by Ivana Trump
Once, I made these paperweights for all her friends. I’d pour Lucite on top of carefully selected flowers and seashells in a mold, and then I’d use tweezers to insert little slips of paper with each woman’s name, handwritten, into the plastic before it hardened.
I was the entertainment, too. There was a theater at Mar-a-Lago. After dinner, my mother and her friends would go have drinks there, and I’d get on the stage and perform for them. I loved the show Annie and sang “Tomorrow.” I went through a Madonna phase and would do all her hits—“Vogue” definitely, and “Express Yourself”—with dancing. Mom’s friends would watch and give me a round of applause. I remember being really excited about doing it, too.
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SMALL TALK
I regularly hosted parties at Trump Tower. When the guests started to arrive, I sent the kids to the living room to entertain them. I would come down in fifteen minutes, fashionably late, and then relieve the kids of their host duties. “This is what you’re going to do,” I instructed. “Go downstairs, say, ‘Hello, I’m Don’ or ‘Eric’ or ‘Ivanka.’ Take a drink order. Speak to everyone as they come in. No sitting on the sofa by yourself! Stay on your feet and go from person to person. A little small talk, a little coochi coochi, moochi moochi. ‘How are you?’ ‘How is the weather?’ ‘How do you know my parents?’ ‘I just came from ballet’ or ‘soccer’ or ‘karate.’ ”
Sometimes, I would spy on the kids before I made my entrance.
“Hello, I’m Don Trump. Can I take your coat?”
“Hi, I’m Ivanka Trump. Mom is on her way down. How are you?”
Fabio, a male model for countless romance novel covers, came to one of my parties, and Ivanka’s composure was shaken. She blushed adorably when they shook hands. He was, and still is, a very handsome man! I believe she got him a drink and moved on to the next guest without being too flustered.
When I made my entrance, guests would say, “Your children are so polite! What great manners!” They seemed so surprised, as if they’d never met children who looked them in the eye before. It was disarming to see a nine-year-old working the room, mingling with movie stars, politicians, and financiers with grace and confidence. They weren’t forced to do it, but it was expected. Entertaining was just a part of being in our family. The kids were never afraid of talking to adults or self-conscious about going up to strangers and introducing themselves, because they did it often from a young age. It’s a bit like skiing. The younger you start, the less fear you have, and the better you are at it.
One day in the late eighties, I was by the pool with the majordomo of Mar-a-Lago, and we got a phone call from the Royal Air Force, from Prince Charles’s social secretary. That night, Charles was the guest of honor at a gala hosted by upper-crusty horsey people at the International Polo Club in Wellington, Florida. His social secretary said that the plane was landing at the West Palm Beach airport in one hour and, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, might Prince Charles pop by for a tour of Mar-a-Lago?
In other words, I had sixty minutes to organize a royal reception! As soon as I hung up, my assistant and I got on the phones and called thirty of my friends. “Get over here, now,” I said. “And dress modestly!” Estée Lauder showed up fifteen minutes later looking like Queen Elizabeth in a hat, pearls, a conservative dress, gloves, and a boxy clutch. Charles’s security team arrived before he did to go over the property and the grounds, checking under every bush with bomb-sniffing dogs. They asked me for a list of every person who would be at the tea, including the family, our friends, and the staff. I had to scramble to get a list of eighty names together in ten minutes.
And then he arrived via limo. Prince Charles was charming, gracious, and friendly. He was very interested in the history of the house and asked a lot of questions during the tour. Afterward, he posed for pictures with everyone. Our adult guests, who were usually the opposite of shrinking violets, were a bit shy to meet him. But the kids were as cool as the cucumbers in the tiny sandwiches. Don, Ivanka, and Eric walked right up to him, introduced themselves, shook his hand, and asked, “How are you?” “How was your flight?” “Can I get you a drink?” (Charles skipped the tea and had whiskey instead.)
SOUND BITES
Oprah. Barbara Walters. Jay Leno. The kids faced off with all of them. Although they grew up watching their parents talk to the press, I can’t say that either one of us gave the kids concrete instructions on dealing with the media. It’s a natural instinct, an innate intelligence. You either have it or you don’t.
If they were paying attention, the kids got the best media training money could buy from Donald and me. We were always in front of the camera or headlining events with prepared speeches or off-the-cuff remarks. Trained public speakers can go for an hour without notes and then do fifteen minutes of Q & A. I used to do it all the time on the lecture circuit. The kids attended enough of them to learn how it’s done. There’s nothing to be afraid of if you are expressing yourself freely and honestly.
Once, when Ivanka was just starting out in the Trump Organization, Donald brought her along to a meeting so she could watch him in action. But then, completely spontaneously, he called her up onstage to address the crowd for him. It was a sink-or-swim situation for her, not unlike the time my father took me out to the middle of the lake and said, “Now swim back to shore.” Ivanka was nervous at first, but once she started talking, she realized she knew her stuff and did very well. As I said before, you either have it or you don’t.
