Children don’t have to follow their parents’ taste in music – but there was something almost defiant about Ivanka Trump’s decision to attend a Taylor Swift concert a fortnight ago.
Granted, she was taking her 13-year-old daughter Arabella, a longtime Swiftie, to one of the singer’s sold-out Eras Tour shows near their home in Miami.
It was, however, just weeks after Ivanka’s father had proclaimed that ‘I hate Taylor Swift’ on his social media site, Truth Social.
A few days earlier, Swift had broken with her tradition of staying out of politics and endorsed Donald Trump’s rival Kamala Harris.
The former president later phoned Fox News to say he wasn’t a ‘Swift fan’.
Children don’t have to follow their parents’ taste in music – but there was something almost defiant about Ivanka Trump ‘s decision to attend a Taylor Swift concert a fortnight ago.
It was, after all, just weeks after Ivanka’s father had proclaimed that ‘I hate Taylor Swift’ on his social media site, Truth Social.
Certainly, the episode has rekindled frenzied speculation about a father-daughter rift – and, with days to go until the election, one of the lingering mysteries of a possible second Trump administration.
Would it feature the return of the power couple dubbed ‘Javanka’?
Ivanka, 42, and husband Jared Kushner, 43, became two of the most trusted advisers and the principal gatekeepers in Trump’s first administration.
Even though she was the apple of her father’s eye and a prominent figure in his campaign, Ivanka and her husband’s lightning ascent still shocked the political cognoscenti – not least because the pair had no previous political experience
Their rise certainly didn’t come without cost.
Jealous insiders depicted them as Machiavellian schemers, driven by cold ambition but hopelessly out of depth.
Liberals who’d hoped for more from the young New York couple, meanwhile, singled Javanka out for failing to rein in what they saw as President Trump’s worst instincts.
In response, Javanka, who’d always been careful curators of their own public image, broke with Team Trump after he lost the 2020 election and decamped to Miami with their three young children to lick their wounds.
Ivanka concentrated on her role as a mother and on her old socialite lifestyle, earning her way back into the good books of pro-Democrat celebrity circles.
Meanwhile, Jared concentrated on making lots of money from investors in foreign countries, people he’d met while in government and who have since piled millions into his private equity firm.
Both Ivanka and Jared have met with some success.
When she isn’t spending her weekends jet-skiing and boating near their $24 million home on Indian Creek Island, also known as the ‘billionaire’s bunker’, or practicing qigong breathing and ju-jitsu, Ivanka is rediscovering a social scene that some predicted would never have her back.
She was a guest along with Lauren Sanchez (fiancée of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos) and supermodel Hailey Bieber at Kim Kardashian’s 43rd birthday celebrations in Beverly Hills last year.
Kardashian went to the trouble of seating Ivanka next to her at dinner.
Ivanka was also at Bezos’s 60th birthday in LA in January. And, in March, she attended the ludicrously lavish pre-wedding celebrations of Anant Ambani, son of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, in Gujarat. Other guests included Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, while the three-day event featured performances by Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Katy Perry.
The episode has shed new light on one of the lingering mysteries of a possible second Trump administration. Would it feature the return of the power couple dubbed ‘Javanka’? Ivanka, 42, and husband Jared Kushner (pictured), 43, became two of the most trusted advisers and the principal gatekeepers in Trump’s first administration.
Javanka broke with Team Trump after he lost the 2020 election and decamped to Miami. Ivanka concentrated on her role as a mother and on her old socialite lifestyle.
When she isn’t spending her weekends jet-skiing and boating near their $24 million home on Creek Island, Ivanka is rediscovering a social scene that some predicted would never have her back.
The same month, Ivanka and Jared made a rare appearance with her father at the Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts event in Miami.
For the most part, she has kept her distance from Donald Trump in public.
She’s been absent from his 2024 election campaign and didn’t turn up to his historic trial in May, where he was convicted of felony crimes over the Stormy Daniels hush-money scandal.
Some might wonder why Ivanka would ever want to come back to the snake pit of Washington DC. Yet the whispering persists that she may well do just that.
Campaign insiders told the Wall Street Journal this month they doubt claims that Ivanka and Jared would choose not to get involved in a second Trump administration were they to be given the opportunity.
In May, news website Puck reported that Ivanka was ‘itching to return’ to the spotlight.
But that is not what Javanka is saying officially.
Hours after failing to attend her father’s Mar-a-Lago announcement in November 2022 that he would run again for president, Ivanka released a carefully worded statement.
‘I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family,’ she said. ‘I do not plan to be involved in politics.’
Last week, with the possibility of a second Trump term looming close, her husband rammed home the same message, telling the New York Times that there was ‘zero’ chance of Ivanka joining the Trump campaign.
However, a source close to the Trump family spoke exclusively to the Mail this week and suggested that the truth isn’t so simple.
While there is little expectation that Ivanka would make a substantial return to the White House should her father win, the source did not rule out more minor involvement from the potential future First Daughter.
‘I can’t see her doing anything that would take her away from Florida and her family,’ the insider side. ‘But perhaps Donald would deputize her on a foreign trip, she could travel with him occasionally, or she could work on a special project. Nothing day-to-day.’
The source continued: ‘She will enjoy the pomp and pageantry. She would be at the inauguration. But Ivanka is concerned with what the “taste makers” think and it suits her to say that she no longer works with her father fulltime after January 6, and after his indictments and convictions.’
Finally, added the insider: ‘Everything also has to be looked at through the lens of her husband and his [private equity] business.’
‘I can’t see her doing anything that would take her away from Florida and her family,’ an insider side. ‘But perhaps Donald would deputize her on a foreign trip, she could travel with him occasionally, or she could work on a special project. Nothing day-to-day.’
That booming business, some insist, helps explain why Javanka have no need to step back into politics – because they already have what they wanted from it: access to powerful and super-wealthy people and the means of enriching themselves from those contacts.
Of course, they stand to get richer still if there’s another Trump presidency.
After leaving the White House, Kushner, who had led the administration’s Middle East peace efforts, set up his private equity company, Affinity Partners.
Now – controversially – it runs a $3.1 billion fund bankrolled by the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as Taiwanese billionaire Terry Gou.
Kushner made those top-level Arab contacts while in the Trump administration and is estimated to have personally earned at least $112 million in fees since 2021.
He has drawn further criticism over Affinity’s big project: a $1 billion scheme to build two super-luxury hotels on an Albanian island, Sazan, that was previously a Soviet submarine base. Ivanka has reportedly had a hand in the design.
Some local landowners and opposition politicians have accused the Albanian and Serbian governments (where another development is planned) of agreeing unfair deals with Kushner, allowing him to buy land without a public auction in order to curry favor with the Trumps.
For his part, Kushner has said that, as a private citizen, he has the right to pursue international real-estate and business deals, even if they involve foreign governments.
A spokesman denied any financial impropriety or exploitation.
However, Kushner is the first to admit that, the closer his father-in-law gets to the Oval Office, the more scrutiny his business dealings will face. He knows, too, that the spotlight would be even more intense were he or Ivanka to join Trump in government once again.
Perhaps Javanka simply can’t afford (if that’s the right word to use of multi-millionaires) to come back and help Daddy run America.
As for Trump, he still mentions his daughter fondly at rallies, once observing: ‘We had the simplest, most beautiful time.’
But it’s not entirely clear how far she would agree.