms Trump appeared at rallies, in television ads and on national convention stages, often with the implicit role of appealing to female voters.

But nearly two years ago, as her father started a third run for the White House, Ms Trump announced that she and Mr Kushner would be stepping back from politics to prioritise their children and family life.

“While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena,” she said.

So it is in her father’s fiercest and potentially final campaign that Ms Trump – his oldest daughter, one of his former top aides and perhaps his closest family member – has become a nearly silent observer, with seemingly no intention of boosting his candidacy in any public way.

That decision to separate herself from her father’s politics comes as Donald Trump has faced the prospect of four separate criminal trials, including one in her – and his – former home of Manhattan, where he was convicted of 34 felonies in late May, and one in Washington, in connection with the Capitol riots of Jan 6, 2021.

One of Ms Trump’s most prominent appearances during the 2024 race has been at Donald Trump’s civil fraud case in autumn 2023, when she testified that she was not “privy” to her father’s finances.

Ms Trump, 42, declined to be interviewed, asking instead that Mr Kushner speak for her and her family.

And when asked the chances that she might rejoin the campaign fray in the final stretch of the race, Mr Kushner was blunt.

“Zero,” he said.

Mr Kushner, 43, added that Ms Trump “made the decision when she left Washington that she was closing that chapter of her life. And she’s been remarkably consistent”.

He went on to suggest that the outcome in the contest between Donald Trump and US Vice-President Kamala Harris may change little for their family.

While “obviously the world is different for us over the next four years if her father is president”, Mr Kushner said, he didn’t see “a major shift in terms of what we prioritise”.

“We’re rooting for him – obviously, we’re proud of him,” he said. “But, you know, either way, our life will just continue to move forward.”

Critics of the couple, however, said that even if Ms Trump remains outside of the government, she and her husband could stand to benefit financially if her father is re-elected.

Mr Kushner, who served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House, now runs a US$3 billion (S$3.97 billion) private equity fund bankrolled by the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as by Mr Terry Gou, the Taiwanese billionaire and founder of Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer.

It is an endeavour that has already earned his firm at least US$112 million in fees.

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, there will be a steady stream of questions about whether she and Mr Kushner are getting special treatment in any new deals they are making, particularly when the transactions directly involve foreign governments, as is the case in several projects that Mr Kushner and Ms Trump are already working on.

“He says it sort of self-effacingly, but at the end of the day, he’s sitting there directing traffic all around the world,” said Ms Vicky Ward, the author of Kushner Inc, about the couple’s various businesses, who suggested Mr Kushner could wield influence behind the scenes as a kind of “shadow Secretary of State” or “Kissinger 2.0”.

“They don’t need to go into government,” she said. “They’ve already proven, in a way, that government is really good business for them.”

The other women for Trump

Ms Trump’s low-to-no profile at other significant events in her father’s life has also been conspicuous: Unlike her brothers Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr, she did not attend her father’s trial in Manhattan, where he was convicted of 34 felony counts.

And though she did briefly appear at the last night of the Republican National Convention in July, she did not speak – a stark contrast with the two previous conventions, when she introduced Donald Trump.

Ms Trump was also not in the audience in October at an all-female town hall-style meeting held in Georgia and hosted by Fox News, nor was Mrs Melania Trump, the former first lady, who has also largely kept her distance, save for rare appearances, like at her husband’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Oct 27.

In the past, the Trump women have tried to pitch Donald Trump as a champion for women and framed his presidency as uplifting for women in the workforce, particularly during moments when Donald Trump’s comments and behaviour were under scrutiny.

Ms Susan Del Percio, a Republican political strategist, said it was unclear whether – after several political campaigns in which Donald Trump has alienated and insulted women – either his daughter or his wife could be an effective surrogate in the race. Their absence, however, was telling, she added.

“The positives that she could make on the trail are marginal, but the fact that she and Melania are not on the trail could be significant,” Ms Del Percio said, noting that issues like reproductive rights were motivating many voters.

Donald Trump’s businesses – and political career – have always depended on and heavily involved his family.

And in place of Ms Trump and the first lady, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Mrs Lara Trump, has taken on a larger role, since he lobbied to install her as the co-chair of the Republican National Committee in March.

