Ivanka Trump is done with politics and says she isn’t coming back

By Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — For Ivanka Trump’s entire adult life, she worked for her father.

When Donald Trump was a real estate mogul, she was designing his next hotel. When he was on a reality TV show, she was in his television boardroom. When he was running for office, she was on the campaign trail. When he was president, she had an office in the West Wing.

But in January of 2021, for the first time since she was 23 years old, she left Washington – and his employ.

Ivanka Trump is done with politics and says she isn’t coming back.

“I love my father very much. This time around I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics,” she said in a 2022 social media post after her father announced his third run for the presidency.

That statement remains true after Donald Trump’s 2024 victory, sources close to Ivanka Trump said, as she and her husband, Jared Kushner, seek a relatively private life in Miami, Florida, where they’ve spent the past four years largely outside of the public spotlight.

It marks a dramatic turnaround for one of the former and future president’s closest aides, but an intentional one after the first four bruising years in the White House.

Ivanka Trump faced constant scrutiny and criticism for decisions made by her father that she was unable to wholly influence or moderate. She was alienated by some liberal friends in her New York social circle, and she shut down a relatively successful eponymous clothing and accessories brand amid persistent ethics questions. Her departure from politics means her father is no longer her boss – and she is forging a new path with a definitively different lifestyle, one made possible as her family’s businesses have profited from proximity to the presidency and resulting relationships.

“Politics is – it’s a pretty dark world. There’s a lot of darkness, a lot of negativity, and it’s just really at odds with what feels good for me as a human being,” she told “The Lex Fridman Podcast” in a three-hour conversation this July. “And you know, it’s a really rough business. So for me and my family, it feels right to not participate,” she added in what was her most substantive public reflection on her time in Washington and her life after.

Still, a private life may prove elusive as a high-profile member of America’s incoming first family, one with a carefully cultivated personal brand and significant influence, beloved to many of the president-elect’s supporters and a target of many of his detractors.

Trump remains very close with her father, with whom she talks regularly, a source close to her said. And she is likely to continue to informally advise him on a range of issues behind-the-scenes, sources told CNN.

“She’s still his daughter, and a trusted voice, so in that sense an informal adviser, as we all are with our family members,” said Maggie Cordish, a longtime friend who joined Trump in the West Wing for a year working on paid family leave issues.

During her time in the White House, staff and advisers took care to highlight her successes and counsel to the president. There was a robust public relations effort at times over those four years to ensure she got credit for her work – and distance from less popular policies.

She publicly maintained a neatly tailored West Wing portfolio, turning her focus to less polarizing issues like criminal justice reform, combating human trafficking and workforce development.

“Ivanka proudly spearheaded the White House’s efforts and promoted the administration’s success” on those policies, a representative for Trump said in a statement to CNN.

Perhaps the work that left the most significant mark on Republican politics was her efforts toward paid family leave legislation and a child tax credit for working families.

“She made those Republican issues. Really, they had not been Republican issues,” said a former colleague.

This time around, sources said, her advice to her father is likely to stay under the radar.

A source familiar with her thinking said that if Trump chooses to weigh in and have influence during her father’s second term, “It’s never going to be something that people are going to see publicly.”

For his part, Kushner is also declining a formal role in the incoming administration, but is expected to be a pivotal outside adviser to Donald Trump’s Middle East efforts, leveraging his close relationships with regional leaders. He also has significant financial interests in the region.

And in a sign of the president-elect’s implicit trust in his family members, Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, has been selected as US ambassador to France.

From ‘heir apparent’ to jiu-jitsu

Toward the end of Trump’s first term, Ivanka Trump had emerged as a more combative figure, adopting a posture aligned with her father as she lambasted what she cast as “partisan investigations.” She described herself as “unapologetically” opposed to abortion rights, and at the time, sources predicted a future run for political office, with one source who worked with the Trump family saying that Donald Trump viewed his daughter as “heir apparent.”

But the end of the first Trump term marked necessary change for the family: Her father was largely exiled from Washington in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, and they left behind the drama of the nation’s capital for sunnier skies and Florida’s more welcoming political climate.

Her decision to leave the political fray may have also been shaped by more challenging personal moments over the past four years. Ivana Trump, her beloved mother, unexpectedly passed away at her New York City home in July 2022.

“The loss of a parent is one of life’s very painful passages for which one is never fully prepared. It hits at the very core of your being. And it takes a good amount of time to emerge from how it dislocates you,” she wrote in an Instagram post reflecting on her first holiday season since her mother’s death.