Before a speaking engagement or media appearance, I make sure I think ahead and plan answers to predictable questions, including the ones I’d rather not have to deal with at all. I can tell what kind of response reporters want by their tone of voice and the way they look at me. If the tone is hostile, I ignore the question or I’ll say, “Well . . .” and then stop talking. The reporter is forced to wait for me to say something, and when I don’t, they have dead air, which is the worst thing for TV. The reporter has to move on to the next question.
Eric and Ivanka really enjoyed their multiple seasons on The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. The shooting schedule was tough on them and they were often too busy to meet me for lunch, which was my only complaint about their TV stardom. I watched the show to see them on it, but I didn’t find it suspenseful in the least. I could always predict which person would get fired because I know how Donald thinks.
Needless to say, all three kids were magnificent at the Republican National Convention, giving articulate, impassioned speeches to support their father. Don presented with real confidence and authority, but I don’t think he enjoys the spotlight, or how the media can spin the most innocent comment into something offensive. No matter how articulate you might be, CNN or the New York Times will use your words to reinforce their own agenda. This is why I didn’t get involved with the press at that time. “Too many cooks in the kitchen,” I said. Don was a good sport this winter when the Times ran an article with a strange and stiff photo of him sitting on a tree stump. The Internet turned it into a meme making fun of his rigid posture. He could have been upset, but he started posting the images on Instagram to show people that he thought some of them were funny, too. You learn not to take things personally.
Eric is very good at controlling interviews. If he doesn’t like a question, he ignores it and talks about what he wants to discuss, always smiling. It’s beautiful to watch.
Ivanka holds the reins tightly. Even though she’s the most publicly visible of my children, she rarely gives interviews these days and prefers to control her image carefully through her own social media. When a public dust storm whips up, she waits for it to pass without comment. To me, that’s Ivanka being smart. She knows that when you throw gasoline on a fire, it only gets bigger. But if you cut off the oxygen, it dies down. She has to be especially careful now in her role as assistant to the president. As she told Gayle King on CBS This Morning, the most important conversations she’ll have with her father will probably never be reveale
d in public. Sometimes, the most impactful words anyone can say are softly spoken, delivered at precisely the right moment in the right ear.
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KIDS WHO WORK
In order to be liked by their kids, many parents do everything for them. I didn’t really care how popular I was at home and made it clear that the children had to carry their own weight. They made their own beds and kept their own rooms neat. On the slopes, they hauled their own equipment. Granted, the nannies or housekeepers might have remade the bed and reorganized the toys, but the kids gave it their finest effort.
“If you make a mess,” I said, “you clean it up.”
“Why do I have to?”
“Because I said so.” Speaking with a certain tone was almost always enough, but if the kids failed to do their chores, or they committed the crime of whining or complaining about it, they faced the consequences. Was complaining about cleaning their room worth a red bottom? Only once.
As the kids got older, their list of chores got longer. They started helping around the house and yard, sorting laundry, walking the dog, raking, weeding, skimming leaves out of the pool, taking out the garbage. No one liked that one because you took your life into your hands doing battle with Connecticut’s commando raccoons.
I happen to believe that chores can be therapeutic, and kids thrive when they have a sense of personal responsibility and a clear understanding of what’s expected of them. Why should kids get out of bed before noon if they don’t have to? If their palms are covered with cash whenever they put their hand out, why develop ambition to earn it? Motivation comes from associating effort with reward. My father instilled it in me when I was six years old and had to wake up at dawn to get to the pool to do laps. I didn’t know any other way to exist. The sooner you instill the drive to succeed in your children, the better. I taught them that if you do nothing, you get nothing. But the harder you work, the bigger the payoff. The formula isn’t magic. It’s how the world spins.
At thirteen, Donny was a dock attendant at the marina I built at Trump Castle, tying up boats, running supplies, gassing up, and doing whatever the marina master asked him to do. The Trump Princess was docked there, and we’d put high rollers on the boat for cruises to entertain them. Don assisted the guests, stocked the supplies, and cleaned up afterward. He loved boats. During our vacation weeks on my yacht each summer, he scraped barnacles off the hull and swabbed the decks. He would get so tan by the end of the month!
Both boys did landscaping on Trump properties, trimming hedges, mowing the lawns, and getting their hands dirty. It was hard work, for long hours in the summer heat, alongside men who did the same or similar work to feed their families. As Don said often on the campaign trail, “Our father had us work with the guys who had doctorates in common sense, not the guys who had doctorates in finance.” Don’s salary was five dollars an hour. After two years at the same rate, he finally asked his father, “Why haven’t you given me a raise?”
Donald said, “You didn’t ask!”
If you want something, you have to ask for it. No one is going to hand you a dollar. Don got his raise to six bucks an hour, but that life lesson was far more valuable.
When Donald was a boy, his father, Fred, brought him to construction sites, too. If Fred saw a nail on the ground, he’d pick it up and give it to the construction workers and say, “We can use this.” Donald learned how to build as a boy with his father, and the tradition carried on when Donald brought Don, Ivanka, and Eric to sites when they were small. They were like his ducklings, following him around. Ivanka has joked that one of her special skills is navigating a construction site in stiletto heels. They got another education listening to Donald interact with the workers and seeing how things got done.
