Raising Trump

by Ivana Trump

  Looming large in my living room is a white grand piano that I never play myself. When I have parties, a professional comes to entertain my guests. Nothing is quite as charming as when someone spontaneously slides onto the piano bench or casually picks up a guitar or violin and makes beautiful music for her guests. It’s especially charming if a child does it.

  When the children were young, they all had at least one year of piano. Ivanka lasted the longest, from seven to nine. I don’t think she really liked it. I can’t say I liked it, either, when she played the same song eighteen times in a row with mistakes and I had to plaster a supportive smile on my face. After two years, she said, “Do I have to play piano if I don’t like it?” It was another echo from my own childhood. Like my father, I didn’t force it. I gave her and her brothers every chance to find what they loved and were good at. If they came back from a class and said, “I didn’t like it,” we’d look around for something else to try. If you excel, it gives you confidence. The arts were another opportunity, like sports and school, to set goals and achieve them.

  When Ivanka was eight, she had dreams of being a ballerina. She took classes at Lincoln Center’s School of American Ballet and was taught the basics by Russian masters Antonina Tumkovsky and Helene Dudin. She was good enough to be picked to perform in the Christmas production of The Nutcracker for two years in a row, dancing the parts of “party scene girl” and “angel.” We went as a family to her performances, and it filled my heart with joy and pride to see her dance on the same stage that George Balanchine performed on.

  Ivanka gave up her Aspen vacations to stay in New York with Bridget for the two weeks of daily performances. She has credited ballet with teaching her discipline and focus—skills that she uses in every aspect of life—and for giving her a lifelong appreciation for dance that she now shares with her daughter, Arabella, who is as big a dance fan as her mother. Ivanka encourages her daughter by signing her up for lessons and taking her to professional performances in the American Ballet Theatre in New York and, once, the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

  Ultimately, Ivanka’s ballerina dreams were not to be. She had to give it up when she was ten, even though she still loved it, because she was a head taller than the other girls and double the size of the boys. Oh, well. On to the next.

  • • •

  Fine art has always been very important to me as a collector and a fan. As a charity fund-raiser since the eighties, I’ve sponsored countless museum events in New York and beyond. Recently, I hosted an exhibit called “Born Wild” in Miami for French artist Richard Orlinski, most famous for his monumental mountaintop sculptures of bears, gorillas, and wolves at the French Alps ski resort Courchevel. We raised $80,000 for the people of Haiti, and Richard was so grateful, he gave me the signature piece from the exhibit, a three-meter-high rearing stallion in red that stands on the coffee table in my Miami living room. It makes me smile whenever I look at it.

  Every home I’ve had, I’ve filled with beautiful objects—and that includes the creations of my children. Ivanka took drawing and painting classes at the Museum of Modern Art in the early nineties. At that time, the whole city was buzzing about an eight-day-only installation of works by Matisse and Picasso, including the masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. I had a party, and as always, the kids were there to greet my guests and make small talk with them. One guest mentioned the installation, and Ivanka, around twelve, started talking about it, having seen and studied the paintings as part of her lessons at the museum that week. I just stood there and watched my adult friends ask my sixth-grade daughter for her insight about Picasso, thinking, That’s my girl!

  Even if she’d never picked up a pencil or paintbrush again, the classes were worth it to put her inside a museum every week. Being exposed to and educated about art when you’re young gives you a lifelong appreciation for it. Our tastes differ, but Ivanka and I share the love of immersing ourselves in our aesthetic. My style is luxurious, whimsical. In my town house on East Sixty-Fourth Street, I have a leopard room with spotted wallpaper and upholstery, and feline-themed art. My red and green living room is how Louis XVI would have lived if he had had money. Ivanka and Jared Kushner, her husband, like modern, minimalist style. They’re art fans and have collected pieces by Louis Eisner, Alex Israel, Garry Winogrand, and Christopher Wool, among others. Her new house in Kalorama, Washington, DC, is sparsely decorated in muted grays and whites. It’s the opposite of how I decorate, but as long as she’s happy, her style is okay by me.

  Don was just not into the arts. He knew this about himself very early, and there was no point in pushing him to do things he couldn’t have cared less about. But Eric was very creative, the kind of kid who was always busy with art projects. He took drawing classes at MoMA, too, and was into painting watercolors for a while. I framed them and hung them in Greenwich and my post-divorce Palm Beach house Concha Marina. My second husband (technically my third, but Austrian Fred doesn’t count), Riccardo Mazzucchelli, a patron of the arts, a serious collector of Eastern European masters’ paintings, and a talented craftsman, was a great influence on Eric. Riccardo set up a pottery studio in Greenwich with a few wheels and a kiln. I remember many weekends in the studio with the two of them, molding clay on a huge table into bowls and little statues. I made a leopard that is currently displayed in the leopard room (where else?). Eric made hundreds of ceramic objets d’art, painting them carefully with glaze. Riccardo would get up in the middle of the night to turn off the kiln to make sure Eric’s pieces didn’t explode. I had a thousand original Eric ashtrays all over the house for years, despite the fact that no one smoked.

