Style

When Dads the president

a look inside Ivanka
Trumps complicated world
By Monica Hesse and Krissah Thompson July 1 at 11:21 AM

Ivanka Trumps office: clean, white, quiet. A zone of punctual start times and promptly-offered water bottles, and a
conference table at which she conducts meetings. A short, winding walk away from her fathers Oval Office
downstairs.

She does not necessarily appreciate daily schedules. Neither does her father. When Ivanka needs to see the
president, she stops by. When he needs to see her, he calls. When he wants her opinion, he asks for it and she gives
it, but without expectation that it will be followed.

She sees her role as not to persuade, but to inform and support: That much is clear to White House staffers and
friends who have observed the first daughters early months in the White House. Anyone who has invested in her
the ability to change her father clearly doesnt understand the dynamic that has always governed their relationship
and also the dynamic of a president and his staff. After all, she works for him.

The people are different. The decisions are different and the office is different, Ivanka, an assistant to the
president, said in a recent extended interview in her office, one of the few shes granted. But he is the same person
and I am the same person. And we interact in the same way as we always have.

One morning last week, she was one of the senior staff who convened around a long table in the White Houses
Situation Room. On the agenda was solidifying her fathers remarks at the upcoming G-20, a global economic
summit, particularly in a session relating to the economic empowerment of women.

Shes been the advocate to put these things on the presidents agenda, said a senior White House official who was
in the meeting.

Ivanka argued that the administrations message should focus on the barriers facing women: access to capital,
access to markets issues that were her personal interests before she maneuvered them onto her fathers official
platform.

In the meeting, she was, as usual, collegial and thoughtful, thanking the mid-level staffers present for their research
and work.

A few hours earlier, her father had already issued a few words on one woman. Just before 9 a.m. the president had
gone on a Twitter bender targeting MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski. He called her crazy and low IQ. He described
her as coming to his Florida estate, bleeding badly from a facelift.

The media and political world exploded another days-long uproar over a sexist remark by the impetuous
@RealDonaldTrump. His words were again seen as tearing down the platform Ivanka says she is trying to build.
People wondered: Who would dare tell him to stop undermining his office and damaging himself.

Where are Jared and Ivanka right now? Politico demanded.

Ivanka was discussing policy.

And then she went, presumably, back to her West Wing Office small by CEO standards, big by White House ones
and to what has become the most complicated father-daughter dance in the history of American politics.

For Ivanka, moving to Washington has been a masters course in the zigzagging political process. But there is no
rule book for dealing with a presidents discombobulating tendency to overshadow everything she and everyone else
in his administration is trying to do.

Her response to what she called all the noise has been to retreat into a cocoon of carefulness, to put her head
down and work. Every time Im a little tired or frustrated I remind myself that its the greatest privilege in the
world to do this, to be in the White House, she said.

She is learning to more carefully weigh the consequences of her opinions, which impact not the family business, but
the country and the world. Unlike in business, where she felt comfortable exchanging off-the-cuff opinions with her
father, she now tries not to respond too quickly. She waits until he has asked her opinion multiple times on the
same issue, taking that as a cue to its importance, and then she reaches out to subject-matter experts to help her
develop a reasoned position.
When she disagrees with her dad, she asks herself whether the issue was a campaign promise or not. If it was, she
readily suppresses her own wishes. She believes that doing otherwise would undermine what the American people
voted for. She asks herself why her opinion is more right than the 46 percent of the country who put her father in
office.

Foremost, she presents him with information. She tells him what she thinks, and then lays out what the other sides
strongest arguments are. Then the president decides. As he always has.

My father trusts me to be an honest broker, Ivanka said. I dont have a hidden agenda. I have a very clear agenda.
He knows exactly where I stand and I express why I care. Theres no secrecy about it.

***

In a meeting with CEOs in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, she is her fathers mouthpiece, hosting
business leaders who want to support his plan to boost workforce training. On a tour through a technical school in
Wisconsin, she stayed at his shoulder, shaking hands and passing compliments to a man demonstrating an
automated cutting machine. In a briefing with reporters, she constantly revised her notes with a felt-tip pen, but
rarely needs to consult them as she speaks about the administrations proposal for a workforce training program.

She said shes pushing the administrations working family agenda. She uses the language of her father
tremendous, incredible.

When you say daughter, when you say staffer she is definitely not a staffer, said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn), who
has met with Ivanka multiple times in the 16 weeks since she took on a role as adviser to the president. No
question. That is not the case. I think its very much she is I dont want to use the word peer, but she is a
partner.

Donald Trump has relied on his daughters advice since she began working for him as a vice president at the Trump
Organization, the tempered Athena to his furious Zeus. She was 24.

She did not build her life thinking she was going into politics, said a person close to Ivanka.

