Donald Trump was 'emotionally uninvolved' at Ivanka's wedding and gave a 'lame and embarrassing' speech, claims book
President Donald Trump graced his daughter Ivanka Trump's wedding to husband Jared Kushner in 2009, with a "lame and embarrassing" speech, claims a book. The pair tied the knot at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on October 25, in an event that saw the likes of Barbara Walters, Rupert Murdoch, Regis Philbin, Anna Wintour, Natalie Portman, and several other bigwigs in attendance, but that didn't stop Trump from reportedly delivering a dry and unemotional speech.
The claim was made in author Vicky Ward's 'Kusher, Inc: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump,' which features interviews with many who have been up close and personal with Trump and the first family. The book claims that Trump's entire speech consisted of just one sentence, where he said, "Ivanka’s great, and Jared’s great, and they’re great together, so let me give a toast." One of the guests who attended the wedding, but remained anonymous, told Ward that they were very underwhelmed by the impersonal toast. "I’m like, is that all you’ve got?" they said.
Another guest said the president did not "seem as emotionally involved" as Jared's father, Charles, who gave a speech that was "memorably, startlingly emotional." Charles reportedly spoke about how Ivanka was going to be a wonderful addition to the family - in stark contrast to his initial feelings about his daughter-in-law.
In the same book, it is claimed that Ivanka and Jared briefly split up in 2008 after a year of dating because the latter's parents were "horrified" of their pairing as Ivanka was not Jewish and their son was dating someone outside their faith.
"The idea was particularly offensive to Seryl [Jared's mother], who had raised the children," Ward wrote. "They were her world, and her world was the closed conservative Jewish culture she had grown up in."
Ward also writes that such was the Kushner's parents' dislike for Ivanka, that, for the longest time, they refused to even meet with her. Eventually, it would be the intervention of Rupert Murdoch's then-wife Wendi Deng Murdoch that would save their relationship. She is said to have invited both Ivanka and Jared to a boating holiday without telling them the other would be there, and it was on this holiday that they got back together.
Ivanka subsequently converted to Judaism in a compromise with her partner's family, but even that was not without its hitches.Because Charles was still not convinced, he made sure the conversion wouldn't involve just talking to a rabbi and reading a couple of paragraphs from the Torah. But Ivanka surpassed all expectations, and by the time she married into the family, her father-in-law was "effusive" about her, as was evident in his wedding speech.