84 OCTOBER 2019 THE ATLANTICBetween their business holdings and their politi-
cal influence, the Trumps could remain a fixture of
American life for generations. The question now
dividing the president’s children is not just which
one of them will get to take up the mantle when he’s
gone—but how the family will attempt to shape the
country in the years ahead.FOR A NATION FOUNDED IN REVOLT
against monarchy, the United States excels at pre-
serving its own royalty. Once a name and fortune are
made, the machinery of American power churns into
gear. Wealth is passed down through trusts. Impor-
tant jobs flow to unaccomplished heirs. Famous fam-
ilies get mythologized in the media, celebrated in
the culture. The result is a ruling class dominated by
dynasties—from the Rockefellers to the Roo sevelts,
the Mellons to the Murdochs.
Members of these clans tend to justify their privi-
lege by claiming to uphold a tradition of patriotism
and public service passed down by their forebears—a
refrain that has echoed especially throughout Ameri-
ca’s most durable political dynasty.
The Trumps like to invoke the Kennedys in their
own myth making. The president has called Melania
“our own Jackie O.” Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner,
whose father reportedly sees himself as a “Jewish Joe
Kennedy,” had a framed photo of JFK in his Manhat-
tan office. And close Ivanka watchers have noted that
her Insta gram feed—filled with idyllic photos of fam-
ily life against the backdrop of the White House—has
a certain Camelotian quality.
But if Camelot was always a romantic facade, the
Trumps have dropped the ennobling pretense. Like a
fun-house-mirror version
of the Kennedys, they reel
across the national stage
swapping the language of
duty and sacrifice for that of
grievance and quid pro quo.
Ask not what your country
can do for you, they seem to
say; ask what your country
can do for the Trumps.
In considering which of
his children should carry on
his legacy, Trump is now
caught between compet-
ing visions for the future of
the family— one defined by
a desire for elite approv al,
the other by an instinct for
stoking populist rage.
But Stephen Hess, a
scholar who studies American political dynasties,
says succession can be unpredictable in presidential
families. Unlike in business, where a patriarch can
simply install his chosen heir as CEO, politicians
often see their best-laid plans upended by voters:
Think of the Bushes anointing brainy, well-behaved
Jeb, only to have George W. surprise everyone by
beating him to the White House.
For Trump—a distant and domineering father who has long pitted his
offspring against one another— the unsettling reality is that the choice of who
will succeed him may be out of his control.II.
The Trump children grew up surrounded by the trappings of dynasty. Their
home was an eponymous skyscraper—all glass and gold and capital letters—
that doubled as a symbol of their family’s power. Famous surnames can have
an enveloping effect on those who carry them, flattening every outside aspi-
ration until the family is all that matters. To young Don, Ivanka, and Eric, the
whole world felt as if it could fit within Trump Tower.
From afar, their lives looked like a Richie Rich–style fantasy. They had an
entire floor of the triplex penthouse to themselves, with rooms full of toys
and big-screen TVs, and nannies and bodyguards attending to their whims.
Michael Jackson, their neighbor, stopped by to play video games. Limousines
shepherded them around the city.
But within the family their father cultivated a Darwinian dynam ic. On ski
trips, when they raced down the mountain, Trump would jab at his children
with a pole to get ahead of them. His favor ite father ly maxim was “Don’t trust
anyone”—and he liked to test his children by asking whether they trusted him.
If they said yes, they were reprimanded. Sibling rivalry flourished. “We were
sort of bred to be competitive,” Ivanka said in 2004. “Dad encourages it.”
(Tiffany and Barron, born later to different mothers,
seem to have been spared from this contest.)
For Trump’s three oldest kids, the defining
drama of their childhoods came in 1990, when
he left their mother for Marla Maples, moving out
of the penthouse amid a tabloid feeding frenzy.
Eric, then 6, was too young to fully grasp what
was happening, but his siblings understood, and
they reacted in different ways. Don, who was 12,
lashed out at his father—“How can you say you
love us?” he reportedly spat during an argument—
and refused to talk to him for a year. Eight-year-
old Ivanka was afraid of what she might lose in the
divorce. “Does it mean I’m not going to be Ivanka
Trump anymore?” she asked, tearfully.
In the years that followed, Don seemed to
define himself in opposition to his father. Trump
loved golf, so Don stayed off the links. Trump was
a teetotaler, so Don drank heavily. In his college
fraternity, he developed a reputation for blacking
out. “He was drinking himself into a really dark place,” said one former fra-
ternity brother, who recalled Don breaking down in tears at a party as he
talked about his father. “He hated what his dad did to his mom. For a while,
he didn’t even want people to know his last name.” (A spokesperson for Don
said: “This is fiction.”)
Ivanka, meanwhile, worked to stay close with her father. She stopped by
his office every day after the divorce, and when she was at boarding school
she called home often— seeking his advice, and asking questions about the ȉȉɔ
ɷʦʰȉΦʦ
ʹ ɫʰȉʰJˑȉɷɦȉউʦʁɫɔ ̆ɷ ʦ˒
ʁ ɫʁʦɫ ̆ȉɫɔ
ɷ˒ɔʰʦɷ˒ɦɷʦ
ʰȉɷ ʹʦʰ ɫʰˑʁʰʦे