You may not feel a crazy degree of sympathy for Chelsea Clinton. After all, being the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton means that she is both wealthy and famous, and that opens doors that are forever closed to most of us. Just how bad could fame be, really?
As it turns out, very bad! Chelsea Clinton’s celebrity status has always been something of a double-edged sword. Sure, it made her life that much easier in countless different ways. But her fame also ensured that her life was filled with one wild tragedy after another.
Don’t believe it? Keep reading to discover the surprisingly tragic history of Chelsea Clinton!
Chelsea Clinton has been ridiculed since she was a child
Chelsea Clinton wasn’t truly famous until her dad became president. Bill Clinton had been the governor of Arkansas, and this made her something of a big fish in a small pond. Once she moved into the White House, though, Chelsea Clinton became a household name. Unfortunately, that was when she began receiving nasty ridicule that continues to this day.
In short, people who hated Bill Clinton tried to hurt him by attacking his daughter. She later told the Guardian that “I’ve had so much vitriol flung at me for as long as I can literally remember, people saying awful things to me even as a child.” Sometimes, the mud-slinging came from surprising directions. For example, she was the butt of the joke on a Saturday Night Live skit when she was only 13 years old!
Being attacked by Bill Clinton’s political foes was nasty enough. Getting attacked by Wayne’s World, though? That’s just weird.
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Bill and Hillary Clinton left Chelsea behind in the Kremlin
Home Alone is one of the most beloved films ever made. Of course, this lighthearted film is only funny if you can overlook how scary the premise is. No parent likes to imagine leaving their child behind at all…can you imagine how much worse it is to find out you left your child only after boarding the plane for another country?
Bill and Hillary Clinton don’t have to imagine how bad that would be for a simple reason: they lived through it! Back when Bill was president, the Clintons visited Moscow as part of a diplomatic visit. On The Tonight Show, Hillary told Jimmy Fallon that she and Bill were in the limousine headed back to the airport before they realized they had left their daughter behind. Hillary seemed flabbergasted by the memory, saying, “Leaving my only child in the Kremlin, especially with everything that has happened?”
Chelsea appeared nonplussed on the show. However, we’re pretty confident that nearly being abandoned in Russia after years of Cold War tensions was even scarier to her than to her parents!
Losing her friendship with Ivanka Trump
Once upon a time, Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump were very close friends. However, the political rivalry between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump effectively put the kibosh on their relationship. One day before the 2016 election, though, Chelsea seemed hopeful they could remain friends, telling E! News that “Our friendship started before politics, so it will last beyond politics.”
That prediction didn’t exactly hold up. In a 2022 appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, Chelsea admitted that she and Ivanka hadn’t spoken since November 2016. “We were definitely friends,” she said. “And then she went to the dark side.” While Chelsea didn’t seem too broken up about it at the time, we are confident that losing one of her best friends due to her parents’ politics had to sting.
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Chelsea Clinton called out for being a bad mom
Some of the cruelest shade ever tossed at Chelsea Clinton focused on her parenting style. Despite their wealth, both Chelsea and her husband Marc Mezvinsky work. That means they have a nanny to watch their children, and many critics have claimed that Chelsea is a bad mom because she relies on someone else to do so much for (and with) her child.
At times, Clinton is effectively criticized because she can’t be in two places at once. A great example of this was when she was helping Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in 2016. This kept Chelsea from attending her daughter’s first day of kindergarten, and while Mezvinsky was there, many tabloids (including some of the same ones that once called her out for partying) tried to paint Chelsea as a bad parent who would choose her mother over her daughter.
In 2020, Chelsea confided to People that she feels “mom guilt” over the difficulties in balancing parenting and other responsibilities. “[There’s] [l]ots of guilt and navigation and just trying to do the best we can every day, and some days the best is going to be better than others.” Honestly, that sounds like good advice for us all!