Over the course of a decade working for her dad, she grew accustomed to offering her opinion, sometimes off the
cuff, on the familys business portfolio: deals, properties, hotel openings and hotel design.

This is her portfolio now: Workforce development. Childcare tax credits and paid parental leave issues that no
American Congress has ever passed, and which have become Ivankas signature topics, and bellwethers for her
success. Human trafficking. Last Tuesday, she stood by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at a crowded State
Department ceremony, honoring award recipients who have contributed to the study and eradication of trafficking.

When I have conversations with her, its really not about trying to influence the president, said Corker, who was at
the event and has counseled Ivanka on the issue. In meeting with Ivanka, I feel like Im dealing with the principal
who is going to be carrying out these issues in the White House.

At the conclusion of their meetings, on occasion Ivanka has walked Corker downstairs to wander into the Oval
Office and say Hi to the president. And, it was clear to the senator that Ivanka has real power in the White House
over issues that are on her agenda.

She may not be able to sway her fathers opinions, but she is throwing her weight behind issues such as family leave
building coalitions and, if all miraculously aligns, could see Congress pass legislation that she has helped to push.

Says her husband, Jared Kushner: I think shes very lucky in that she cares less about what people think and more
about if shes doing the right thing and will be able to get positive results. Ultimately thats what has and will make
her very successful.

***

At its heart this is a story about fathers and daughters, and what happens when one becomes president of the
United States and the other follows him to the White House and tries to make heads or tails of it.

This is a story of a daughter who leaves her beloved New York. Moves her three children to D.C. Marvels at having a
house with an actual back yard, and wonders if the paparazzi who post themselves in front of their new home are
paid in 10-hour shifts, because theyre always there to photograph when her husband Jared leaves for work at 6
a.m., but then are always gone by 4 p.m.

This is a story that gets exceptional because its the Trumps, for whom life and career are also always entwined with
family: Ivanka as a child, building future Trump towers out of Lego sets, as one of her favorite stories goes. An older
Ivanka, using the interoffice envelopes in the real Trump Tower to send her father positive press clippings about
himself, as an acquaintance remembers. Season after season of The Apprentice, with the fates of D-list celebrities
determined by the opinions of the two Trumps.

Then as now, when Ivanka presents her dad with information, she said she tells him what she thinks, and then tries
to tell him what the other sides strongest arguments are.
A lot of the way people try to get things done, or sell things in Washington, is they present facts that align with the
outcome that they want the other person to come to, she said. In business its the same they tell you the good
facts about a company, not the bad facts. I dont do that. I have never done that.

Maggie Cordish, a longtime friend whose husband now works in the Trump administration as an assistant to the
president, said Ivanka understands what a privilege it is to find herself in this position and to be able to move the
needle on things she cares about. ... She uprooted herself from New York to come down here to get things done.

As she goes about her work, there is another oddity that is Ivanka-specific: the fact that she becomes a cipher into
which people pour their own beliefs and aspirations, the fact that multiple people can sit in a room with her and
each believe she is speaking directly to them.

Republican female lawmakers who have met with Ivanka spoke about her preparedness, and their excitement to
have a representative from the White House who cared about issues they had worked on, in some cases, for years.
Multiple male lawmakers spoke at length about her elegance and her grace; and then worried out loud that they
seemed enamored of her.

In the eye of Democrats, Ivanka is forever moving one step forward and two steps back, forever caught up in her
fathers unseemly dramas. Three months into her official role, observers who analyze her influence on Donald
Trump are still doing so via a method of reading her tweets like tea leaves: Ivanka sends out support for refugees on
World Refugee Day, against a father interminably stumping for a travel ban. Ivanka wishes her LGBT followers a
happy Pride month, while her father eschewed Barack Obamas tradition of issuing a proclamation. At times, she
comes across as earnest, if slightly oblivious; at times it seems like she knows exactly what she is doing, which is
goading her dad.

Ivanka, taken out of context, is rarely offensive. But Ivanka is all context the context of her father. He is why
people write about her, dissect her, fret over her. She is playing a flute in an orchestra. He is running around
banging a gong in the background, making her look tone-deaf.

***

Trent Franks, a Republican congressman from Arizona, recently received an invitation from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-
Fla.) for a meeting to brainstorm a pro-family tax code. A special participant the predicate of the meeting, as
Franks saw it would be Ivanka Trump, the woman whose father had spent an election cycle gleefully referring to
the meetings host as Little Marco.

Nine Republican lawmakers gathered around a table at which the first daughter spoke softly enough that other
participants fell silent to hear her bring greetings from the president and talk about her desire for a child-care tax
credit and paid family leave. The roundtable, and Ivankas behavior in it, was representative of how she has come to
conduct business in Washington.

