The Surprising Reason Ivanka Trump Won't Return to Work at the White House

The Surprising Reason Ivanka Trump Won't Return to Work at the White House

During President Donald Trump's first term, his eldest daughter Ivanka served as his senior advisor. But for his second term, she won't be returning to the White House.

“The main reason I am not going back to serve now is, I know the cost,” she told The Skinny Confidential's “Him+Her” podcast hosts Lauryn Bosstick and Michael Bosstick. “And it’s a price that I’m not willing to make my kids bear. My primary goals were just to, like, be the best freaking mom. Every time I had to miss something, I’m like, ‘I will never let this happen again in the minute I leave the White House.’ I feel super great about this decision.”

She added, “I love policy and impact. I hate politics. And unfortunately, the two are not separable…There is a darkness to that world that I don’t really want to welcome into mine.” She called it a “very dark, negative business.”

After her father lost reelection in 2020, Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, moved their family to Florida. Her goal for her father's second administration is to be a daughter, not an advisor, she said. “I think I’m most looking forward to just being able to show up for him as a daughter and be there for him to take his mind off things, to watch a movie with him, or watch a sports game,” she said. “To know that he can be with me, and be himself and just relax and for me to be able to provide that for him in a very loving way as his daughter.”

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During Trump's first term, Ivanka and Jared faced scrutiny on a number of issues, including how they used their positions for personal gain.

“When they beelined to Washington, the whole point of doing that was so they could raise their own profiles and impress the people they’ve been trying to impress for years,” Elizabeth Spiers, a former editor in chief of the Observer, told T&C. “The Trump administration was so horrible—and they were so complicit in the badness of it—that it sort of had the opposite effect. The type of people they were trying to impress when they left won’t have anything to do with them.”


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