Free, Melania

by Kate Bennett

  During the campaign for Trump’s presidency, even though Melania stayed out of the way, the media liked to gin up stories about stepmother and stepdaughter. (The New York Times ran a piece titled “Why Men Want to Marry Melanias and Raise Ivankas.”) A lot of it was Trump’s own fault for talking about one whenever he talked about the other. To this day, more often than not, if he mentions Ivanka, he quickly follows by mentioning Melania and vice versa. “Ivanka has been so great. And Melania has also been so great.”

  For a time, the two women had enjoyed a comfortable, if not warm, alliance. But the White House has not been good for the relationship between Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump. “Cordial, not close,” is how it was described to me by someone who has spent ample time around both women.

  At the start of Trump’s presidency, Melania and Ivanka were equally popular with the public, according to polling. Both were curious accoutrements to the Donald Trump administration, glamazons about to be a part of American political history. Now the stock of Daddy’s favorite child has dropped and continues to do so as more time passes in Washington. Melania, however, remains the most liked member of the Trump family and the administration. Some would argue that’s not a difficult achievement, considering the company she finds herself in.

  In the beginning of her White House tenure, before her stepmother moved in, Ivanka had free rein. Unlike Melania, Ivanka had been an active and prizewinning surrogate for her father: glamorous and personable, she had filled in on the trail when Melania had abstained. Ivanka was the de facto spouse.

  When Ivanka arrived at the White House, she took liberties because of what she had achieved, perhaps deservedly so. She was able to walk the hallways of the West Wing, but it was also fine for her to take the occasional dip into the East Wing. Without Melania there, she had the virtual run of the place, which must have been exciting and alluring.

  Ivanka was all too happy to take at least a pass at the role of first lady, subbing in for Melania when she was still in New York living at Trump Tower. Like her father, and as a Trump, she wanted it all and didn’t see that as absurd or understand why she couldn’t have it. She wished to be taken seriously as a political adviser, a career woman, a real estate executive, a brand developer, an influencer, a working mom, and a devoted wife. And she tried her hand at being all of the above and then some. And Trump let her do as she pleased, as he had basically done since she was born.

  In February 2017, just one month after her dad was in office, Ivanka posted on her Instagram a picture of herself in the Oval Office seated at the Resolute desk, her father, the president, at her right and the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at her left. Both men were standing. “A great discussion with two world leaders about the importance of women having a seat at the table!” Ivanka captioned the post, with emojis of the American and Canadian flags.

  It was an empty statement, meant only to showcase that she got these two world leaders to stand over her—and Dad let her sit at his desk. It felt demoralizing for the men, props in her social media shenanigans. When you’ve stared at the picture long enough, you recognize its utter absurdity. It was cringe-worthy.

  Melania would never post something like that. No sooner would Melania make a joke about being a woman seated at the table in a setting as revered as the Oval Office than she would do cartwheels across the South Lawn. Not only is she private, she isn’t prone to social media “moments” meant for clicks.

  Ivanka also featured her three kids, particularly the two older ones, Arabella and Joseph, in her Instagram feed. After the family arrived in Washington, D.C., she documented the various family field trips she took them on around town: to museums and the zoo, sports games and parks. One day she brought Arabella, six at the time, to the Supreme Court to watch a case be argued. And she did it all with a smile and a blowout, almost always wearing something from her eponymous label. It was like “D.C.” Ivanka was the Enjoli woman from the old commercials, doing it all because she’s a “wooo-man.” It wasn’t unusual for her hungry fans to peep in on every part of her day if they followed her social media feeds: Morning workout! White House time! Crafts with the kids after school! Dinner!

  Posting such frequent and private details is, again, something Melania would never do. For Melania, the goal was to make Barron virtually disappear, not place him in the virtual world for strangers’ eyes to gaze upon.

