Ivanka Trump opens up about her dad's parenting style
"He wasn't always physically present, but he was always available.”
Ivanka Trump on Wednesday offered a preview of the prime-time speech she'll deliver when she introduces Donald Trump in Cleveland, sharing personal anecdotes of her father's parenting style and lavishing praise on his character and capability.
During a one-on-one interview with CNN’s Gloria Borger — which was broadcast during Day Three of the Republican National Convention — the eldest Trump daughter acknowledged her father wasn’t the type of dad to play games with his children and read them bedtime stories.
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“No, he was different,” Ivanka Trump said. “He was not really the type of — he wasn't long on diaper changing and things like that.”
But though he wasn’t as involved as some traditional parents are, the New York mogul “was very accessible and very available,” said Ivanka Trump, who hailed her father as “an incredible parent” who was at times demanding and “sometimes wickedly” funny, while emphasizing that no matter how busy he was, his children were always a top priority.
“He never allowed us to question that fact because he always made us his top priority,” she said. “So it doesn’t mean he was home every night for dinner. He wasn't. He was working very hard. He was building an enormous business, and he was in the early days of doing that when I was young and had a lot to prove to himself and to others, and he had big ambitions for himself. You know, he wasn't always physically present, but he was always available.”
Even when Ivanka Trump was a 10-year-old at school, she said, Donald Trump was available. She recalled collect calling his office at the Trump Organization from a payphone in the janitor’s closet.
“He would pick up the phone every single time and he'd put me on speaker phone. It wouldn't be a long conversation,” she said. “He'd introduce me to whoever was in his office, but only in retrospect — I laugh now — it didn't matter who was there. It was colleagues. It was titans of industry. It was heads of country. He’d always take my call, and he'd always tell everyone in the room how great a daughter I was and say cute things and, you know, ask me about a test I took. But, you know, I think that’s really telling of him as a person and a parent. We always came first.”
Ivanka Trump said she was “very grateful” to her parents for all they’ve done and continue to do.
“He had very high expectations for us because he knew what we had the potential to accomplish, and he saw the potential in us before we saw it in ourselves and I think really encouraged us to pursue our passions,” she said of her dad. “He wanted us to find meaning and purpose in our lives but was very careful not to push us into real estate.”
But Donald Trump’s passion for real estate was passed on to his children, Ivanka Trump said. The executive vice president of the Trump Organization added that her father always told her that “you have to do what you love, and you'll never succeed, you’ll never be able to compete at the highest level if you don't deeply love what it is what you do, if you don't want to get out of bed every morning and do what it is that you're doing.”
“And he firmly believes that,” she continued. “It's probably the most consistent piece of advice he gave me my whole life. So he would periodically check in with me and almost undermine my thought process about coming into the family business because he wanted to make sure that I knew that it wasn't an expectation of his.”
She described Donald Trump as an authentic man who listens to people he respects but ultimately makes his own decisions, and defended her father against accusations that he's a polarizing candidate.
“My father’s always elicited strong opinions in people. He is bold. He’s unabashed. He’s very himself,” she said, adding that what’s most important to her is that she know who her father really is. “So when I hear things that are factually inaccurate, it's sometimes hurtful. I feel that as a daughter, but I still know the man. I, as a woman, I, as a person, could never support someone who was sexist or racist, but I just couldn’t. I would not be able to be OK with that, but I know who he is as a human being, and I know those things are not true. And not many people say those things, but when they do it's easier for me to dismiss it because of that fact.”