Mrs Lara Trump appeared at a “Team Trump Women’s Tour” event on Oct 24, and has more scheduled in the final days of the race.

Ms Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancee of Donald Trump Jr, has appeared at campaign stops and fund-raising events.

Leaving Washington

Ms Trump’s withdrawal from her father’s side has been discreet.

She and Mr Kushner left Washington DC for the Miami area in 2021 with their three children – a move that some interpreted as a kind of forced exile from New York City, where they had lost the affection of former friends and acquaintances because of their work in the Trump administration and in the wake of Jan 6.

The family moved to an oceanside condo in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, before buying a mansion in Indian Creek Village, a gated island community in Biscayne Bay sometimes known as Florida’s “billionaire bunker”.

The area consists of only a few dozen homes, including those reportedly belonging to Tom Brady and Jeff Bezos, and comes with its own private police force.

Accessible only via boat or a single, well-guarded bridge – and with a country club at its centre – the village is perhaps Miami’s most exclusive location.

The move there, Mr Kushner said, was a result of New York’s schools being closed for Covid-19, adding that Miami is “a city on the rise”, and “it’s a lot safer than being in New York right now”,

Observers say that Ms Trump and Mr Kushner – or “Javanka,” for short – have flourished financially, freed from governmental ethical rules.

“They’re much richer than they were before they went into government,” Ms Ward said. “And now he’s got a Rolodex of world leaders who are on the phone to him. And when he puts the phone down, he can call his father-in-law.”

‘Super happy with the lifestyle’

Ms Trump’s New York roots were deep, having grown up in Trump Tower, attended the Chapin School on the Upper East Side, and danced as a child ballerina at Lincoln Centre.

And from a young age, she was entwined with her father’s ventures.

She worked for Donald Trump after college and was often a guest star on his reality television show The Apprentice, as she worked on building her own business selling clothes and jewellery.

She hobnobbed with the likes of Ms Chelsea Clinton and Mr Rupert Murdoch, hit the Met Gala more than once and, in 2009, married Mr Kushner, whose purchase of the money-losing The New York Observer had given him entree to the city’s media elite.

Much of that social life was put on hold, however, after the couple’s departure for Washington.

In 2018, Ms Trump shuttered her fashion business, after being dropped by a number of major stores and after having been forced to step away because of DC’s ethical rules, leaving the business – which she said was profitable – in an untenable holding pattern.

“My focus for the foreseeable future will be the work I am doing here in Washington,” she said at the time.

Now, Ms Trump is self-employed, but is investing in businesses, according to friends and advisers, though she has not announced which ones.

She also volunteers, recently helping victims of Hurricane Helene with CityServe, a Christian-faith-based organisation.

Her daily life sounds both commonplace and charmed: She cares for her three children as well as her 98-year-old grandmother – Marie Zelnickova, the mother of Ms Trump’s mother Ivana, who now lives with the family on Indian Creek – along with two dogs and a hamster named Chester.

She practices jujitsu with the Valente Brothers (one of whom, Joaquim, is dating Brady’s ex-wife, Gisele Bundchen) and qigong breathing; she plays guitar, tennis and golf. She also meditates.

Ms Trump’s friends counter that these days she is less concerned with being seen, and more focused on quality of life, for her and her children: Arabella, 13; Joseph, 11; and Theodore, 8.

They attend a private Jewish day school near their home; the family walks to synagogue for services on Saturday. (Trump converted to Judaism before the couple married.)

Avoiding a ‘blood sport’

Though Ms Trump has largely avoided the spotlight over the last couple of years, she made a recent exception for a podcast appearance.

The host of that podcast was Dr Lex Fridman, an MIT scientist whose segments have recently featured polarising conservative figures such as Mr Elon Musk and Mr Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as Donald Trump himself in September.

In a wide-ranging three-hour interview with Mr Fridman in July, Ms Ivanka Trump touched on everything from architecture to The Apprentice, with detours into Michael Jackson to Dolly Parton. (She said Parton reminded her of her mother, and leads with “a lot of love and positivity”.)

She also reiterated that her decision to step away from politics was a calculation involving what being away from her children could mean for them emotionally.

“I’m not willing to make them bear that cost,” she said.

She also, more pointedly, called politics “a blood sport” and “one that you also can’t dabble in”. NYTIMES