by Doug Wead
Jared and Ivanka had been there before. On official business.
“Ivanka and I came in 2009,” Jared said. “We were invited in with a group of young entrepreneurs. This was the Obama White House, and we were supposed to present ideas.”9
Jared and Ivanka were on a guest list that included Ben Kaufman of Kluster; Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos; Blake Mycoskie, the founder of Toms Shoes; and Evan Williams, a cofounder of Twitter. The eclectic group had been gathered to “discuss the future of the ravaged U.S. economy.”10
Hsieh tweeted that they had been tapped to discuss “ways to help the economy that administration may not have thought of yet.”11
“We ended up just meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building,” Jared remembers. “We thought we’d meet some real administration people. But it ended up just being somebody from OPL.”
The more Jared described his visit, the more it sounded like the White House I understood and knew well. Invite in some high-profile people and listen to them and then do what you wanted to do in the first place. Only this time, they apparently, didn’t even listen to them. They had twenty-year-old children read carefully written White House talking points.
Jared was philosophical about it and said he would use the experience to help improve on White House meetings when the Trumps took over.
“It was a great group,” he said. “I met Jack Dorsey that day and Tony Hsieh, from Zappos. I met Jack Spero. He was with us. It was a very, very great group.”
“Did you actually tour the White House? Or were you stuck over in the Executive Office Building?” I asked.
“That day we would actually go through another contact, to get a tour of the State Floor and even to figure out how to get in and see the real West Wing.
“You know, I remember the feeling of what it was like to be invited into the White House. It was a very exciting day to be able to go down and share with the administration. And I also remember being very unsatisfied. They just had us in there to lecture us. They didn’t really ask our ideas on anything. They were just trying to get us to be talking heads for them.
“Now I think back on that. It makes me realize that everyone who comes to the White House to meet with us, for them, it’s a very important day. Sometimes we have the ability to deliver for them the things they need. Sometimes we can deliver quicker and better than anywhere else they can go. This is a meeting they prepare for. It is a meeting they tell people about. It’s an experience to come through here. We have to make sure that we give them one hundred and ten percent focus and that we follow through. We have to treat every meeting with that kind of respect.
“So yes, it was a big deal to come down here.
“Then I came down with my father-in-law during the transition. The president-elect had this meeting set up with President Obama. Trump asked me if I wanted to come along, so I joined him. So we were able to walk around and see the offices. That was a very, very neat experience.”
A CHEESEBURGER FOR ERIC
As soon as the Trumps left the Blair House for the service at Saint John’s, the famous White House staff set into motion. The Trump family’s clothes and special items were packed and prepared for the move across the street. As soon as President and First Lady Obama left with the Trumps for the drive down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, accompanied by their children, the White House staff began to perform their famous magic trick. They would move the Obamas out and the Trumps in. All in a matter of a three hours. It was a performance worthy of David Copperfield.
“So when we left the Blair House that morning,” Lara explained, “they told us, ‘You won’t be coming back here after the inauguration. You will be moving into the White House. But don’t worry about your things, it will all be taken care of.’”
So who was telling you this?
“I don’t know,” she said, perplexed. “Whoever was in charge.”
At this we both started laughing. The people had elected Donald Trump as president, but there always needed to be help to think through the details. I remembered being on White House staff and placing the footprints on the stage so the various dignitaries would know where to stand. Later I would look at videos of the biggest summits in world history, the leaders would walk out onstage and then look to the floor and rearrange themselves. “No, no, Prime Minister, you’re over there, I’m here.” They were matching up to the footprints that staffers had thought through. And they would soon be reading comments that staffers and aides had vetted. Donald Trump may be president, but someone else had to get his and the first lady’s clothes from Blair House over to the White House. And fast.
The actual swearing-in ceremony, when Donald Trump took the oath of office, was a blur for most of the Trump family. Some remembered George W. Bush making wisecracks, or Dick Cheney admonishing one of the dignitaries who was taking pictures with a cell phone: “No, no, you can’t do that.”
To Donald Trump Jr. the whole moment was like a dream. In one of our interviews he described being stunned. As to his father’s speech, which was criticized by some as being “unpresidential,” Don Jr. was proud of him. “It was a very Trumpian speech,” he said. “He made it clear that he was going to be a promises-made, promises-kept kind of president. His words were very straightforward. He didn’t send the signal that, ‘Well, now I’m here, I’m going to be just like all the other presidents.’ He was sending a message back to the so-called forgotten man. ‘I’m still with you. We did it and we are going to get this country the help it needs.’”
After the swearing-in ceremony, the Trump family motorcade joined the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.
“We left the Capitol,” Eric Trump said, “and we were going down the parade route when they suddenly stopped. It was all pre-arranged. They had snipers all over the rooftops and they had this, you know, 500-yard area, incredibly locked down. The family hopped out of the five or six limos we were in. You had all the press vehicles and you had everybody else, including bystanders.” They walked 500 yards of the parade route before returning to the motorcade and being driven the last mile to the White House, up the curved drive of the South Lawn, where they were brought to the front doors of the Diplomatic Reception Room.