  Melania was smart enough to know that using her son in her social media feeds might make her more relatable as a mother to the rest of America or that having a staffer snap a photo of him in the White House with his dad (the way they used to for People magazine or The Apprentice) would likely help Trump project the softness he needed. But she wasn’t about to do it. “Sacrificing her son’s privacy to look well rounded on social media for strangers? No way. Not Melania,” says a friend. But Ivanka was all in. Kids, job, White House—nothing was off-limits.

  “Taking a call in the White House with my personal assistant, Theodore” was the caption of one shot of Ivanka in a White House hallway holding her youngest son. Marketing 101 was Ivanka’s wheelhouse. She fancied herself a big part of the reason why her father had won the White House, and she’d earned that right, endlessly campaigning, even while heavily pregnant, and rarely taking a day off from spreading the MAGA message across the country. If she wanted to walk around like she owned the place and have her kids hold their grandfather’s hand as they strolled the South Lawn to the helicopter, she was going to do it.

  In January 2017, as Trump took the oath of office on Inauguration Day and placed his hand on the bible, held by Melania, Ivanka, in a bright white suit by Oscar de la Renta, positioned herself in a very Ivanka way—right in front of the podium, with the microphone at her chest level, the seal of the president of the United States clearly visible. From an angle, especially in almost every front-facing photograph after the fact, Ivanka, standing where she was, looked to be the president, or a president, about to speak to her people. Don Jr. was off to the side, behind Melania and Barron; Eric to Ivanka’s other side; and Tiffany, always Tiffany, farthest away from her dad.

  Heading to the parade that same weekend, Ivanka posted from inside the limo, her kids sitting in protective booster seats. It was all very wannabe Kennedy, but was she trying too hard? A lot of people thought so. Arriving in D.C. days before, she stepped off a government plane in an all-green outfit, also Oscar de la Renta, baby Theodore in one arm, guiding Arabella with her other. Ivanka strode from the plane first, Barron, Tiffany, and Melania’s parents behind her. She was saying that she had arrived, here to lead the Trump family, next gen.

  Ivanka posted shots from inside the White House that weekend to her millions of followers, tweeting a video of barefoot little Theodore having his first crawl in the State Dining Room, Ivanka seated cozily on the rug, added as part of the Obama renovation of the room a year before. She looked at home, which would have been fine, had the home not been the people’s house, and had Melania not been its actual mistress.

  As soon as the official public events of the inaugural weekend were over, Melania and Barron hopped a jet back to New York, not even sticking around to stay the night in the White House. Melania had soured on the festivities early, according to one account—the focus, the pressure, the overwhelming need to be “on” was just too much for her and her son. Entry into the presidential bubble was not something she wanted to drink from a fire hose. Ivanka, on the other hand, didn’t want the weekend to end.

  But that is who Ivanka is: from birth groomed to find a marketable way to connect and sell a brand to the public. Born in 1981 to Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana Trump, young Ivanka was the apple of her dad’s eye. She was driven and ambitious, and she stayed out of trouble, for the most part, attending New York City’s posh private day school Chapin before heading to bucolic Wallingford, Connecticut, for boarding school at Choate Rosemary Hall, a favorite of the millionaire set. Ivanka had paid attention to both her mother’s and her father’s driv
e and competitiveness, which rubbed off on her, clearly: she worked as a model in her teenage years and later entered elite Georgetown University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, Trump’s alma mater. While other heiresses with family names that are part of the pop culture vernacular opted to exploit their wealth for fame (remember Paris Hilton?), Ivanka turned her sights on business and adopted a lower social profile. She partied and shopped and dated around and about Manhattan, but she did so without much in the way of accompanying scandal. As she grew into a swanlike beauty of five foot eleven, she weathered the tabloid stories about her parents’ divorce and did so with more responsibility and self-awareness than most girls her age probably would, given her background. She didn’t use her family’s wealth and her exposure to the tabloid headlines as an excuse to devolve into a poor little rich girl, partying too hard, acting out, and so forth. She kept it together, and did so remarkably well.

