OPINION:
In 2015, I invited Ivanka Trump to join the FT table at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. At that time, her father had yet to announce his intention to run for president, and she was not a figure of global controversy. But even then, I was struck by her dedication to image management and clever messaging. She arrived looking impeccable and, during dinner, she was achingly polite, speaking to everyone at the table rather than running off to hang with grander guests or shoulder surfing for more powerful people, as is Washington custom.
The next morning, a long handwritten thank-you letter arrived. “Wow,” I thought, wondering how she had found the time. I realised that she was someone for whom no symbol was too small when it came to projecting the right image.
A decade on, it’s a point that anyone studying current American politics should note. Last month, Donald Trump finally did what he had been promising to do and declared his intention to run for president in 2024 as a Republican. The news left many anti-Trump observers reeling at the thought of a possible second term. Opinion polls during most of the past year indicated that the former president was the favoured nominee of most GOP voters. A survey last month by Politico and the business intelligence company Morning Consult suggested 47 per cent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters would back Trump if the Republican primary was held today — a far higher level than for any other candidate.
These are serious numbers. Yet among many senior Republicans there are doubts about whether the former president could actually prevail in a general election. I suspect Ivanka also has her doubts. When Trump announced his candidacy at Mar-a-Lago, surrounded by supporters and family, his daughter was nowhere to be seen. (The FT Weekend Magazine reported that her husband, Jared Kushner, was present.) This is a sharp contrast to 2016, when Ivanka was constantly at his side.