Ivanka Trump: 13 things you didn’t know

The president was joined by his daughter at a campaign rally ahead of the midterm elections

Donald Trump was joined on stage by his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, during a pre-election rally in Ohio last night.
While introducing her to the cheering crowd in Cleveland, the president said “you’re not allowed to use the word ‘beautiful’ anymore when you talk about women” because “it's politically incorrect”.
He added: “I'm not allowed to say it. Because it’s my daughter Ivanka. But she’s really smart, and she's here. Should I bring her up? Come on, Ivanka. Come up.”
The president has previously been scrutinised for having an “unusually close” relationship with his daughter, regularly complimenting her appearance and intelligence, Newsweek says.
In a brief speech ahead of today’s crucial midterm elections, the 37-year-old businesswoman credited her father for low unemployment figures and rising wages, adding that “it’s never been a better time” to be an American worker.
“People are coming off the sidelines and back into the economy and realising the opportunity of the American dream,” she said.
Ivanka, whom her father regularly calls his “favourite”, was given unparalleled levels of authority in the family business and now serves as a senior White House adviser.
So what else do we know about her?

Exclusive upbringing

Ivanka was born in New York in 1981, the only daughter from Donald Trump's first marriage to Czech athlete and model Ivana Trump (nee Zelnickova). She spent her early years among the Manhattan elite studying first at the Chaplin School, whose former alumnae include Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and then moving to Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut, where JFK himself studied. Her ability to master many an exclusive social circle has given her an "urbane self-assurance that her father never mastered", says Politico.

Like father, unlike daughter

In the Trump family business, Donald gave Ivanka a "level of authority none of his wives, or for that matter executives, have ever had", says The New York Times. She handled some of the Trump Organization's biggest deals and along with her elder two brothers, Donald Jr and Eric, has often preached fiscal conservatism in direct contrast to her father's bellicosity.

'Proxy wife'

Throughout her father's campaign, Ivanka found herself being used more and more to get across Trump's political message. A profile in Vanity Fair described her as a "proxy wife", saying this was in part due to Donald's current wife, Melania, not being a "conventional campaign spouse".
"The Trump campaign appears more comfortable using the candidate's daughter to spread his message than his wife," the magazine said.
Quartz suggested Ivanka would serve as Donald's "actual first lady".

Conversion to Judaism

Ivanka was raised Presbyterian but converted to Judaism in 2009, to marry husband Jared Kushner. The couple have three children: Arabella Rose, Joseph Frederick and Theodore James.

She told Vogue in the run-up to the election that the family are kosher and observe the Sabbath, turning off their phones to enjoy time together. "We don't do anything except play with each other, hang out with one another, go on walks together - pure family," she said. Ivanka described herself as a "very modern", but also "a very traditional person", adding that her conversion was "a great life decision".
Ivanka rarely discusses her religion, calling it a "personal thing", but her father invoked it several times during his campaign to assure voters he was pro-Israel. "I have tremendous love for Israel," he said. "I happen to have a son-in-law and a daughter that are Jewish, OK, and two grandchildren that are Jewish."

She has written two books

Ivanka published her first book, The Trump Card, in 2009. The self-help tome is aimed at working women - but the average reader would be forgiven for giving up after the first few sentences "to preserve her sanity", writes Jia Tolentino in the New Yorker.
In it, she continues, a woman "born with a silver spoon in her mouth" offers life-coaching to "people who use plastic forks to eat salad at their desks".
Ivanka also displays massive "cognitive dissonance" in asserting that her birth played no part in her success and wealth, says the critic.
Ivanka's second outing, Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, hit the shelves last year and focusses on her career advice and "best practices".
It is very much a spiritual successor to The Trump Card - and received even more brutally scathing reviews.

She is a White House adviser

After initially suggesting she would not take an official role in the White House, Ivanka was appointed to an official government post, joining her husband Jared Kushner as an adviser to her father.
At the time the New York Times said Ivanka's role "amounts to the formal recognition of the value Mr Trump places on the judgement and loyalty of both his daughter and his son-in-law". However, the paper added, while past presidents have called on family members to provide unofficial counsel and advice, "giving them a formal role has few precedents".
Ethics experts criticised the appointment, arguing it allows her to avoid financial disclosure rules.
"This arrangement appears designed to allow Ms Trump to avoid the ethics, conflict-of-interest and other rules that apply to White House employees," Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, ethics lawyers for former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush, respectively, wrote in a letter to the White House counsel.
Eisen added that the decision to appoint a nuclear family member to such a position was "a lot of nepotism".

She has stepped down from the Trump Organization

Ivanka stepped down from management and operations of the Trump Organization to comply with ethics regulations once her father became president.
She also quit her eponymous fashion brand.
Kushner, meanwhile, resigned as chief executive of Kushner Companies and as the publisher of the New York Observer newspaper.
According to CNN's Dylan Byers, however, the businessman has transferred his interest in the paper into a family trust.