  It was no surprise that eventually she joined the family business and used the family name to spin off her own fashion and jewelry lines, get book deals, and attract social media followers. By the time she got to Washington, Ivanka was married to another wealthy heir from a New York real estate family, Jared Kushner, and was the mother of two small children.

  She would promote, promote, promote—her Instagram feed becoming an unofficial advertisement for her brand, which she had stepped away from to be in the White House (and which would fold for good several months later) and her new book, titled Women Who Work. What Ivanka failed to recognize was something that, like her father, she just couldn’t fathom: she rubbed a majority of people the wrong way. Instead of finding her strong and amazing, they found her cloying and ubiquitous.

  In the family’s first interview after Donald Trump was elected, Ivanka insisted—with her father’s blessing—that she be seated in the front “row” of the family. After Trump was interviewed by Lesley Stahl alone and then with Melania, the 60 Minutes crew set up the chairs in the living room of the triplex with Trump, Melania, and Ivanka in front and Tiffany, Don Jr., and Eric in back. Trump liked when his daughter was on equal footing with his wife, and Melania, in a red, tulip-sleeve Antonio Berardi dress, let it happen—she knew to pick her battles, and she had gotten used to Ivanka wanting to have equal billing. It didn’t particularly bother her.

  During the interview, Melania was her usual self, calm and measured, telling Stahl that she was prepared to lose her independence. “You won’t be able to walk down the street,” Stahl said, trying perhaps to stir up some emotion. “I didn’t do that for two years already,” answered Melania. “It will just continue. It’s another level, but it will continue.” She was measured and practical, and the audience couldn’t tell if she was happy about losing her identity or furious about it.

  That interview would also be the first time that Melania addressed what would become the Achilles’ heel of her Be Best campaign—stopping cyberbullying. Her husband is the biggest cyberbully on the planet. How can you tell kids to be nice online when your husband is such a jerk? asked Stahl—not quite in those exact words, but something to that effect. “So, you never say to him, ‘Come on’ [when he tweets bad things]?”

  Melania: “I did.”

  Trump: “She does.”

  Stahl’s not buying it, and she keeps at Melania—it’s revelatory, because clearly Stahl thinks there’s no way this woman who has been such a passive participant throughout the campaign has the balls to tell her husband she thinks he should shut up when he tweets something horrible. “If he does something that you think crossed a line, will you tell him?”

  Melania: “Yes. I tell him all the time.”

  Stahl: “All the time?”

  Melania: “All the time.”

  Ivanka doesn’t get these questions. During her sit-down, she used all the “Ivanka” adjectives that she has become known for using—“We had enormous pride, joy. It’s incredibly exciting. And we’re very grateful for the opportunity. And we take that opportunity very seriously,” she said when asked what it was like to watch her father win the election. She also denied that she would join the administration. Sort of. “No, I’m going to be a daughter. But I’ve said throughout the campaign that I am very passionate about certain issues and that I want to fight for them. Wage equality, childcare. These are things that are very important for me. I’m very passionate about education. Really promoting more opportunities for women. So, you know, there are a lot of things that I feel deeply, strongly about. But not in a formal administrative capacity.” Hmm.

  Funny how when Melania told Stahl about her antibullying agenda, she received pushback, getting questions about her husband and his behavior. Yet when Ivanka, with all of her breathy adjectives, said she wanted to promote women, Stahl didn’t ask her about the charges being levied against her father from a number of women, who accused him of sexual misconduct. Melania had already been labeled the vapid-model trophy wife; Ivanka, the savvy career mom.

  Later that same evening, a press release went out to the media: “Style Alert,” it said, Ivanka was wearing “her favorite bangle from the Metropolis Collection” from her Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry line on 60 Minutes, and it can be yours for a mere $10,800. The release was not only in poor taste, it also highlighted the nebulous legal vortex that Ivanka and her various fashion and jewelry lines had slipped into, where she was sort of using her father’s election to sell her wares, but also sort of maybe not? Ivanka had tried something similar after her RNC speech, tweeting a link from her personal Twitter account: “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.”