At the White House there was a formal signing ceremony in the Oval Office, and the whole First Family trooped in, including the eight grandchildren. “That was amazing,” Eric Trump told me. “Going into the Oval Office for the first time. It is for anybody a time you will never forget. You look down at that carpet and you see the eagle holding the arrows and holding the olive branch.”
Ten-year-old Barron, standing next to his mother, the first lady, played peak-a-boo with Theodore Trump, still a baby in the arms of his mother, Ivanka Trump.
“We got to the White House,” Lara said, “and then had to turn around and go right back out to the first family reviewing stand in front to watch the rest of the parade, with all the marching bands from high schools across the country.”
“The White House staff was probably stalling for more time,” I suggested, “to get you all moved in.”
“Probably.”
The Trump family was walked out of the front door of the West Wing Lobby. The whole North Lawn had been reconfigured. “They had a big tent that allowed us to walk all the way down to Pennsylvania Avenue,” Eric remembered. “They had a cut in the fence. And this grandstand was right on the street. So literally all of the soldiers and school bands were marching right by our reviewing stand down Pennsylvania Avenue.
“It was pretty amazing to see that my father had become the commander in chief. That’s hard to describe. Now he was standing there with five generals, literally, it was the whole Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as we walked to the reviewing stand they were going by him and they were all saluting. The whole family was following him, and we could see the different cadets and soldiers standing at the doors, and they were all saluting and he was saluting back. It was an amazing moment. There had been a transformation. Our f
ather, a citizen, a businessman that we had worked with all or our lives, had become the commander in chief of the most powerful nation on earth.”
The reviewing stand was heated, but it was still somewhat exposed to the elements, and they were all freezing. Everyone in the Trump family was exhausted. Still, they beamed with gratitude. Sixty-three million Americans had voted for them. The inaugural balls would begin at seven p.m., which gave them little time to get ready.
In the next few hours of their lives, it was very possible that more pictures would be taken of Melania Trump and the other Trump sons and daughters than would be taken in all the rest of their lives put together.
The Trumps were now moved into the private quarters of the White House. This is one story above the State Floor, where tourists visit the East Room, the Red Room, the Blue Room, and the others, including the State Dining Room. The private quarters of the White House are depicted quite accurately in the American television series House of Cards, right down to the exact paint colors. The Lincoln Bedroom and the Queen’s Bedroom are there, as is the private family dining room. The president and first lady have rooms. The president also has an office there, where I had occasionally met with presidents in earlier years.
There is yet another floor above this, with an atrium. But it was all constantly being reconfigured and changed to fit the newest first family.
“We stayed upstairs on the top floor,” Don Jr. said. “I had my five children with me, running around, and we were all together in rooms nearby, so it was just insane. One of my kids went to lunch in the State Dining Room wearing his orange-and-green Ninja Turtle pajamas; another was dressed like Spider-Man.”
“Eric and I stayed in what was arguably the smallest bed upstairs,” Lara said. “I believe it was where Michelle Obama’s mom used to stay and, of course, we were the tallest two members of the family.
“We really had to rush to get ready to go to the balls. All the women were trying to get their hair and makeup fixed. We were running so late. My gosh, it was quite a fiasco. You know, everything runs behind anyway.
“I remember the White House butler coming up and saying, ‘Does anyone want something to eat?’
“We were all starving, so we were like, ‘Yeah!’
“I think I ordered sweet potato fries, and they brought us some food while we were changing clothes and trying to get ready. They brought it right to the room. They were amazing. So kind. The staff there is just incredible. I mean, just such nice people.”
“So what did you have, Eric?”
“Cheeseburger. What else?”
I asked Tiffany where she spent the night. “I stayed in the room next door to Don and near Eric and Lara. I remember ordering an iced sweet tea.” Tiffany, who now often spends the weekends at the White House, says, “Only at the White House can I get a sweet tea as good as it is when I’m home in Georgia!”12
Before sundown, Jared and Ivanka retreated to their bedroom for a special ceremony. “Ivanka and I had the Lincoln Bedroom,” Jared said, “so that night we lit the Shabbat candles at the White House.” This was a Jewish duty, to welcome the onset of Sabbath. “We were told that it was the first time that it had been done, that the Friday-night candles had been lit in the White House.”
STUCK IN THEIR HIGH HEELS
The inaugural balls, including the big one held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, were held in honor of the president and first lady and, really, the whole Trump family. Such events are not as glamorous as they may sound. Having once attended, even if you are a close friend of the president, they are not something you make a habit of attending again. They are packed wall-to-wall with people. The dance floors cannot be seen, unless, in this case, the dance floor was in fact, the stage, where the president and first lady danced and the crowd watched.
