Raising Trump

by Ivana Trump

  • • •

  Get the right job. Marry the right person.

  These are the only two steps you need to reach your full potential. I knew the kids were at the right place professionally to learn and become builders and deal makers while working under their father’s wing. The second step, though, finding and marrying the right person, wasn’t quite as simple.

  I have a complicated relationship with marriage, clearly. What I told my children was that you have to be in love from the beginning. Over time, you will really get to know if this person is right or wrong for you. Unfortunately, no one can say for sure that they’ll be as madly in love after twenty years of marriage as they were as newlyweds. Life has too many surprises up its sleeve for guarantees like that. But hedge your bets by starting in romance and passion, and, with kindness and patience, allowing the love to grow into mutual respect and companionship. After you get married and have kids, establish a routine and shift into a friendly partnership of enjoying life together. The fact is—and I do mean the fact—no one who’s been married for ten years has sex more than a few times a month, once a week tops. You can’t count on hot sex to sustain a long-term marriage, but the chemistry that originally brought you together can turn into a meeting of minds. You have to be stimulated by your partner’s brain more than anything else. I could never be with a stupid man. It’s just not interesting or attractive. Donald and I had a real meeting of the minds. We used to talk for hours and hours. I hoped my kids would have the kind of relationships that began in volcanic passion that, like lava, would cool over time into something permanent and nourishing, where love and life could grow.

  Don had his first girlfriend at fifteen. When I found out about her, I sat him down for the Talk. Actually, it was more like the Lecture. I told him about STDs and made him read aloud from a pamphlet about transmission a dozen times until he could recite it from memory! I hope the message got through. Apparently, he was Don Juan in college and dated a lot. I heard that his girlfriends were always the prettiest, which didn’t surprise me (apple, tree). I didn’t have to give the Lecture to Eric. Don took care of that for me. Ivanka knew how I felt about safe sex because she got the Lecture, too. The last thing I wanted was for her to get pregnant too young, so I told her to be very careful and make sure she was always protected.

  When the kids started dating in earnest after college, I backed off from meddling almost completely. The boys didn’t give me too much opportunity to scrutinize their girlfriends anyway. They were very private about who they were seeing and kept me in the dark. Don introduced me to only one of his girlfriends, a sporty, fun Canadian. They were close enough to adopt a black Labrador together. I liked her, but she wasn’t a good fit for the Trump family. He figured that out and they broke up. She started calling me and my mother in the Czech Republic, begging us to intervene on her behalf and tell Don to take her back. It was extremely awkward. I felt sorry for her, but there was nothing I could do. “I can’t force love,” I told her. “If you split, you split. Get on with your own life.” I hope she did, and that she’s happy.

  He met Vanessa Haydon, a model, actress, and tennis star from Manhattan, not long after he broke up with the Canadian. Don was at a fashion show with his father, and Donald noticed Vanessa at the start of the event (she was one of the models). He went right over to her and said, “Have you met my son?” and introduced them. At the show’s intermission, Donald went back over to Vanessa again and asked, “Have you met my son?”

  She said, “Um, yes. A few minutes ago.”

  Don and Vanessa had to be introduced for a third time at a friend’s dinner party. If at first they didn’t make much of an impression on each other, once they started dating, they got serious very quickly and wed within a year. I can’t speak for Don, but I fell in love with Vanessa at first sight. She’s the kindest, sweetest girl in the whole wide world. I was thrilled that Don was jumping in and marrying the woman he loved, not waiting for his life as a husband and (soon enough) a father to begin. The wedding was at Mar-a-Lago, officiated by Maryanne Trump. It was the first of my children’s weddings, and I basked in my role as MOG (mother of the groom). It was no work, all fun.

  • • •

  Ivanka didn’t bring many boyfriends home, either, not for her sake or mine, but for the guys’. Introducing a boyfriend to Donald and me was a terrifying experience, so she was very selective about the ones she thought could handle it.

  For a few years, Ivanka dated a Wall Streeter who was generous, sweet, smart, successful—all good things. I met him at a dinner and liked everything about him, but he was only five foot five! Ivanka is six feet tall. In stilettos, she towered over him. When we had a private moment that night, she asked me, “Well? What do you think?”