  It was, yet again, something Melania would never do.

  But Ivanka was convinced she could also, on top of everything else, become a style influencer. Unprompted, she showed her gown for an inaugural gala on her Instagram feed (a white Oscar de la Renta dress with a big black obi-style sash), from inside a chinoiserie-wallpapered bedroom at Blair House before she left for the party. Melania, on the other hand, made people wait to see her gown, only caring that the public saw her body-hugging, head-to-toe nude sequined Reem Acra gown if they happened upon it via a press photo after the fact. Melania had already taken a page from Jackie Kennedy’s book, in that she understood, as did Jackie, that the more there is mystery, the more they, the public, want to know. Jackie would dole out bits and pieces of her life, her children, the White House, but she was never effusive about a desire to be an open book. Melania felt the same. She knew that crumbs were an effective tool to lure favor, and if she used them all at once, she was blowing a valuable commodity. Ivanka, on the other hand, was eager for everyone to see how fabulous everything was right away, as quickly and intimately as possible.

  During the day, Ivanka stepped in front of as many cameras as she could in the White House, at cabinet meetings, during dignitary visits, at roundtables, and inside the Oval Office. Often, she wore sleeveless tops and floral dresses, while other female staffers stuck to de rigueur navy suits. Ivanka was at the greatest job in the world, America! Or, possibly, going to a garden party.

  Meanwhile, up in New York, Melania was hiding from paparazzi, who were desperate for a glimpse of the new first lady. The dynamic between stepmother and stepdaughter was growing more distant. Melania was looking at Ivanka’s behavior in Washington, not quite with surprise but, rather, with acceptance. As she knew to be true of Ivanka’s father, Melania knew that trying to change someone or expect different behavior from them was a fruitless endeavor. Ivanka had always craved the spotlight; Melania had wandered into it. Ivanka saw the presidency as her chance to achieve her own ambitions; Melania saw it as something tangential to her life, which was primarily being a mother.

  Before Melania even moved to the White House, Ivanka had posted more than a hundred photos of her children on her social media accounts. Melania had almost zero (well, there was one old one of her and Barron that she posted in honor of Mother’s Day 2017). Melania stealthily settled in at the White House on June
11, 2017, only announcing it via a photo on her @FLOTUS Twitter account that showed candles lit on a table in the executive residence and the view through a window over the Truman Balcony that looked out onto the South Lawn; the caption read, “Looking forward to the memories we’ll make in our new home! #Movingday.” A few days after that, Ivanka, thirsty as ever and happy to show she’s still there, too, posted a photo of Arabella, hand uplifted, in the White House China Room, with the caption, “Raise your hand if you’re ready for the weekend?!”

  Behind the scenes, Melania had made it clear from New York that Ivanka was not to have an office in the East Wing, because the East Wing, when she ultimately did arrive, was to be her territory and hers alone. A stickler for tradition, Melania wasn’t about to bend the rules for Ivanka’s unprecedented role in the administration, which was publicly becoming part adviser, part first family representative, and, quite honestly, part first lady. An office in the East Wing wasn’t something Ivanka necessarily wanted anyway; she was really much more about having full run of the White House, east, west, north, and south, but people who know her assume it was Ivanka who had leaked the possibility to the press. Melania was already redecorating the space, picking new paint and furniture for the official Office of the First Lady, a suite of offices on the second floor of the East Wing, first established as the home base of the first lady by Rosalynn Carter in 1978.

  Meanwhile, Ivanka was busy trying to create the model of what a first daughter is, since there hadn’t really been anyone like her, in her role as family member and presidential adviser, in modern White House history. If she hurried, she could possibly establish herself as the most essential woman in her father’s administration, someone with political influence who was also a celebrity hybrid of sorts and who could potentially parlay her time in the White House into a spin-off series, to use television vernacular.