She was a very active listener, said Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), noting that Ivanka responded to each participants
favored issue an adoption tax credit, a caregiver tax credit as if she had personally researched them.

In every sincere way, said Franks, I left and felt like this was a meeting of consequence.

Ivanka left and told Kushner in one of the frenetic catch-ups that the couple holds, sometimes in his office,
sometimes in the 11-11:20 p.m. timespan between when her husband gets home and when the two go to bed that
the meeting had been really positive.

Paid parental leave is on the administrations proposed budget this year: a mandated six weeks for birth and
adoptive parents. Ivanka knows proposed budgets never survive intact, an aide said, and that the proposal could
struggle to find support from either Democrats, who dont think it goes far enough, or from conservative
Republicans, who disagree with a mandate at all.

I think theres going to be a question of whether it gets there, but you know, shes happy that people are talking
about this and again shes working hard to build coalition and understanding around the issue, said a person
close to Ivanka in the White House, who requested anonimity to speak openly.

While Ivanka did meet privately with her home state Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, according to the Associated Press,
her early public meetings have largely included Republicans on Capitol Hill, leaving some Democrats who have
pressed the legislation for decades wondering about her strategy.

I appreciate what Ivanka Trump is doing to elevate the issue to make it part of the public discourse, said Rep.
Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), a veteran advocate for family leave whose own proposed bill was analyzed alongside
the Trump administrations in a recent collaborative study by the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative
think tank American Enterprise Institute.

I havent met with her. I havent been asked to meet with her, DeLauro adds. I dont want to be presumptuous,
but since I have been engaged in these issues on the House side for such a long time Id hope that I would be
included in a discussion of these issues.

****
When Donald Trump announced he would be pulling out of the global climate change agreement known as the
Paris Accords, it angered liberals who had put their hopes in Ivanka. She had personally met with Al Gore, and
gotten Leonardo DiCaprio into a room with her father to talk about climate change. She telephoned business
executives, encouraging them to reach out to her father and tell him to stay in the deal. He didnt.

Is it possible shes doing nothing to moderate her father? asked exasperated HBO host John Oliver and aides
say she felt frustrated. She had done her job, as she saw it, exposing her father to a variety of ideas, but she couldnt
make her father commit to something he didnt want to.

That is her typical approach. I am not sort of trying to selectively curate information that will lead him to agree
with me, she said. Debate is good.

In other interviews, she has said she would never criticize her father in public. Where I disagree with my father, he
knows it, she told CBSs Gayle King in a televised interview in April. People who know her say that speaking out in
public would be inappropriate.

At times it seems like the question of whether Ivanka could change her fathers mind misses the question of how
much she wants to. Understanding her requires understanding them as a unit.

A childhood friend of Ivankas remembers a moment during the campaign. Ivanka was scheduled to come to
California and be interviewed on stage for a Fortune magazine-sponsored summit on powerful women. The friend
lived nearby, so Ivanka invited her to attend. It was supposed to be more about her, and being a successful woman
in business, the friend recalls. But it was hard for them not to turn it around to something like, How do you
define your fathers actions about X that day?

Day X, a quick Google search reveals, took place shortly after the presidents leaked Access Hollywood tape.
Without preamble, the Fortune interviewer asked for Ivankas reaction.

Way to warm up! Ivanka said, laughing. Its lovely to be here in California.

The friend, who asked to speak anonymously, remembered being nervous on Ivankas behalf, but then unsurprised
at Ivankas easy response. Ivanka noted that her father had apologized and had always treated her with respect.

That ease could be traced to half a lifetime in the public eye: She started modeling as a teenager and spent nearly a
decade on prime time TV with her father. And she had become used to explaining his behavior.

The same thing happened in April in Germany: Ivanka was invited by Chancellor Angela Merkel to attend a summit
on how to achieve equality for women. Ivanka showed up and was immediately asked to defend her fathers
statements about women. The fact that Merkel announced Ivankas involvement with a World Bank fund for
women-owned businesses was overshadowed by stories about whether some audience members had booed Ivankas
rationalization of her dads behavior.

The same thing happened last week while she was in the Situation Room for the G-20 meeting. On Twitter, a flurry
of commenters were blasting Ivanka to explain her father.

Ivanka is always asked to explain her father.

But, the childhood friend notes: In more than two decades of knowing Ivanka, she has never once heard her
complain about that.

Monica Hesse is a sta writer for the Post Style section. She frequently writes about culture, the Web and
the intersection of the two. ! Follow @MonicaHesse
Krissah Thompson began writing for The Washington Post in 2001. She has been a business reporter,
covered presidential campaigns and written about civil rights and race. More recently, she has covered the
rst lady's oce, politics and culture. ! Follow @Krissah30