  I said, “I don’t dislike him. I’ve just had it with him up to here,” and put my hand level with my breasts, an approximation of his height. “You get it? Up to here!”

  Hey, I thought it was funny. I waited for her to laugh along, but Ivanka did not see the humor. She didn’t speak to me for two weeks.

  She and the diminutive banker broke up soon after. I don’t know the intimate details of why they split. Ivanka wouldn’t be so superficial as to get rid of a man because he was much shorter than her, but the truth is, she’d have had to spend her whole life looking down at the top of his head. I’m sure she had good reasons for ending it. Who knows? Maybe, as they got to know each other better, she’d had it up to here, too.

  Ivanka dated another guy, the son of a socialite with family in Palm Beach, for several years. He was very funny, charming, a certain kind of handsome that wasn’t my type. I could see why Ivanka was attracted to him. But he was too cocky. We met for the first time in early March in Palm Beach at a charity cocktail party I threw at Max Mara, and she brought him along. I asked him, “What do you do?” It wasn’t an interrogation, just making conversation.

  He said, “I watch my parents’ and grandparents’ estate.”

  It sounded vague, but I knew what it meant to me. I felt he had no ambition, and as long as his family was rich, he’d do nothing on his own. He was the nephew of a friend of mine, and I really wanted to like him. But I couldn’t see Ivanka and him together for long. Ivanka deserved the whole package: an ambitious man who looked good at her side. This cocky charmer wasn’t going to make a name for himself. He seemed completely content to live off his family’s money and go to parties. I pointed that out to her, and she didn’t speak to me for two weeks again, though she broke up with him soon after.

  To his credit, he did do something productive, coproducing a documentary in 2003. But other than that movie, the cocky boyfriend lived up to my doubts about him. Ten or so years after their split, he was arrested for possession of cocaine outside a downtown New York nightclub with a rock star friend of his. Can you imagine the headlines if she’d stayed with him?

  Ivanka didn’t tell me much about her dating life between the cocky guy and Jared. I heard rumors about athletes and movie stars, but I didn’t intrude or ask for the details. She was a grown woman. If she wanted to talk to me about her boyfriends, I was always there for her, but she preferred to keep her personal life to herself. At one point, Donald wanted her to date Tom Brady, the quarterback. He said, “You have to meet him!” But Ivanka wasn’t into it.

  When she was twenty-six, she was set up with Jared Kushner by mutual friends. He came from a New York real estate family and was—is—a wealthy businessman in his own right and the owner of the New York Observer. I met him at a dinner of just the three of us and I liked him immediately. He was intelligent and good-looking, and they obviously adored each other. I assumed they’d take the next step, but Ivanka told me, “His family won’t let him marry me because I’m not Jewish.”

  I asked, “What are you going to do?”

  She was torn about it, and she broke up with him. But they really loved each other and got back together a year later. The core problem hadn’t changed, though. I told her, “I
don’t care about religion. You were born Catholic and your roots won’t change. But if he makes you happy, go for it.” She converted, and they got married in 2009 at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

  * * *

  IVANKA

  As a wedding present, one of our friends gave us a five-night stay at a gorgeous hotel that he owned in Italy. We were so excited to finally be able to take the trip, almost a year later. On the first day we arrived in Sardinia, I got a text from my mother that said she was on a friend’s boat in the area and heard we were in town so they were “dropping anchor.” She was coming ashore and had booked a room in the same hotel so we could catch up. My mother crashed our romantic getaway! We spent the days with her, and she did her own thing at night. She hardly ever ate with us because dinner at nine p.m. was like a second lunch for her. When her night was just getting started, we’d be in bed.

  * * *

  Ivanka and Jared are incredibly happy, which is all I care about. They’ve been married for eight years and have three children. He’s a great father, and they’re still crazy about each other. Jared is strong. If he doesn’t agree with something she’s said or done, he tells her right away. It takes real guts to put my daughter in her place, right in front of his mother-in-law—and I’m not your typical mother-in-law. He’s either very comfortable around me, or they’re comfortable being complimentary and critical of each other, or all of the above.

