In her own way, Ivanka Trump is the one member of her family who is most full of surprises. Years ago, nobody could have predicted that she’d try to start her own company or that she’d end up as an official advisor to the President. Later on, nobody expected her to suddenly create distance between her famous father after he began making plans to run for President a third time.
Now, Ivanka managed to surprise us yet again, this time in a completely different way. For the most part, we all know that she had a great childhood…what else would you expect from having a doting father who just happens to be one of the richest and most famous men in the world? Recently, though, Ivanka mentioned a surprising childhood regret, one that seems to be the fault of both Donald and Ivana Trump.
What was this regret, exactly, and how did Donad’s parenting style influence his daughter? Keep reading to discover how Donald Trump disappointed Ivanka when she was a child.
Ivanka Trump has always been daddy’s favorite
If you need to know one thing about Ivanka Trump, it’s that she has always been her father’s favorite child. Normally, parents would never let on that they like one of their children more than another. However, Donald Trump has always been publicly effusive when praising his daughter, to the point that he made arguably inappropriate comments about her beauty. He so clearly favored Ivanka that, as Business Insider reports, Donald Trump, Jr., once asked his dad a simple question in an interview: “Who is your favorite Trump child, and why is it Ivanka?”
As we mentioned before, this eventually led to some very special treatment for Donald Trump’s little girl. When he successfully won the 2016 election, Donald made Ivanka an official presidential advisor. She worked in the White House, rubbed elbows with world leaders, and emerged from the whole thing much wealthier than she was before. More to the point, she’s the only one of Donald’s children to get this prestigious opportunity.
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Distancing herself from Donald Trump
Ivanka Trump remained her father’s favorite child for decades. However, some believe that changed after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. After Ivanka left the White House, she made it clear that she wanted to focus on her family. And she stayed true to her word, doing little to help her father on the 2024 campaign trail and doing nothing to indicate that she’d like to resume working in the White House alongside him.
As The Guardian reports, Ivanka Trump also admitted to the Congressional panel investigating the January 6th attack on the nation’s Capitol that she didn’t believe her father’s claims that the election had been stolen from him. Her reasoning was that she believed Attorney General Bill Barr…a man whom Trump almost immediately began insulting via Truth Social, his preferred media platform.
Outwardly, there was never any major rift between Donald and Ivanka Trump because of this. But many felt that this revelation, along with her distancing herself from her father’s politics, meant that Ivanka was no longer as close with Donald as she once was, especially when she was a child.
Ivanka Trump’s surprising childhood hobby
As we mentioned at the beginning, IVanka Trump is always surprising us with new revelations about her relationship with Donald Trump. Recently, she made an appearance on the The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast and dished more about her childhood with two of the most famous parents in the world. And that included a tale about a surprisingly favorite hobby as a child.
After school let out, Ivanka Trump used to head over to the New York Plaza Hotel. Her mother Ivanka Trump was the CEO, and young Ivanka liked to come to the place to see what her mom got up to during the day. She would sometimes do the same with Donald Trump, essentially shadowing her parents to see what their work days were like. She generally found this hobby very fulfilling, but she admitted to one big regret from those days that really surprised us.
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Her biggest disappointment from shadowing her parents
In that same podcast, Ivanka Trump admitted that things were a little too unstructured for her taste when she visited her parents. “There was never explicit instruction,” she said. “I kind of wish I’d gotten a little bit of that, sort of sitting me down and saying, “This is how I like to be, this is how I conduct myself, did you notice this?”
Does that mean she didn’t generally enjoy the experience? Of course not, and Ivanka was quite lucky to have two wealthy, famous parents who still made time to see her while they were working. Plus, this parenting approach was arguably quite healthy: Donald and Ivana Trump modeled for Ivanka what a successful business leader looks like. Now, all these years later, she’s one of the most famous and successful women in the world, which would be enough to transform any lingering disappointment into warm gratitude.