She has also been caring for her 98-year-old maternal grandmother, known as “Babi,” who lives with the family in Miami.

And her husband has also contended with health issues, revealing in his 2022 memoir that he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2019 and had surgery to remove a growth on his thyroid. Kushner had a second thyroid surgery in August 2022, a source close to him told Reuters at the time.

Friends describe a gradual shift from Trump’s more public-facing and aggressive posture to her current position beginning with the family’s January 2021 move to Miami, where they settled into an oceanfront condo in the Surfside area before later relocating to a mansion in the exclusive Indian Creek Island enclave.

Multiple friends say she’s at peace with her decision to step away from politics, telling CNN that she is prioritizing her family, attempting to find some privacy, and pursuing new interests.

“Her children are in a sweet spot where they’re all critical ages, they’re tweens and teens, and it’s short – it’s really brief. She loves being with her children, and she’s found a lot of peace and happiness in her private life,” said Cordish.

Trump has tapped into a wide-ranging series of new hobbies. Her social media posts are peppered with images of her and her family gardening, practicing jiu-jitsu at the Valente Brothers’ studio, learning to surf at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, playing polo on horseback, driving motocross bikes and playing board games.

She told Fridman that the decision not to be involved in politics “was rooted in me being a parent – really thinking about what they need from me now.”

“I know today the cost they would pay for me being all in, emotionally, in terms of my absence at such a formative point in their life, and I’m not willing to make them bear that cost,” she said.

Family matters

Trump’s self-imposed retreat from public life was briefly paused in 2023, as she was forced to testify in the New York civil fraud trial against her father and his company, detailing her role in negotiating loans for Donald Trump’s purchases of his Doral resort in Florida and the Old Post Office building in Washington, DC.

While he stood trial in a hush money case earlier this year, family members flocked to the courthouse to stand by him, but Ivanka Trump was notably not present. After his conviction, she traveled to New York to support her father, but stayed out of sight at Trump Tower. He was found guilty of 34 charges of falsifying business records – a felony conviction for which he has yet to be sentenced. Trump pleaded not guilty and has denied wrongdoing in all cases against him.

Meanwhile, her brothers Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump fully embraced their father’s “Make America Great Again” movement, in part filling the vacuum created by their sister’s campaign trail absence. Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, became a key spokesperson and co-chair of the Republican National Committee during her father-in-law’s political comeback. Since the election, she has said she’s stepping down from the RNC and initially signaled her willingness to fill an expected Florida senate seat opening, pending Sen. Marco Rubio’s confirmation as secretary of state. But she withdrew from consideration Saturday.

The four-year forecast

With the door firmly closed to a return to political life for now, Ivanka Trump is likely to spend her father’s second term using her influence in new ways, including in the nonprofit space, with a focus on food insecurity, supporting farmers, and disaster relief, a source close to her said.

“She is choosing to use her influence now on a more personal level” to “positively impact her own community,” the source said, adding, “Being able to have an impact in that way, while allowing her the time to be prioritizing her young children and their privacy, is where she wants to be.”

She has worked with victims of the Hawaii wildfires and North Carolina hurricanes, volunteered with Ukrainian refugees in Poland, and packed food boxes at a local kosher food bank.

Dave Donaldson, the president of CityServe, a nonprofit organization where she has volunteered, welcomed what he described as Ivanka Trump’s “compassion portfolio.”

“She’ll continue to work with us on helping victims of disasters, wars – but why does somebody need to be in government to do that? The reality is that most of the compassion work being done around the world is outside government,” Donaldson told CNN.

She posts frequently about her volunteer work on social media as she presents a new iteration of herself to her followers with glossy, polished photography.

“She is very brand aware, very conscious of wanting to do something positive – and that’s not a bad thing – but has a little bit of reputational buildup to accomplish and reach that bigger goal,” said one crisis communications and reputational management expert.

“I don’t doubt the sincerity, but if I were advising her, I would just encourage her to take a little bit of the polish off.”

Trump and Kushner have also returned to the world of real estate, developing luxury projects, including a 1,400-acre Albanian island that has garnered some controversy.

“It’s amazing to bring together all of this talent, and for me to be able to play around and flex the real estate muscles again and have some fun with it,” Trump told Fridman.

And she is doing some “quiet investing in certain areas of interest,” the source familiar with her thinking said, declining to provide additional details when pressed.

CNN’s Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.

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