  And now I have a Jewish daughter and grandchildren. Eighty-five percent of my friends, including my best friend, Nikki Haskell, are Jewish. However, most of my friends are not observant, hardly ever go to temple, and don’t keep kosher. None of them are Orthodox, which the Kushners are. When they used to visit me in Palm Beach on the weekend, they’d walk from the synagogue to Concha Marina to have tea and cookies. Walk! For miles in scorching heat in their nice clothes. They had to be exhausted and I always offered to have my driver take them home. But, according to custom, they couldn’t ride in a car on the Sabbath. So they walked back to Mar-a-Lago.

  In New York, when Ivanka and I get manicures together at Nail Niche on a Saturday, she can’t touch money, so I pay (I would pay anyway). One Saturday, the doorbell rang unexpectedly. It was Ivanka with her two oldest kids. She said, “Mom, get dressed and come with us now. And bring cash!”

  I said, “Why? Where are we going?”

  It turned out that her friend Wendi Deng, the former wife of Rupert Murdoch, and her two daughters, Chloe and Grace, were selling cupcakes on Fifth Avenue to raise funds for a new locker room at their school. It was the Sabbath, so Ivanka couldn’t purchase a freaking cupcake! They were one dollar apiece, with only five left. I offered them the four singles I had on me for all five cupcakes, but they wouldn’t budge. Then a friend of mine walked by—actually, the aunt of Ivanka’s cocky ex-boyfriend—and I said, “Do you want to buy a cupcake for a dollar?” She did, and we gave the Murdoch girls the money. Then we stood on Fifth Avenue in a small circle—Ivanka, her children, my friend, and I—and ate Wendi Deng’s cupcakes. It was a sweet moment, one we wouldn’t have had if Ivanka could carry her wallet on Saturday.

  • • •

  Eric was the last one to get married. He was barely out of college when he met Lara Yunaska, a sporty pastry chef and dog person. What’s not to love? When they met, she was a TV producer at Inside Edition. She runs five miles a day and loves horseback riding. Eric and Lara didn’t rush into anything; they dated for six years before getting engaged. She’s a very nice girl, intelligent, hardworking, all the things I admire in a person.

  I threw Lara a bridal shower at my house for family, including Ivanka, and her many friends. It was a classic shower with pastries, drinks, and presents. I hired a piano player to entertain us, and we did the ritual of her opening her gifts. She got lingerie (of course), perfumes, candles, some jewelry, chocolates. Eric stopped by at the end, and we got to raise our glasses to toast them together.

  They got married at (guess where?) Mar-a-Lago in 2014. Two weeks before the wedding, she had a horseback riding accident and broke one of her wrists. I worry about Lara and her riding. Last year, she fell again and broke her collarbone. I told Eric, “She keeps getting hurt. Maybe she should stop.” (I don’t think she’ll be riding much these days, since she’s pregnant with their first child. I’m already planning her baby shower!) She might just be accident-prone, and it may be spreading to Eric, too. She took him on a jog once and he came back with a twisted ankle. He was on crutches for months. Anyway, on her wedding day, she wore satin sleeves over her arms to hide the cast as she walked down the aisle. They didn’t cover her fingers, so her diamond engagement ring—from Ivanka’s collection—flashed in the lights. Their miniature beagle Charlie was the ring bearer, and Jared officiated. (For the record, it was not a Jewish ceremony, as was reported in many media outlets.) I walked down the aisle with Eric and sat next to Donald, Melania, and Barron at the ceremony, which was okay. At the dinner, I sat with Dorothy and Babi, which was better.

  At that wedding, Donald and I did share a moment of gratitude for the family we created together. All of our children are married, and once Eric’s son arrives, we’ll have nine grandchildren. Six boys and three girls! (We need more girls.) Donald and I started the whole thing and have watched our family grow, and grow, and grow! Nine little monsters! It’s so many freaking Trumps. I love it . . . and I’m getting scared!

