Ivanka Trump broke into tears when discussing the women who shaped her life in a rare show of emotion for the first daughter.
Trump, 44, asked for a tissue as she discussed her mother and maternal grandmother in an interview with the Diary of a CEO podcast. She also grew tearful at other points in the 90-minute interview, when she discussed her husband Jared Kushner’s battle with thyroid cancer and how she watched her father get shot in Butler, Pa., in “real time” with two of her children.
But her most emotional moment was when she expressed her regret that her three children – Arabella, Joseph and Theo – won’t get to know their grandmother Ivana Trump.
And she said she was grateful her own grandmother – Ivana’s mother Marie Zelníčková – lives with them in Florida. Nicknamed by the family as “Babi,” Trump said she raised her and her brothers Don Jr. and Eric when they were children.
“My grandmother cooked every meal,” she said. “She’s unbelievably nurturing.”
Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner moved to Florida after President Trump’s first term in office. They are raising their children in Miami, with Babi living with them.
“’It’s a blessing to have her in our home and living with us,” Trump said, adding she appreciates the stories Babi tells her children. “Her telling her stories and stories of my mother, who they sadly didn’t get to know.”
At that point, Trump had to pause in order to compose herself and choke back tears.
Podcast host Steven Bartlett asked her: “Are you okay?”
“I have a lot of love for this woman,” Trump said as the tears came. She noted: “This doesn’t happen to me often.”
“She taught me so much about love,” she continued. “It’s been hard to see her now as she struggles.”
Then Trump whispered: “Maybe I’ll have a tissue.” An aide brought her one so she could wipe her eyes.
Trump also described her late mother Ivana as “extraordinary.”
Ivana Trump died in 2022 at the age of 73 from a fall at her New York home. She was found at the bottom of the staircase in her townhouse on the Upper East Side.
“My mother taught me a lot about bringing intention to what you do,” she said, tearing up again. “Sorry,” she whispered. Ivanka delivered her mother’s eulogy at her funeral and was very close to her.
“I’m trying not to cry again,” she said as Bartlett showed her photos of her as a child with her mother.
“She lived a good life,” Trump said, wiping away tears. “She was very joyful.”
“Losing a parent. It hits differently you know, especially unexpectedly, especially sort of post-covid, which kind of robbed so many of us of so many years,” she noted.
During the pandemic, Trump was in Washington DC with her family – serving in the White House during President Trump’s first term – while her mother Ivana was in New York.
“We really keep her memory alive,” Trump said of her mother.
Trump, who served as an adviser in her father’s first term, chose not to return to the White House in his second term, saying she wanted to prioritize her children.
And she went to therapy after leaving the White House in 2020, she revealed. At the time, Jared Kushner was battling cancer.
She said she chose therapy after “some of the challenges around Jared’s health. I had just left Washington. Our life was in flux. Jared was diagnosed with thyroid cancer for a second time and then my mother passed.”
Jared Kushner secretly battled thyroid cancer and had surgery to remove a tumor in his throat while serving as a senior adviser in Trump’s first term, he revealed in his memoir.
And, in 2022, after his White House tenure, Kushner underwent a second thyroid surgery.
Trump also described watching in “real time” the assassination attempt on her father in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2023.
She was at the Trump golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on that day, hanging out at the pool with two of her children. The televisions were on so she saw the attempt play out on the news.
“The televisions were on so I saw it almost immediately,” she said. “It was almost real time, before he stood back up.”
“I was horrified and I was scared, and I was protective of my children,” she said.
But, she said as she watched her father get up and walk down the stage, surrounded by his Secret Service detail, she knew he “was fine,” adding: “I just knew it wasn’t his time.”
She revealed she has forgiven assassin Thomas Crooks for his actions.
“Forgiveness is a difficult thing in this regard but I think you have to,” she said, adding of her father: “His living was a blessing.”
Trump also offered the lessons she learned in life after losing her mother, almost losing her father, and watching her husband’s health issues.
“You can’t take things for granted in life, and I’ve learned that in numerous ways,” she said. “When my mom passed prematurely, when my husband had a scare with cancer.”
“You just can’t take anything for granted.”
