A TOUCH OF FROST
Relations between US first lady Melania Trump and first daughter Ivanka have turned decidedly chilly
THEY’RE the two most important women in the life of the world’s most powerful man. But although President Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, and his eldest daughter, Ivanka, smile brightly when cameras are pointed in their direction, there’s no love lost between these two women of the White House.
They apparently can’t stand each other and sources in the Trump inner circle have revealed to US magazine Vanity Fair that their relationship is “frosty”.
Ivanka, said to be power hungry, has found herself standing in for the first lady on numerous occasions since her 70-yearold dad moved into the White House on his own earlier this year. Melania (47) opted to remain in New York to be a stay-athome mom to the couple’s 11-year-old son, Barron. She plans to stay there until he finishes the school year.
For much of her husband’s first 100 days in office Melania has been nowhere to be seen. While the Slovenian former model remained holed up in her “golden cage” on Fifth Avenue in the Big Apple, Ivanka (35) and her husband, Jared Kushner (36), packed up their lives and their three kids – Arabella (5), Joseph (3) and Theodore (13 months) – to follow Trump to Washington.
Eyebrows were raised when Ivanka was given her own office in the West Wing, where the Oval Office is situated, while the East Wing where the first lady and her staff are usually housed has been described as practically a “ghost town”.
And while tongues are wagging about the Trumps’ marriage and Melania’s reluctance to play first lady, her stepdaughter seems more than willing to step into her designer stilettos.
TRUMP’S golden girl was at her dad’s side when he received Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at the White House. And she was recently invited by German chancellor Angela Merkel to a women’s forum in Berlin – while Trump has yet to leave the country on official presidential business.
Ivanka and her husband have been getting used to their new lives in Washington DC. They’ve been spotted jogging in their new neighbourhood and Ivanka spoilt secret service staff with cookies that her two eldest children delivered.
She also won over irate neighbours with her baking, which she and her kids hand-delivered. This after people in the neighbourhood complained about the shortage of parking due to all the family’s secret service detail.
As her fame grows, people are wondering if all the glowing things Ivanka has said about her stepmother in past interviews are sincere.
“Melania is an unbelievable mother,” she told American magazine People last year. She even said she respected her stepmother’s decision to put caring for her son before campaigning for votes and her duties as the wife of a presidential candidate.
With all the travelling her father was doing, Barron needed the stability and routine his mother was offering him, Ivanka said. “She takes him to school every day, picks him up every day. It’s a really remarkable thing and she’s a great inspiration to me.”
While Melania has delivered only a handful of speeches as first lady of the
United States, Ivanka never misses an opportunity to court the cameras and her hectic schedule is causing tension between her and her stepmother, Vanity Fair reports. “Two sources in fashion and media have observed a frostiness between the two,” the magazine added.
Melania was apparently deeply unhappy when her husband won the election, so much so that she refused to pack up and move to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But now insiders say she’s green with envy that her stepdaughter is spending so much time with Trump.
With Melania far away in New York, Ivanka is the person he leans on and her husband, Jared, is one of his senior advisers. But Ivanka insists everything is rosy.
Days after Vanity Fair’s story broke she had only nice words to say about Melania. “Happy birthday to our first lady (and my incredible stepmom!) Melania Trump,” she tweeted. “A wonderful example of kindness and grace for us all! @FLOTUS”.
Yet Ivanka, who usually loves giving followers a glimpse of her glam life, didn’t share a single photo of Melania’s private birthday celebration, held at the White House, with her 3,5 million followers.
She’s been applying some real elbow grease in her official role as adviser to the president but has come in for a great deal of criticism. On her recent trip to Germany she was unceremoniously booed at a women’s forum in Berlin when she called her father, notorious for his sexist slurs, a campaigner for women’s rights.
German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel accused Merkel of treating Ivanka like royalty at the event. “There are things that are strange to me, for example the visit of his [Mr Trump’s] daughter, which was treated almost like a world event,” Gabriel said in an interview.
“This mix of politics with family and business smacks of nepotism and would be unimaginable here.”
Ivanka came in for more flak when the Chinese government granted her company three trademarks to sell her products, including jewellery, in China – on the day she and her husband dined with Chinese president Xi Jinping at her father’s estate, Mar- a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.
IF MELANIA is feeling threatened by her stepdaughter, she’s doing something about it. She seems to be making a little more time for her official first lady duties and was recently at her husband’s side to welcome Argentinian president Mauricio Macri and his wife, Juliana Awada, to the White House.
A day before Trump’s 100th day in office she stepped out in Christian Louboutin pumps and a Giambattista Valli dress for the opening of the Bunny Mellon Healing Garden at the Children’s National Medical Centre in Washington DC.
Melania was initially the one everyone sneered at after she “borrowed” a speech from predecessor Michelle Obama.
“But what a difference 100 days can make,” The Daily Beast website said. “While Ivanka Trump and her business ventures have become yet another ethical distraction in an administration plagued by them, Melania Trump has emerged as . . . well, a surprisingly calm, classy counterbalance to her husband and those he surrounds himself with, including her stepdaughter.”
Melania is now suddenly the one keeping Trump in check. She recently reminded him to place his hand on his heart as they sang the national anthem. She also successfully sued the British Daily Mail newspaper and Mail Online website for reporting on allegations she’d worked as an escort in her modelling days.
Those who know her say she’s friendly and without pretence and has no desire to climb the social ladder like Ivanka. “She enjoys letting him [Trump] take centre stage,” says their friend, interior designer William Eubanks.
There have been rumours the president and his wife sleep in separate quarters at their homes in New York and on the Mar-a-Lago estate, but their friend Paolo Zampolli, who spent New Year’s Eve with them, scoffs at reports that the pair are on the brink of a divorce.
“It looked as if they were on a first date,” he said of the Trumps. “I don’t have that kind of romance with my wife.”