President Donald J. Trump, right, and Ivanka Trump, center, on Jan. 31, 2020. Photo by White House photographer Andrea Hanks

By Jacob Kornbluh November 16, 2022

Noticeably absent from former  President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night launch of his third bid for the presidency was his daughter Ivanka Trump. One of the most effective advocates in his first campaign for the presidency and at the White House, Ivanka Trump’s absence detracted further from a kickoff widely panned as uncharacteristically subdued for the typically animated Trump.

“I love my father very much,” Ivanka wrote in a statement she shared on social media moments after her father concluded his remarks at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics.”

Trump and her husband, Jared Kusher, have three children, and their Jewishness has often been used to push back at criticism of Trump for trafficking in racist and antisemitic tropes.

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Ivanka was pregnant with her third child when she introduced her father at his 2016 campaign launch in New York. She and Kushner joined his administration as senior advisers at the White House after Trump was elected. “There is no one closer to my father than Ivanka,” her brother, Donald Trump Jr., said in 2016.

Their time at the White House didn’t go smoothly. According to a recent book by veteran reporter Maggie Haberman, Trump “frequently” told his chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, that he was eager to see Kushner and his daughter give up their roles in the White House. At one point, he had to be talked out of firing them via a tweet.

Kushner, who was the chief architect of the Abraham Accords and who was behind several key initiatives in Trump’s first term, has also indicated that he won’t be involved in the 2024 campaign or seek to return to the White House if Trump is elected again. But he nonetheless attended Tuesday’s event.

Trump’s bid has been overshadowed by the poor performance of Republican candidates in the midterm elections last week and the investigation into his handling of classified documents. Some high-profile donors and activists have already called on him to exit the stage.

Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group, one of Wall Street’s biggest investment firms, said in a statement to Axios that it is “time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders” and that he intends “to support one of them in the presidential primaries.”

Schwarzman was a major Trump donor and served as chairman of Trump’s strategic and policy forum when Trump was president. Other Jewish megadonors who have not yet made known their intentions about supporting Trump’s campaign include: Jeffrey Yass, an American options trader; and Larry Ellison, former chief executive of Oracle.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley — all potential candidates for president in a GOP primary next year — will speak at the Republican Jewish Coalition leadership summit in Las Vegas this weekend. Miriam Adelson, the wife of the late casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who was the most generous single donor for Trump in 2020, has pledged to stay neutral in 2024.

Trump’s role in inciting the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol has also lost him some key Jewish backers.

At least one Jewish politico has signed onto Trump’s next presidential campaign. Boris Epshteyn, a former White House aide who headed the “Jewish Voices for Trump” group in 2020, will reportedly serve as a senior advisor.

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