  -26-

  PRIDE OF THE LION GLAM-MA

  My best advice to Ivanka, Vanessa, and Lara about what I learned from my own three pregnancies is to take it easy on yourself (which I never did, but should have), don’t wear high heels (which I did until the eighth month), and watch your diet. Ivanka only gained twenty-five pounds for each of her pregnancies. After she had Theodore last March, she was back at work in two days (just like me) and was down to her pre-pregnancy weight by the time she spoke at the Republican convention just a few months later, and looked fabulous.

  Don and Vanessa welcomed Kai, my first grandchild, to the world in May 2007. At the hospital, I congratulated the new parents and said, “Welcome to the club.” I warned each one that from this point on, no matter what they did or where they went, part of them would be thinking about the health and happiness of this tiny creature. Don put Kai in my arms and I gave her a hug and a kiss. “Yup, she’s a baby!” I said. I held her for a few minutes, and then I got bored and gave her back. Newborn babies aren’t that interesting to me anymore, I must confess. They’re a lot more fun when they’re five or six and can hold up their end of a conversation. Kai is now nine, and she loves to dance and perform. She’s got a big personality, just like me. Donald III (Donnie), eight, is a very sweet boy. He reminds me of Don, actually. Tristan, five, is a little troublemaker! He jumps around from sofa to sofa, and I run after him making sure he doesn’t hit his head. He needs to be watched constantly. Recently, he broke his leg on a skiing trip in Aspen and had to get a full leg cast, poor boy. What I do to quiet the little hell-raiser is give him a project, like drawing with special fabric crayons and Mickey Mouse stencils on T-shirts. That one kept him busy for hours. Spencer, four, is following after his older brothers, like Eric did with Don. He’s already very bright. Chloe, two, is a beautiful angel baby with a round face and enormous blue eyes. She’s absolutely gorgeous.

  After Ivanka had Arabella in July 2011, she called me and said, “Mom, I’m a mom.” I rushed to the hospital to meet my newest grandchild. Hug, hug, kiss, kiss, snap, snap. And then I left so Ivanka could get some much-deserved rest. I came to the hospital to meet Joseph in October 2013 and Theodore in March 2016. I’m not the type to go in the delivery room and hold her hand. I don’t think anyone should be in the room except for the mother and her doctor, and definitely not the father! As I said earlier, a man sees a baby come out, and your sex life will go down the tubes. Arabella, six, is a little show-off. She comes over after her ballet lessons, in pink tights and a bodysuit, and sings and dances for me. Just like her mom, sh
e loves The Sound of Music and can belt out all the songs. Last April, Arabella, then five, serenaded Chinese president Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan at a state visit while her brother Joseph, a sweet, shy boy, hid in his father’s jacket. Her song was in Chinese. Arabella’s nanny is from China and is teaching her the language.

  Both Vanessa and Ivanka were breastfeeders. It wasn’t for me, but if a mother wants to attach a baby to her boob, do one side, then the other side, burp him, get him to take a nap, and then do it all over again when he wakes up, go right ahead. For me, it just wasn’t possible. I was working ten-hour days and needed to sleep for longer than three hours at a stretch. I have no regrets about bottle-feeding my kids. They were all strong and intelligent, they never got sick, and they all grew to be six feet tall. Whatever you choose, it’s fine. What matters is that you are at peace with the decision. A stressed-out mom is going to have stressed-out kids. I also had a lot of support. If it weren’t for Trudy, Bridget, and Dorothy, there was no way I could have accomplished so much in my career, on the charity circuit, or as a coordinator of the kids’ activities and educations. Working mothers back then and nowadays need help! Ivanka is doing her all to make life easier for families with legislation about child-care tax credits and generous family leave. I know she’s going to do a lot of good for millions of people.

  Vanessa and Ivanka are both excellent mothers, as I’m sure Lara will be, too. Vanessa is very strict. She takes no nonsense. If one of her kids jumps on the coffee table, she corrects him immediately. I’ve never had to bite my lip about either Ivanka’s or Vanessa’s parenting choices—because they are always what I would do myself. Even if I did have criticism, I would keep it to myself. It’s not my job to give advice unless I’m really disturbed by something. Parents have their own way of doing things, and as long as the children are happy and healthy and the family is together, whatever strategies and techniques they use are okay with me. Every kid is different, and responds to different motivations and punishments.