It was clear that Donald Trump prefers his daughter Ivanka to her younger sister Tiffany — a long, documented trail of suggestive quotes and passive-aggressive Twitter comma placement stands as evidence. But it might be that Ivanka is Trump’s only child he actually likes.
Trump Sr. “took regular pleasure” in saying that his sons Don Jr. and Eric “were in the back of the room when God handed out brains,” wrote Michael Wolff in the recent exposé Fire & Fury, “but then again, Trump tended to scorn anyone who might be smarter than he was.” In fact, Wolff contended, Ivanka “certainly no native genius, was the designated family smart person, her husband Jared the family’s smooth operator.”
Trump and Donald Jr.
Meanwhile, the Trump presidency has provided a number of opportunities for Donald Trump Jr. to prove himself the Fredo of the Trump family, a nickname that The Daily Beast reported given to him by White House officials after the milquetoast screw-up in “The Godfather.” The “I love it” email chain about the meeting with Russians in Trump Tower to get dirt on Hillary Clinton was only one.
Trump Jr. was reportedly “terrified” of his father during filming of “The Apprentice” and was smacked around by Trump Sr. in full view of his dorm hallmates for failing to greet his father at the door in a suit. More recently, the president was deeply disappointed that Don Jr. and wife Vanessa had filed for divorce, as he’d personally intervened to keep them together.
Trump and Eric
Eric has the chance to become at least an equal disappointment to his father. It’s his quotes about the Trump Organization’s ties to Russia that stand in direct conflict to the president’s insistence that they have no ties to Russia. “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” the president said in a January 2017 tweet. But Eric Trump told golf writer James Dodson in 2014 that the Trumps “have all the funding we need out of Russia,” Vanity Fair reported.
On Elite Daily, Daniella Bondar points out that Trump may have dished out his ultimate sign of disapproval to Eric — by hardly mentioning him. “If you’re looking for Donald Trump quotes about his daughter Ivanka Trump, you’ll find loads — and some of them a bit, let’s say, inappropriate — but it looks like dear old dad has said almost nothing about Eric,” she writes. “I had to do a real deep dive to find just a few.” Bondar also found Trump’s recent congratulatory tweet on the birth of Eric’s son to be “a little cold.”
And even though Ivanka may have made the misstep with the biggest ultimate consequences for her father — with husband Jared Kushner, she reportedly lobbied for the president to fire FBI director James Comey — there’s nothing even approaching criticism of her in the public record. And he may have given her the biggest gift of all: In the $150 billion of new prospective China tariffs the president announced this week, clothing and shoe manufacturers — e.g. Ivanka Trump — are nowhere to be found.
