KARLIE JOINS THE TRUMP CLAN
Two brothers, politically diametrically opposed, and their two tall blonde wives – how will Karlie Kloss fit in with the extended First Family? Jane Mulkerrins reports…
WHEN supermodel Karlie Kloss announced her engagement last week, via a sunset selfie on Instagram, congratulations flooded in from her 7.5 million followers. But the most notable and surprising message came not from one of her coterie of famous friends, which includes Serena Williams and Princess Beatrice, but from Ivanka Trump. The daughter of the controversial US President wrote: ‘So happy for you and Josh! I feel blessed to have you as a sister (!!!) Karlie and look forward to the decades of happy memories we will create together as a family!’
Indeed, as a ‘family’, those ‘happy memories’ may well include invitations to the White House, since Karlie’s fiancé is none other than Joshua Kushner, tech
entrepreneur and younger brother of Ivanka’s husband Jared, one of Trump’s most senior and key advisors.
If you weren’t already aware of the connection between the catwalk star and the political power players, then you wouldn’t be alone. For a supermodel with a huge public profile, Karlie, 25, has kept her and Josh’s six-year relationship impressively private. And, while she and Ivanka, 36, were pictured together at the 2016 US Open with their mutual friend Dasha Zhukova, ‘ever since the Trump Presidency, relations have been more strained,’ says a New York insider who knows both couples.
The day after Trump took up residency in the White House in January 2017, Karlie and Josh, 33, were also in Washington DC, along with hundreds of thousands of others, protesting the new presidency.
‘Jared viewed Josh and Karlie as disloyal for going on the Women’s March. That caused long-lasting tension between them,’ says the insider. Josh had already donated $100,000 to the Democratic Party, while Karlie had posted a picture of herself on election day with the pro-hillary caption ‘I’m with her’.
Before his father-in-law stood for election, Jared, too, was a staunch democrat, as were his wealthy parents – the Kushner family, a powerful New York real-estate dynasty, is worth an estimated $1.8 billion – until they switched to donate to a pro-trump super PAC. But if
anyone understands family duty, it is Jared. When his own father, Charles, was jailed for two years in 2005 for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and witness tampering ( he set up his own brother-inlaw with a prostitute, then secretly videoed the encounter with a hidden camera), Jared took the reins and steered the family business through the scandal.
However, his position in Trump’s inner circle has now dented the family firm. ‘In the real estate world, people are more reluctant to deal with them, because of his links to Trump,’ says a source who has worked with the Kushners in recent years. ‘New York is generally anti-trump, and there’s talk of a lot of their projects not going through.’
One might imagine, then, that the family would be grateful for the sort of sparkle a hugely popular supermodel might bring. However, according to those in the know, until recently, the Kushners had never even met her.
In her book Born Trump, author Emily Jane Fox quotes friends of the Kushners as saying: ‘Karlie is not seen as educated in their minds, that she’s a midwestern girl from a midwestern family, a model who’s posed in lingerie and walked the runway at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show nearly nude. They care a lot about modesty.’
Another possible barrier in the past has been that the Kushner family is Jewish, and Ivanka converted in order to marry Jared. It was only a month ago Karlie did the same, in readiness for her engagement to Joshua.
But one New York society source believes that may still not be enough. ‘Ivanka was in many ways the perfect daughter-in-law and set the bar so high,’ says the source on why Karlie might struggle to fit in. ‘ The Kushners are quite private on social media and are suspicious of her Instagram profile,’ he adds. ‘ Their idea of an engagement announcement is certainly not via social media.’