Exactly seven weeks from today, Donald Trump won’t be President anymore. And likewise, his eldest daughter, Ivanka, will be out of a job.
See, Ivanka — along with her husband, Jared Kushner — have spent the last four years by her dad’s side in Washington, emerging as major behind-the-scenes (and sometimes in front of them) players in the, um, tempestuous Trump administration.
While Ivanka won’t be working in the White House anymore, she’s not going to just disappear. As The Washington Post’s Jacqueline Alemany notes in a terrific story on Ivanka:
“It’s unclear where exactly Ivanka Trump and her husband — Jared Kushner, who like Ivanka is a senior White House adviser — will physically land after they are expected to leave Washington in January. …
” … But former friends, colleagues and associates of the couple believe wherever they live, the first daughter will be contemplating how to maximize her political capital — whether that means an actual run for office, or a gauzier influence in Republican circles in a world where President Trump still holds enormous political sway.”
If you ask Donald Trump, his daughter is capable of being elected to anything. In 2016, he reportedly considered naming her his vice president (!) And as he campaigned for a second term this year, he seemed to push her for his job.
“I want to see the first woman president also, but I don’t want to see the first woman president get into the position the way [Kamala Harris] would do it,” Trump said at a rally in New Hampshire in late August. “They’re all saying, ‘We want Ivanka!’ I don’t blame them.”
The problem with all of that, of course, is Trump himself. He appears ready, willing and able to run again for president in 2024, which would mean that Ivanka can’t also run for president that year.
And if she can’t do that, well then, her options are relatively limited.
She can’t return to New York City and, say, run for mayor. (She would likely lose in an embarrassing way.).
If Ivanka and her family wind up moving to her father’s club in Bedminster, New Jersey — as has been widely speculated — she could in theory run for the 7th Congressional District, a swing seat currently held by Rep. Tom Malinowski (D).
But would Ivanka see the House as small potatoes? (Yes, yes, she would.)
Given all of that, it seems likely that Ivanka hangs in New Jersey and bides her time — lending her name and star power to Republican fundraising efforts and making as nice as possible with the GOP establishment (such as it exists) and collecting chits.
The Point: While there is no obvious political office for Ivanka to run for at the moment, that doesn’t mean she is going to disappear from the national political radar. If you think that, you don’t know Ivanka.
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