  * * *

  ERIC

  When I went to boarding school, I fell in love with woodworking. They had a shop program there with a great teacher named Mr. Block (an ironic name, given his profession). I built a twenty-two-foot-long rowing scull and designed all sorts of Shaker-style furniture: benches, tables, everything that you could imagine. Any free time at boarding school when I wasn’t in class, playing sports, or studying, I was in the shop building.

  * * *

  -11-

  I HATE PLAYDATES

  Above sports and the arts, Donald and I placed the highest value on the kids’ education. I was in charge of choosing all of their schools. Getting accepted into a private nursery school in Manhattan in the eighties wasn’t as much of a blood sport as it is today, but it was competitive. I don’t really know what the admissions officers were looking for in a three-year-old, but the politeness and manners training I’d been working on with the kids—always saying “please” and “thank you,” smiling, and looking adults in the eye when they’re speaking to you—didn’t hurt. They went to Christ Church Day School on Park Avenue and East Sixtieth Street. It was only a few blocks from Trump Tower and two blocks from Central Park. It couldn’t have been a more convenient location for me or the nanny to run them over in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon, go to the park for playtime, and then go home for dinner.

  Preschool admission was just a warm-up for the much longer, more complicated process at grade school that included tours, testing, and evaluations. Why does a kindergartner need recommendations? They weren’t trying to get into medical school! As strange as it was, I took the process seriously because I knew how important it was for the kids to get the best possible education from day one.

  Some of the schools we looked at were for supersmart kids who, at six, were computer and math geniuses; these schools had very tough curriculums. Some schools were for the little dummies of rich parents, basically drawing and sandbox time for $20,000 a year. I was looking for a balance: schools with top-notch sports, arts, and academics in a smart, friendly environment.

  For Don, a competitive, sports-obsessed kid, I choose Buckley, an all-boys school on East Seventy-Third between Park and Lexington.

  Ivanka went to Chapin, a small all-girls school with a cozy, nurturing vibe (Jackie Kennedy was an alum) on East End Avenue
and East Eighty-Fourth Street.

  For Eric, I went with a coed experience at Trinity on West Ninety-First between Amsterdam and Columbus.

  Three kids at three different schools in three different Manhattan neighborhoods. The logistics of just getting them there was a nightmare. We had limos and company cars with drivers to take them. Don and Eric sometimes took a bus that pulled up right in front of Trump Tower.

  Chapin admissions required a series of interviews with school personnel, first with Donald and me, then Ivanka, then all three of us together. It was endless. I always dressed well, usually in a business suit, because I was coming from work at the Plaza Hotel and returning there afterward. When Ivanka went to her interviews, she wore dresses and tights, Mary Janes, and her hair pulled back from her face. The other mothers on the tours weren’t professionally dressed, and their kids were usually in jeans and T-shirts. I wondered if Ivanka and I might have overdressed, but then the other mothers started asking me for interview style advice for themselves and their daughters. I didn’t know any better than they did! We must have been doing it right, because Ivanka was accepted and took her place in a class of only fifty girls. She loved going there.

  I kept a close eye on the children’s academic progress during homework hour and by scrutinizing their quarterly grades. If they dipped below a B+ in any subject, we sat down and talked about what the problem was and worked to get their scores up. Their schools were top-echelon, very competitive, and full of the children of the superrich. Parents spared no expense to put their kids at the head of the class. It was common for them to spend big bucks on tutors for their seven-year-olds.

  Not me. I was already paying plenty to send them to these schools and expected the teachers to do the teaching, not private tutors. If the kids needed help, they got it from me. History wasn’t my strong suit. They’d ask me about things that happened hundreds of years ago and I would say, “I live in the now! I’m more interested in tomorrow than yesterday!” Math was my forte. Before going out for the night, I’d sit at the table in a designer couture gown with fifty pounds of beading, full makeup, and hair up to the ceiling, with algebra books open in front of us, scratching out formulas with sharpened number-two pencils. When they erased a mistake and left little rubber clumps on the paper, I’d yell, “Brush away from the dress!” God forbid some of those pink eraser crumbs got stuck in the beading.

  Ivanka was very popular at Chapin, always invited to every party and in high demand for playdates. She was, and is, sweet, friendly, and pretty. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to be her friend. That said, I got the feeling that some of the girls pursued her because her parents’ photos appeared in the newspapers with celebrities at fashion shows, concerts, and parties, and in our box seats at Yankee Stadium and the US Open tennis tournament.

  Donald used to tell the kids “Don’t trust anyone” as an early business lesson, but it also applied to friendships. I grew up wary of everyone outside our family and closest friends, always conscious of the possibility that a chatty neighbor could be a communist spy. I didn’t take loyalty and trust lightly then, and I don’t now. I have to be careful about confiding in people, because everything I say—and a lot of things I never said—could turn up in the papers or online. Former friends and employees have lied to the press about me. One of my boyfriends (after husband number three) tried to blackmail me for money. I thought he was a nice man, and then he stupidly threatened me with Photoshopped pictures. I called the FBI, and two days later, he left the country and my lawyer Gary Lyman coordinated with the FBI to make sure he never entered the US again. You’d think people would know not to mess with me (or my lawyer).