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ERIC
Don and I did stone work, marble work, and tile work; ran electrical conduits; did plumbing; cut down trees; cut rebar with acetylene torches; ran backhoes and bulldozers; mowed yards with big tractors; and renovated properties under my father’s guidance. That’s how we got our foundation in business.
A lot of the work was at Seven Springs, a property in Westchester with a main house built by Eugene Meyer, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and publisher of the Washington Post, and a smaller house built by H. J. Heinz, of Heinz ketchup. Don and I renovated the mansions under the supervision of tough Italian contractors Vinnie Stellio and Frank Sanzo. I woke up at six thirty a.m. and was on the job site with a sledgehammer in my hands by seven. Don and I lived in a caretaker’s house on the property that dated back to the 1900s. He had one room and I had the other. Our schedule: wake up, work, have lunch, work, have dinner, go to sleep.
Don, Ivanka, and I grew up working together and then joined forces at the Trump Organization as adults. Sharing the common objective at the office bonded us in a big way. We worked together to grow the company all over the world, opening hotels. We also traveled together extensively and filled our free time together. Until Ivanka moved to Washington, our three offices were side by side by side.
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While the boys toiled at Seven Springs, Ivanka had another job that paid a bit more. After doing a stint as the fourteen-year-old host of the Miss Teen USA pageant, she landed an agent at Elite, a modeling agency. Her first magazine shoot was for the cover of Seventeen in 1996; soon after, she went on to pose for Tommy Hilfiger and Sassoon jeans in advertisements, and to walk the runway for Paco Rabanne, Marc Bouwer, and Versace. Modeling was Ivanka’s way to make her own money and get away from her boarding school, Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, which she started in tenth grade. (I initially considered Le Rosey, a private school with campuses in Rolle and Gstaad, Switzerland, but I hated it on sight. I was completely turned off by the teenagers in Armani suits smoking in the corridors, driving Mercedes, and flashing platinum cards.)
Unlike her brothers, who adored their years at the Hill School in rural Pennsylvania, Ivanka was bored at Choate. (I don’t think it was academically rigorous enough for her.) At first, the dean didn’t approve of her leaving campus for modeling gigs, but she fought for it by reminding administrators that they let another student, a professional skier, travel for work. They had no choice but to let her go. However, I forbade her from missing classes for modeling, so she could only work on weekends and vacations. It was better for her to earn some money and learn the ways of the world than go to nightclubs and pot parties anyway.
I never worried about her safety in the vicious modeling world because she had her head on straight and was armed with the advice I gave her. I told her that photographers will promise you everything and then try to take advantage of you. When I was a model in Czechoslovakia and Canada, a lot of my friends were used and abused. They felt pressure to do drugs with photographers and to stay thin. I also warned her to watch her back around the other girls, who would often try to sabotage you to get the job instead of you. It’s a cutthroat business at every level, but she wanted to do it and I let her while keeping a very close eye on her. She was a minor and couldn’t make a move without my approval. Her agent told me which magazines and designers wanted to have meetings with her or hire her, and if it was someone I didn’t like or trust, I canceled it. I went to some of her shows, and if I couldn’t make it to Paris, my friends looked after her. A lot of models blow all their money on clothes and the high life. Not Ivanka. She saved every penny of her income.
Back in 1991, I was in the middle of my divorce, and my friend Thierry Mugler, a gifted designer, asked me to be the muse for his haute couture collection in Paris. I needed the distraction and was flattered to be asked, so I said yes. I opened the show, and as soon as I walked onstage, the audience freaked out. It felt good to show myself in public again after a year in virtual seclusion. The show was a great success for Thierry and me. My confidence was restored, and he got a ton of glowing press. Several years later, he asked me to be in another of his collections and extended an invitation to Ivanka, too. She agreed, and in 1997
, when Ivanka was sixteen, my daughter and I had the privilege of doing a runway show together.
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IVANKA
Thierry was all about extravagance and high drama in his clothes; everything was very theatrical. It was a departure from how I was rolling at boarding school at the time, wearing almost exclusively cords and Birkenstocks. All of a sudden, I found myself in platform stilettos and a black patent-leather catsuit. I was so nervous—and pretty uncomfortable! I was sitting there in this full-body leather glove, fretting about tripping in those heels and falling on my face on the runway. Meanwhile, my mom was in the makeup chair next to me, totally relaxed, like it was just another day at the office.
Doing the show with her was amazing. It was an extension of something we’d always bonded over, but this time, we weren’t just watching. We were in it together.
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I thought Ivanka might stick with modeling, so we started looking for an apartment in Paris for her to live in during Fashion Week and photo shoots. A few days before I closed on a place, Ivanka called me to say that modeling had been fun, but she was going to stop to focus on her studies in college. I said, “Okay, sweetie. Whatever you want.” As soon as we hung up, I immediately called my broker and said, “Stop the sale!” Ivanka’s phone call saved me a lot.
She ended her modeling at the right time. Fashion was a fun diversion, but it wasn’t going to be her career. She had bigger dreams for herself.