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“I love my father very much,” Ivanka wrote on Instagram. “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,” she continued. “While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena.”
Ivanka added that she was “proud” of the “many” accomplishments from her father’s administration, where she served as a senior White House adviser.
According to a White House biography, she focused on “the education and economic empowerment of women and their families as well as job creation and economic growth through workforce development, skills training and entrepreneurship.”
The daughter of Trump’s first wife, Ivana, who died this year, Ivanka previously oversaw development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization before joining the White House and described herself as an entrepreneur. She graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in 2004 and has three children with her husband, Jared Kushner.
The twice-impeached former president, who refused to concede defeat and inspired a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election culminating in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, officially declared on Tuesday night that he is running in 2024.
The announcement came at a moment of political vulnerability for Trump as voters resoundingly rejected his endorsed candidates in last week’s midterm elections.
Since then, elected Republicans have been unusually forthright in blaming Trump for the party’s underperformance and potential rivals are already openly plotting to challenge Trump for the nomination. Trump in turn has begun attacking his likely GOP rivals, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“This comeback starts right now,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort, the target three months ago of an FBI search warrant to recover records he took from the White House, including some that were highly classified.
“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”
President Biden tweeted from his personal account on Tuesday: “Donald Trump failed America.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s former running mate and vice president Mike Pence made clear he wasn’t keen for a political reunion. “I really do believe we’ll have better choices,” Pence told a TV interviewer Tuesday when asked if he’d support Trump in 2024.
This week he called Trump’s rhetoric during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol “reckless” and said the former president’s actions “endangered” members of the Pence family and those trapped inside the building that day. Speculation has grown about whether Pence will himself run for president.
The packed ballroom at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night was a mash-up of a Trump rally and a glitzy gala. The hundreds of attendees included alumni of the Trump White House such as former Office of Management and Budget head Russ Vought, speechwriter Stephen Miller and former acting intelligence director Richard Grenell.
All eras of Trump’s political life were represented, from advisers Roger Stone and Michael Glassner to lawyer Christina Bobb. Republican officials included outgoing Rep. Madison Cawthorn (N.C.), Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Michigan GOP chair Meshawn Maddock. Other invitees included MyPillow CEO and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell and right-wing online prankster Alex Stein.
Kushner, Ivanka’s husband, who served as a senior presidential adviser, was present at the event along with her brother Eric Trump. The couple have separately spoken to the House of Representatives Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol in the past. Unlike his wife, Kushner has not publicly ruled out a return to politics and since leaving the White House has set up an investment company and written a memoir detailing his time there.
