Ivanka Trump Has “Gotten the Urge” to Join Her Dad on the Campaign and in a Potential Second Term: Report

Since leaving the White House in 2021, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have gone to great lengths to rehab their images, which were literally in the toilet at the time of their departure. They’ve done so by generally pretending the previous four years never happened and specifically keeping their distance from Donald Trump—both on the campaign, which the former first daughter pointedly said she would not join, and on social media, where the ex-president is almost never featured despite copious posts. (They’ve also attempted to rewrite history via stories like the one published in The New York Times in June 2022, which claimed that as Trump plotted to overturn the 2020 election, they were “already washing their hands of the Trump presidency,” and that they tried their hardest to stop the January 6 attack on the Capitol.)

Now, as the former guy talks of building detention camps for mass deportations, letting states track individual pregnancies, and using the full weight of the federal government to punish his enemies, one would think that the duo would stick to the plan of staying far, far away. That is, since it would not be a good look to be associated with the aforementioned stuff Trump is considering—amongst other terrifying things—and it might risk their ability to party it up. But apparently, not so much!

Puck reports that Ivanka is “warming to the idea of trying to be helpful again,” with a source familiar with her thinking telling the outlet: “[She’s] privately not ruling out having some sort of role. She’s not like ‘Hell no’ anymore.” While it’s not clear what that role could entail, the former first daughter is said to be “quietly surveying members of her inner circle about when it might make sense to reengage with the campaign—and even whether to take a job in the administration if Trump wins.” The person familiar with Ivanka’s thinking added: “After a long-standing position of ruling it out, she’s more open to it. It’s getting more real, it’s revving up.”

As for former first son-in-law Kushner, he has supposedly “displayed zero interest in leaving his newfound perch in private equity to return to the Trump fold.” As a reminder: Shortly after leaving the White House, Kushner set up Affinity Partners and raised $3 billion—including $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, whose board, which happens to be run by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, overrode due diligence concerns. (Earlier this year, Kushner declared that MBS, who US intelligence agencies had concluded approved the gruesome killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was a “visionary leader” who had “made the world a better place.”) “Ivanka has gotten the urge again, but Jared has been a lot more focused on his investment business and being a lot more measured about discussing a return,” the person familiar with the matter told Puck.

In January, my colleague Gabe Sherman reported that Kushner had been floated as a possible secretary of state in a second Trump term. The following month, Kushner gave the world a preview of how that might look: During an interview at Harvard, he said that the Gaza Strip could be “very valuable” from a real estate perspective, if Israel could forcibly remove everyone currently living there to develop “waterfront property.” 

A spokesperson for Kushner and Ivanka told Puck: “As they’ve both repeatedly stated, Ivanka and Jared continue to focus on their family and lives in the private sector and do not intend to go back to politics.”

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