Moving through the lobby of the center was like moving through Main Street at Disneyland on Christmas. You could time your progress by a few yards per hour. “Let’s see, can I get to that door over there by eight p.m.?” Body odor, almost wiped out by American deodorant, makes a strong comeback. The restrooms turned into something you might find at a bus station. Even so, they were packed, with lines stretching out the doors with people in tuxedos and evening gowns waiting their turns for the toilet.
The president, the first lady, and the rest of the Trump family were escorted in through back doors and hustled down messy corridors. There was the stink of garbage. There were food trays and tall utility kitchen carts with dirty dishes stacked up. A Secret Service cordon cleared every aisle and led around every corner and then bam, though doors into the darkened backstage of the ballroom. Even this area was roped off into cordoned sections, with tents reserved for various officials and a presidential tent with couches and chairs and televisions and trays full of food covering tables.
“Don’t eat the food,” the Trump family was warned.
“Don’t worry,” they mumbled back. They were all in the hotel business.
“We went to two of the balls,” Lara remembers. “My parents and some friends of ours were at one of them. I forget which one. There were so many people. Forget it. You weren’t able to see anybody. Eric and I, and I think maybe Don and Vanessa, went to the hotel. We had no idea it would be like that. I mean, it was like a mob scene. People were so excited when we walked in.
“I didn’t have Secret Service [protection] at the time,” Lara explained. “Eric did. I didn’t. So, for me, it kind of felt like I was being thrown to the wolves. Remember, I was a pregnant woman, but nobody knew that, so all of these people were bum-rushing us. It was great because they were excited for us. But I was so tired. So I told Eric, like, at one o’clock in the morning, ‘I gotta get out of here.’
“Then my parents came in. I saw them and took a picture with them. It was quite an evening, to say the least. And that was the end of a very, very special day.”
Lara Trump had been on a treadmill at four o’clock that very morning. It was now after two a.m. the next day. In a few hours it would be daylight, and the whole Trump family would have another special inaugural service awaiting them at the National Cathedral.
“I woke up to the most astonishing situation. I couldn’t get my shoes on. My feet were swollen, they wouldn’t fit. We had been walking around all day in high heels. What did we expect? I wondered if any of the other ladies were having that problem. I literally went down the hall of the White House calling out, ‘Can anybody put your shoes on?’
“And all the Trump women screamed back the same thing. You could hear their reactions. None of us could get our shoes on. Our feet were so swollen.”
Inauguration Day was an entirely different story depending on whether you were one of the men in the Trump family or one of the women. The ladies, including the president’s wife, and his daughters, Ivanka and Tiffany, as well as the daughters-in-law, Lara and Vanessa, were all statuesque beauties. At least part of that was owing to their propensity for wearing high heels.
On January 19, the day before the inauguration, the Trump women had marched up and down the marble stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, making their appearance at a ceremonial concert of the voices of the people.
The next day, the day of the inauguration itself, they had climbed the slippery, elongated steps of the nation’s capital and then down the other side onto the platform for the swearing-in ceremony, repeating the process afterward, back to their limousines.
Worse. The presidential motorcade had stopped, as was the tradition, midway through the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. The Trump women, in all of their glory, had been force-marched down the street, with their husbands, smiling and waving to the cheering crowds. That night, they had glided across ballroom stages in their high heels at the inaugural balls.
Early in the morning of January 21, 2017, with little sleep to draw on, the Trump women, Melania, Ivanka, Tiffany, Vanessa, and Lara, were all in their White House rooms, racing to get ready for one more glorious day of celebration. Some
of them were soaking their feet in cold water, hoping to reduce the swelling. “We had to somehow get back into our shoes.”
“I didn’t soak my feet in cold water,” Tiffany told me. “But that would have been a good idea! I opted to carry as many Band-Aids as I could fit in my purse!”13
THE NIGHTMARE IS OVER
They were thirty minutes late for the service at the National Cathedral.14 But all the Trumps agreed that this, the last event of the three-day-long inaugural festivities, was well worth it. What appeared to be a young, blind child wearing sunglasses was guided gently to a position in front of the high altar just at the crossing. But this was not a child, though quite small in stature. This was Marlana VanHoose. Born with a congenital disease that left her blind, she was not expected to live a year. At the age of two she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. At the age of twenty-one, she now sang before the president of the United States and his family at the National Cathedral.
Some members of the Trump family had heard her sing the national anthem at the Republican National Convention. Others had missed the moment but had been told what they were about to experience. Marlana’s mannerisms were timid and humble, accentuated by the involuntary movements provoked by her palsy. Her voice was confident and sure. Marlana VanHoose had this. She was holding back, and the audience could feel it.
“She was unbelievable,” Don Jr. remembers. “She sang with such poise and power.”
Marlana sang an old gospel hymn, “How Great Thou Art.” Beginning slowly, understated, with a clear voice.
“Everyone was moved,” Lara Trump says. “By the time she was finished there wasn’t anybody in there who wasn’t totally in tears.”