  My wariness might’ve passed down to the kids. I never discouraged them from having playdates, disapproved of their friendships, or said, “You are not allowed to see _________.” If they could make time in their busy schedules between sports, lessons, homework, and family outings, they could have as many as playdates as they liked . . . at their friends’ houses. I did discourage playdates at Trump Tower. The triplex was just too huge and lavish. “You live here?” the friends would say, and you could see the intimidation, awe, jealousy, or resentment on their little faces. In an instant, my children would be judged on their parents’ wealth and not their own character, for good or bad. Their classmates would then talk to each other, and the children would be singled out as “different.” Even among this population—the offspring of Manhattan’s elite—none had their names in gigantic gold letters on the side of their own building. The inevitable result would be negative.

  The only person who had an open invitation to come to the triplex for playdates whenever he wanted was Michael Jackson.

  The King of Pop lived in Trump Tower and was a good friend of our whole family. He’d stop by and chat with Donald and me for twenty minutes, and then he’d go up to the kids’ floor to hang out with them for hours and hours. They’d watch MTV, play Mario Brothers or Tetris, and build Trump Tower in Legos. Michael was a thirty-year-old kid. He could relate to Ivanka and the boys better than to us.

  When Ivanka performed in The Nutcracker, Michael, at the peak of his fame, went to a performance and caused a near riot in the audience, as well as some backstage controversy. One of the teenage ballerinas heard he was coming and got the idea that they should all wear one white glove, an homage to his signature style. The teachers were horrified, and the teen dancer was taken to task for even thinking of compromising the costumes of the production. Ivanka was mortified to be the indirect cause of the tension, but she didn’t let it affect her performance. Michael told me that she looked like an angel that night.

  For the record, during those playdates with Michael, the nannies or I was always in the room. My read on him was asexual. He was a child himself in a man’s body, tender, sweet, and gentle. I never believed the accusations that he molested those kids. There’s no way he could have hurt anyone.

  In Greenwich, the kids had their weekend friends, the children of our neighbors. I remember Ivanka hosting sleepover parties there—I would have to yell to get her and her five girlfriends to go to sleep before three a.m. Eric and Don would ride bikes and roam the woods with a pack of boys for hours. They had a set of friends in Palm Beach, too. But no matter where we were, my three kids were each other’s best friends and constant companions.

  • • •

  I’ve heard that being a parent to a school-age child zooms you back to your own schooltime issues and insecurities. Would I be popular with the other mothers? Would they include me in coffee dates and aerobics classes? Would they invite me on playdates?

  I could not have cared less.

  I avoided playdates like the plague. The nannies did all the dropping-off and picking-up duties. I was working nonstop at the hotels and was just too busy to bond with the other moms. It was a challenge to show up for all three kids’ Parents’ Days, recitals, concerts, games, plays, and graduation ceremonies. I admit, I missed a few. My rule was that someone—me, Donald, the nannies, my parents, or a combination—had to be at every one. I had a strategy for going to the events with the best possible time efficiency. I’d take a car to the school, sit in a seat that my mother or Dorothy saved for me, watch the performance, and cheer on my child. I’d find them afterward for a kiss, hug, and congratulations, and then I’d be out the door and back at my desk within an hour. Later that night at dinner, we’d discuss the performance in detail. Parent-teacher conferences had a high priority. Donald always came to those, and usually let me do the talking. I’d book it into my schedule well in advance, to make enough time for an in-depth conversation. I’d prepare a list of questions beforehand, and if I didn’t like the answers, I’d work with the teachers and administrators to make the necessary adjustments.

  The energy and effort I put into the kids’ schools were about academics and extracurriculars only. I didn’t have the bandwidth for volunteering. The majority of moms who tried to rope me into committees were stay-at-home moms with no
work obligations. Those committees, I heard, were really about socializing, gossiping, and complaining anyway. If I had a complaint, I went directly to the dean, and I saw no point in gossiping with the moms. The women were good people and highly involved in their children’s lives, but I just had nothing to say to them and no time to say it. I barely made it to baby showers for some of my nearest and dearest.

  I’m just not the kind of woman who casts a net for new friends. My core group and I have known each other for forty years. Dorothy can tell you exactly who is my best friend, just a friend, a social climber, a user, an abuser, or a nobody. She’s the gatekeeper of my life and knows who to put right through and who to get rid of. Again, it’s about loyalty and trust. How many best friends do you really have? Four? Five? That’s it. You don’t need more than that if the bonds are deep.

  Casual friendships actually cause problems for me. To this day, people I meet once or twice will use the wafer-thin connection to call restaurants and make reservations under my name. Recently, I got a call from the Polo Bar on East Fifty-Fifth Street, a popular restaurant in the city. Some nights, you couldn’t get a reservation even if your life depended on it. The maître d’ said, “Hello, Ivana. Did you make a reservation for fourteen people for Saturday night?”

  I said, “No! I’m in Miami!”

  The reservation problem is a little-known hazard of being famous. A dozen maître d’s in New York, Miami, and Saint-Tropez have me on speed dial to confirm bookings in my name. “If I made the reservation, I’ll be there,” I tell them. “If I’m not, call the cops!”