96 TIME October 23, 2017
Her teenagers had early curfews, and
she cut Donald Jr. off when he took a gap
year after college to bartend in Aspen,
Colo. Her version of helicopter parenting
was taking her kids on the weekends
in an actual chopper to Atlantic City,
where they would amuse themselves in
her office while she made sure the high
rollers at the Trump’s Castle casino were
accommodated.
The results, she says, speak for them-
selves. Ivanka’s elegance? Her doing.
Ivanka, after ballet classes and art lessons,
used to sit on the bathtub rim watching
her mom get dolled up. Donald Jr.’s disci-
pline? Her doing. She spanked him when
he misbehaved and made him work (on
Trump properties) every summer. Eric’s
perseverance? Her doing. When he hated
skiing because he was cold and scared and
only 3 years old, Trump, who was a com-
petitive skier, made him keep at it.
All three kids are now in the spotlight,
so people are getting a good look at
Trump’s handiwork. Not everyone is as
impressed as her airport interlocutors.
While they may not be spoiled, critics
say, the older Trump kids are definitely
careless. (The President has two other
children: Tiffany, 23, with Marla Maples,
and Barron, 11, with Melania.) Donald
Jr.’s meeting with a Russian contact who
promised sordid information on Clinton
means he now will likely have to testify
publicly before a Senate committee. A
report by ProPublica says he and Ivanka
also misled buyers at the Trump SoHo
condominium building and, though
they settled without admitting any
wrongdoing, they were forced to refund
90% of some buyers’ money.
In April, a report found that the Chi-
nese knitting factory that produces
Ivanka’s clothing brand was in violation
of two dozen international labor stan-
dards. In June, the New York attorney
general said the state would look into a
report that the Eric Trump Foundation
funneled more than $1 million from char-
ity golf tournaments into the Trump Or-
ganization. (A spokesperson has denied
this.) And both Eric and Donald Jr. have
taken heat for posing with photos of an
elephant and a leopard that they had
shot. That last one aggravates Trump too.
“Why go to Zimbabwe to shoot Bambi and
Dumbo?” she writes. “I don’t blame peo-
ple for giving them a hard time.”
BUT SHE DISMISSESthe rest of the stories
of malfeasance with a wave of her French
tips as she sits on a heavily tasseled red
and green couch in her living room, deco-
rated, she says, as “how Louis XVI would
have lived if he had had money.” Her kids,
who contributed their own impressions
of their childhoods throughout the book,
are nothing like the media’s depiction of
them, she says. (The White House and
the Trump children did not respond to
questions about the book or this inter-
view. Trump says she has not provided
the President with a copy.) Raised in
Czechoslovakia by an engineer father and
a telephone-operator mother, she has no
love for Russians. “I don’t like them,” she
says. “They are communists, and they
are hardcore people. They terrorized
my country.” And yes, she thinks they’re
capable of messing with U.S. elections.
“They are very smart, very calculated,and they are capable of doing anything.”
Donald Jr. had “zero interest in
Russia,” she says. “Never been in Russia,
and they can investigate him as much
as they want.” Her maternal loyalty is
endearing if misplaced, since Donald Jr.
has been in Russia, and reportedly much
more often than his father. Trump has
similarly profound faith that her kids
are not doing anything wrong in their
business or charity dealings either.
Of course, she has anxieties. With
Ivanka’s job in the Administration
and three kids to raise, “I’m a little bit
worried that she has maybe too much on
her plate,” says Trump, though she does
write that her daughter “might be the first
female—and Jewish—POTUS.”
For somebody who had to flee New
York to protect her young children from
the tabloid feeding frenzy sparked by her
husband’s infidelity, Trump is remarkably
loyal to her ex. He was a good father, she
writes, and his best quality was that he
deferred to her on everything. “He was
not the kind of father who would be able
to speak to them ‘choochoo-newnew-
choochoo-newnew’ when they were
6 years old,” says Trump, mimicking baby
talk. “He was able to communicate with
them by the time they were in university,
when they could go and talk the business.”
Yes, during the painful days of the
divorce, when her husband was with “the
showgirl,” as Trump still calls Maples,
Trumpland endured some dark times.
Donald Jr. stopped speaking to his father‘I WAS TOO SUCCESSFUL
TO BE MRS. TRUMP. IN
OUR MARRIAGE, THERE
COULDN’T BE TWO
STARS. SO ONE OF US
HAD TO GO.’
Trump, here in the ’90s,
still skis at AspenEven when young, the
Trumps were not a
jeans-and-T-shirt familyIvanka, in her
room in Trump’s
townhouse,
after the split