Ivanka Trump rules out return to politics, ‘a pretty dark world’

Ivanka Trump, who for four years championed several White House initiatives for her father, is ruling out a return to Washington or politics, calling it a “pretty dark world.”

Now much more focused on her home life and three children, Trump said that she did her best to improve the nation during her stint in former President Donald Trump’s White House, and now it is time for others to step up.

“I feel like I left it all on the field. I feel really good about it, and I feel really privileged to have been able to do what I did,” Trump said in an extraordinary three-hour podcast interview with Lex Fridman.

Since leaving Washington with her three young children and fellow White House aide and husband Jared Kushner, Trump has jumped into volunteer efforts, raising her family and exploring sports and fitness.

She told Fridman that the difference between 2016 and 2024 is that when her father ran and won, he was a true outsider with few he could rely on in his inner circle. Now, after being president for four years and a front-runner in his challenge to President Joe Biden, he has a good team around him.

Trump said that when her father first announced, “everything changed.” And when he asked Ivanka and Jared to join the West Wing, there was no choice other than to agree.

“When my father won, he asked Jared and I to join him. And in asking that question, you know, keep in mind he was a total outsider, so there was no bench of people as he would have today. He had never spent the night in Washington, D.C., before staying in the White House. And so when he asked us to join him, he trusted us, trusted in our ability to execute,” she said.

“There wasn’t a part of me that could imagine a 70 or 80-year-old version of myself looking back and having been okay with having said no and going back to my life as I knew it before. I mean, in retrospect, I realized there is no life as you know before, you know, but just the idea of not saying yes, wherever that would lead me, and so I dove in,” she said.

But today, Ivanka said that she couldn’t imagine leaving her family-focused life. She said, “Life’s not fair,” but it’s better with her children around all the time.

“I think it’s actually made me a much softer person, a much better listener. I think I see people more truly for who they are as opposed to how I want them to be sometimes. And I think being a parent to three children who are all exceptional and all incredibly different has enabled that in me,” said Ivanka.

Thus, a trade to return to the rough and tumble of politics if her father wins isn’t in the cards.

“Politics is a rough, rough business and I think it’s one that you also can’t dabble in. I think you have to either be all in or all out. And I know today, the cost they would pay for me being all in, emotionally in terms of my absence at such a formative point in their life. And I’m not willing to make them bear that cost. I served for four years and feel so privileged to have done it, but as their mom, I think it’s really important that I do what’s right for them. And I think there are a lot of ways you can serve,” she said.

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She called her father’s recent conviction in a hush money deal painful and did commit to joining the family at the Republican National Convention. But at home, she said, life is better.

“I also think for politics, it’s a pretty dark world. There’s a lot of darkness, a lot of negativity, and it’s just really at odds with what feels good for me as a human being. And it’s a really rough business. So for me and my family, it feels right to not participate,” she said.