In a new book, Ivana Trump, the US president’s first wife, has some words of praise for her former husband. But she reserves much of the back-patting for herself.
Ivana Trump was married to Donald Trump for 15 years, and she’s the mother of three of his five children, Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr. In an excerpt from her new book about motherhood, Raising Trump, out tomorrow (Oct. 10) from Gallery Books, she has some congratulations to hand out to all the OG Trumps.
In particular, Trump gives her daughter a considerable, if not surprising, amount of credit for her former husband’s election in November.
She writes:
I think Ivanka played a big part in Donald’s victory. Voters looked at her and thought, I like her. I trust her. She loves her father, so he can’t be that bad. Who knows? One day, she might be the first female—and Jewish—POTUS.
And who should get the credit for turning out such a beloved election-nabber? Naturally, the author.
Writes Trump:
I believe the credit for raising such great kids belongs to me. I was in charge of raising our children before our divorce, and I had sole custody of them after the split. I made the decisions about their education, activities, travel, child care, and allowances. When each one finished college, I said to my ex-husband, “Here is the finished product. Now it’s your turn.”
Trump is critical of her former husband, saying that as a father he couldn’t relate to his kids about anything but business. In an interview with Good Morning America, she says:
He was a good provider. But he was not a father who would take a stroller and go to Central Park or go play baseball with them. It was only until they were about 18 years old he could communicate with them, because he could start to talk business with them. Before he really didn’t know what conversation to strike with little kids.
The president affirms this in his own book, The Art of the Deal. Writing in 1987, when Ivanka was six years old, Trump said:
I adore them all, but I’ve never been great at playing with toy trucks and dolls. Now, though, Donny is beginning to get interested in buildings and real estate and sports, and that’s great.
In her own book about women at the office, Ivanka returns the compliments to her working mother, writing, “It was my mother, unapologetically feminine in a male industry, who first embodied and defined for me what it meant to be a multidimensional woman.” Ivanka’s appreciation for Ivana’s commitment to work is conspicuously not echoed by the president.