Ivanka Trump and Don Jr. locked in 'cold war' as the fight for Trump's political heir heats up: Report
Ivanka Trump and her brother, Donald Trump Jr., are reportedly locked in a "cold war" and are both vying for their father's attention.
The Trumps are a Machiavellian family where all of the president's children are gunning for the throne that would be left behind after their father's retirement, according to a report by journalist McKay Coppins in The Atlantic.
"And while the president writes his chapter in history, the next generation waits in the wings, jockeying for position, feuding over status, knowing only one of them can be the heir," Coppins writes.
The article listed interviews with Trump campaign aides and former employees, White House officials and friends of the family to establish how the rivalry between the two siblings—Ivanka and Trump Jr.—became more potent after Trump won the presidency in 2016.
While Ivanka, who presently holds the official position of Trump's advisor, went from being a “party-girl socialite to lean-in lifestyle guru” with “her own fashion line and a flagship boutique in SoHo," her brother always “carried a certain fratty energy into adulthood that periodically got him into trouble.”
Coppins wrote: “Don had long ago come to understand that Ivanka was his father’s favorite. Daddy’s little girl,’ he liked to joke. But making peace with her husband’s status in the family was harder. Ever since Ivanka had married Jared (Kushner), Don had been made to watch as this effete, soft-spoken interloper cozied up to his dad.”
However, all that changed when Trump Jr. discovered that he could serve as a campaigner for his father during the 2016 election. His father too took note of that, often letting his son accompany him to rallies to amp up the crowd.
As Trump Jr.'s popularity in the GOP grew, so did the "cold war" brewing with his sister. "Now that each had their own teams of allies and advisers, they had grown paranoid that the other’s henchmen were planting damaging stories about them in the press," the report said.
The tipping point in their sibling rivalry came after an article titled, "Trump Kids on the Campaign Trail: Don Jr. Wows, Ivanka Disappoints" was published in a Washington D.C. outlet in 2018. While Ivanka's team was "enraged" and blamed Trump Jr's team of defaming them before the media, Don Jr. “confronted Ivanka over rumors that her team was undermining him in off-the-record conversations with reporters.”
“Tell your people to stop trashing me to the media,” a source alleges that Don Jr. told his sister. The brother-sister pair have also disagreed on political policies of their father past, especially gun control.
Representatives for both the Ivanka and Trump Jr. have denied the existence of a rivalry between the two siblings.