Even before Donald Trump became the first president to be indicted twice, Ivanka Trump had made it pretty clear that she wanted some distance from him. But how close is too close for the former First Daughter and White House adviser? On the eve of his Tuesday arraignment in Miami, we got our answer when she buried a photo of her father 20 clicks into an Instagram Story that will disappear from her feed in 24 hours.
Ivanka hasn’t posted a photo of her father on her carefully curated Instagram account since November, and even then, he was only featured in a single shot from her sister, Tiffany’s wedding at Mar-a-Lago. A few days after the nuptials, Ivanka and her husband and former White House colleague Jared Kushner were conspicuously absent from Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential-campaign announcement. Ivanka explained in a message posted to her Instagram Stories that they were through with politics: “While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena.”
In practice, supporting Donald Trump “outside the political arena” appeared to mean refusing to be seen with him in public. After news broke that the former president would be indicted in New York over hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, Ivanka posted a stunningly ambiguous message to her Instagram: “I love my father, and I love my country. Today, I am pained for both.” Both Ivanka and Jared skipped Trump’s post-arrest speech. But the New York Post reported that Ivanka had visited her dad at Mar-a-Lago shortly before his Manhattan arraignment in a “seeming display of support for him privately” — though it seemed no one actually saw her there.
On Monday, In lieu of a statement on her father’s second arraignment in Miami, Ivanka dumped dozens of photos of her daughter, Arabella Kushner’s bat-mitzvah celebration. “With an abundance of love and immense pride, Jared and I celebrated our daughter Arabella’s Bat Mitzvah this past weekend. We reflect on the weekend with full hearts and an abundance of joy and gratitude,” she wrote in the caption for a post with ten photos from the event.
The ninth photo in the carousel shows Arabella surrounded by her parents and her mother’s siblings and their partners — the lineup even includes Don Jr.’s ex-wife, Vanessa, who’s shown smiling next to his current fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle. But the most famous Trump is conspicuously absent.
It’s unclear if Donald and Melania Trump even attended the bat mitzvah. To find them, you’d have to go to Ivanka’s Instagram Stories. After tapping through an additional 20 photos, you come to this shot of Arabella with her grandfather (who’s doing his signature “thumb’s up” pose):
Melania shows up in the next shot, and another photo shows that the mantel is decorated with a sign that says “MAZEL TOV” and some equestrian symbols. Finally, Ivanka explains that these are photos taken at “the sweetest birthday dinner at Mar-a-lago a few weeks ago.”
Obviously, we have no way of knowing the real story behind this family function. Trump could have skipped the bat mitzvah, because he was tied up with plotting his criminal-defense strategy or because Ivanka didn’t want him taking over the DJ booth. But Ivanka clearly knows how to use photos to send a message, and this batch says, “I love you, but I cannot stomach your spiraling legal drama.”
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