Donald Trump’s favorite person, aside from himself, has worked assiduously over the years to make it appear as if she isn’t nearly as vulgar, brash, or downright gormless as the rest of the Huns in her family.
But it’s a dark ruse — as evidenced by her tacit complicity in tearing children from their mothers, playing footsie with white supremacists, and generally pretending that her father isn’t the presidential equivalent of an unrefrigerated, mouse-gnawed head cheese.
So, yes, she’s schadenfreude-worthy, and then some.
So you’ll naturally be interested in this new Vanity Fair exposé on the first daughter and her irredeemable awfulness, brought to you by her grade school and high school BFF, Lysandra Ohrstrom. Lysandra and Ivanka “met at an all-girls’ school on the Upper East Side and were inseparable for more than a decade,” according to Ohrstrom. And so she had a front-row seat to the goings-on at Trumpworld.
A few excerpts (spoiler alert: they’re not flattering):
Mr. Trump always handed over the credit card after a little feigned outrage about how much money he was giving her mother. He would barely acknowledge me except to ask if Ivanka was the prettiest or the most popular girl in our grade. Before I learned that the Trumps have no sense of humor about themselves, I remember answering honestly that she was probably in the top five. “Who’s prettier than Ivanka?” I recall him asking once with genuine confusion, before correctly naming the two girls I’d had in mind.
And, of course, “Mr. Trump” had lots of opinions about this young girl’s body, because he’s a gross Fraggle Rock Muppet with at most three recurring thoughts.
Though he never remembered my name, he seemed to have a photographic memory for changes in my body. I’ll never forget the time Ivanka and I were having lunch with her brothers at Mar-a-Lago one day, and while Mr. Trump was saying hi, Don Jr. swiped half a grilled cheese sandwich off my plate. Ivanka scolded him, but Mr. Trump chimed in, “Don’t worry. She doesn’t need it. He’s doing her a favor.” Conversely, he’d usually congratulate me if I’d lost weight.
Oh, and it turns out Ivanka has always been a low-rent Marie Antoinette:
As she’s touted the achievements the Trump administration has made for the middle class while not-so-covertly pursuing a massive wealth transfer to corporate America, I’ve been reminded of a phone call we had in our mid-20s. Ivanka always solicited book suggestions from me, and I had recently recommended Empire Falls, Richard Russo’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about the life of a diner manager in a working-class community in Maine. “Ly, why would you tell me to read a book about fucking poor people?” I remember Ivanka saying. “What part of you thinks I would be interested in this?”
And she appears to have inherited some of her dad’s more salient traits:
But in private, rougher, more Trumpian edges still occasionally poked out. Ivanka would regularly relay stories of teachers or observers who had commented that she had the most innate talent they had ever seen for whatever new pursuit she was taking up. She never wore a Halloween costume that wasn’t flattering, which means she usually showed up at costume parties looking beautiful and boring. She always stopped at McDonald’s for cheeseburgers. She cursed. And of course, she had the Trump radar for status, money, and power, and her dad’s instinct to throw others under the bus to save herself.
One of the earliest memories I have of Ivanka from before we were friends is when she blamed a fart on a classmate. Some time later, she goaded me and a few other girls into flashing our breasts out the window of our classroom in what has since been labelled the “flashing the hot dog man” incident in Chapin lore. Ivanka had basically been the ringleader, but she pleaded her innocence to the headmistress and got off scot-free. The rest of us were suspended.
And there you have the only real-world skill the Trumps have mastered — throwing friends under the bus.
Of course, like her father, Ivanka appears to have nothing but disdain for the president-eject’s bucolic base:
Predictably, as she began moving with the real power brokers of the world, Ivanka became increasingly certain that she and the rest of the capitalist elite had better solutions to the plight of America’s struggling working class than elected officials and the creaky bureaucracies they presided over. But aligning herself with her dad’s banana republic-style administration made no sense to me, until my friend suggested that Ivanka took her kids to the rally to show them that they are American royalty. This explanation seemed most plausible. What is more royal than presiding over subjects that you disdain?
There’s a lot more at this here click-nozzle, but the gist is that Ivanka — like the rest of her family — is simply awful. And I suspect you knew that already.
This guy is a natural. Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry." — Bette Midler on Aldous J. Pennyfarthing, via Twitter. The first history of the Trump Error is complete! Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump is hot off the presses! Along with Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump, Dear Pr*sident A**clown: 101 More Rude Letters to Donald Trump and Dear F*cking Moron: 101 More Letters to Donald Trump, you’ll see the Trump years from a hilarious new perspective. Click those links, yo!