Tiffany Trump trying to fly under radar
WASHINGTON— Georgetown Law students and professors gather each August to kick off the academic year with a reception in the student centre’s ballroom. Last year, there were canapés and small talk and buzz about one woman, who was the object of much curiosity — Tiffany Trump.
The younger daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump is a member of the law school’s class of 2020, and students began chattering when they heard that the 24-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate would be joining their ranks. Many haven’t stopped talking.
“Word spread like wildfire that she was there. People were following her around with cameras, and it looked really uncomfortable,” said a student who attended the event and like most of Trump’s classmates requested anonymity to discuss a fellow student. “She left within 10 minutes.”
Since then, Georgetown Law students have become more accustomed to the famous name in their midst. But as her father and his administration light up their daily Twitter feeds with controversial public policies, and Tiffany Trump remains publicly apolitical, her classmates remain fascinated.
When she gets coffee from the campus cafe, it’s noticed. “I’m in a WhatsApp group chat, and we all share our Tiffany sightings,” one student said. “She gets gossiped about — what she’s wearing, that kind of thing.”
Members of Tiffany’s Secret Service detail dress down in plain clothes but still stick out. “Law students don’t wear ball caps” in class, said another student.
In some ways, she has managed to experience the routines of a typical “1L” or first year student. Lectures. Library time. All-nighters. A person close to Tiffany said she’s found the campus “warm and welcoming.”
“She had an awesome first year at law school and a great experience working as a research assistant this summer,” the associate said. “She is very much looking forward to start- ing her second year. She is actually taking a class right now prior to officially starting school in a few weeks.”
The children of presidents are generally left alone during their undergraduate years. Malia Obama mostly flies under the media radar at Harvard, and other students at Stanford went out of their way to treat Chelsea Clinton as any other classmate.
But Tiffany Trump’s experience has been different. She’s in her mid-20s, and even before she arrived at Georgetown Law, it was clear she would be a proxy for her father’s often divisive politics, whether or not she shares them.
Maria Kari, a Pakistani-Canadian lawyer who enrolled in the law school’s master’s program, penned an open letter that was published last year in Teen Vogue. In it she questioned Tiffany’s motivations for choosing law school and outlined her own anxieties about the Trump administration, which she felt was causing “chaos around the world.”
Kari, who shares no classes with Tiffany, had hoped to talk to the first daughter about her concerns and spotted Tiffany leaving a building on campus and introduced herself as the author of the letter. Tiffany, ac- cording to Kari, said she had read it several times.
“I told her that I really would love to get coffee sometime and hear her thoughts — I said ‘I’m genuinely curious,’ ” Kari said.
Tiffany told her to be in touch, but Kari’s attempts to send an email through the student directory were unsuccessful. Kari also tried DMing her on Instagram, but heard nothing. Even though Tiffany has seemed uninterested in political engagement, Georgetown is hardly a refuge from the controversies of her father’s administration.
On the evening of Sept. 5, an email landed in every student’s inbox from University president John DeGioia. Earlier in the day, President Trump had announced the end of the Obama-era program that protected the young undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers” from deportation.
DeGioia called it “an unconscionable decision” that would affect some students on campus and outlined steps university officials were taking to protect them.
Later that month, many of Tiffany’s classmates and some members of the law school’s faculty linked arms on the steps of McDonough Hall, where Tiffany attends classes, to protest a speech given by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The law school has also brought the younger Trump in proximity to some of her father’s political adversaries. Last fall, Tiffany was in the audience looking on attentively during a lecture by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal jurist who once called her father a “faker.” Tiffany’s father responded to Ginsburg by tweeting: “Her mind is shot — resign!”
And Sally Yates, the former deputy attorney general who Trump very publicly fired after she refused to defend his controversial travel ban, was named a guest lecturer on the law school’s campus.
Divining Tiffany Trump’s politics isn’t easy. She registered as a Republican as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. She spoke at her father’s nominating convention but has since attended few pub- lic events at the White House, unlike her adult half-siblings.
Recent reports have surfaced that Tiffany Trump, who declined to be interviewed for this story, is struggling. People magazine quoted a source close to her mother, Marla Maples, saying that the younger Trump daughter is bothered by the “negative attention” to her father and her breakup with longtime beau Ross Mechanic. The Daily Caller cited “sources” saying she’s not returning to law school, which a spokesperson for the Trump Organization who acts as Tiffany’s press contact said is untrue.
Classes start up later this month, and it’ll be back to lectures, exams and bad cafeteria coffee. But few other law students would have had a summer like Tiffany’s.
Her Instagram narration of the past three months has been a catalogue of designer clothes and envy-inducing locales. In late July, she was photographed partying with Lindsay Lohan at the actress’s nightclub in Mykonos. The pairing prompted tabloid headlines and rumours that Trump would be appearing on Lohan’s upcoming MTV reality TV show.
You know, just like your typical law student.
“People were following her around with cameras, and it looked really uncomfortable.” GEORGETOWN LAW STUDENT