Ivanka is a senior adviser to the President, along with her husband Jared Kushner, and has been dubbed the First Daughter. Before working in her father’s administration, Ivanka worked for his business – the Trump Organisation – and even before then, she was associated with his brand in other ways. For example, her first TV appearance was when she was just 15 years old, when she co-hosted her father’s Miss Teen USA beauty pageant.
Acting at the show’s ‘teen expert’, Ivanka chatted to the competitors backstage and helped announce results.
According to 2019 book ‘Kushner Inc’, her performance was “horrendously nervous”.
Ivanka made several slip-ups and awkward comments while co-hosting with actor J Eddie Peck in 1997.
After the swimsuit round, Ivanka said: “I can guarantee my brothers were loving that, are any of you single?”
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Ivanka Trump is one of three senior advisers to the President (Image: GETTY)
Ivanka Trump co-hosting Miss Teen USA 1997 (Image: YouTube (21st Century Afropolitan))
While her first TV appearance was considered to be “nervous”, she would improve her performance for future work with the media.
Author of ‘Kushner Inc’, Vicky Ward, said: “She’d recover and mature, and there were many more TV and media appearances in which she shared a platform with her father.
“Ivanka’s glossy looks and poise eventually became an important extension of his brand.”
In 2003, she starred in a documentary called ‘Born Rich’ about a group of young heirs and “arguably came off looking the best”.
Ivanka Trump co-hosting Miss Teen USA 1997 (Image: YouTube (21st Century Afropolitan))
In the show, she expressed her immense pride at being a Trump.
One particularly memorable piece of television was when Ivanka and Donald appeared on The View in 2006, and the future President made a “tasteless” comment about his daughter’s looks.
After pointing out her “nice figure,” he said: “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
Ivanka would go on to star in nearly 90 episodes of her father’s reality TV show ‘The Apprentice’.
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Ivanka Trump on The Apprentice (Image: GETTY)
Trump family interview (Image: GETTY)
This was more than any of her siblings, especially Tiffany who never appeared on the show.
However, TV was not the only place where Ivanka was making her mark.
After joining the Trump Organisation in 2005, she went on a media blitz, getting her name and face out there.
In 2007 alone, she had profiles in GQ, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and The New York Times.
Trump family tree (Image: EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS)
Ms Ward wrote: “Like her father, she excelled at both self-promotion and media manipulation, and her vocabulary was more extensive than his, her demeanour more controlled.”
Ivanka’s on-the-job tutor at the Trump Organisation was a Russian-born businessman called Felix Sater.
He would later recall how he was impressed by Ivanka and thought she would be the best out of Donald’s children to run the company after him.
He said: “She was a born promoter. Her appearance and her tenacity made Donald look at her and say: ‘Wow. She knows how to get s*** for fee and get her name on stuff.’”
Donald Trump (L) and Felix Sater (R) (Image: GETTY)
While Mr Sater was complimentary about his tutee, Ivanka would later be responsible for his expulsion from the organisation.
In 2010, Mr Sater was made a senior adviser to Mr Trump and was placed two doors down from the real estate mogul’s own office.
Meanwhile, Ivanka and her brothers were one floor below them and Mr Sater believes she saw him as a “threat”.
She demanded that Mr Sater be let go from the company and her father reluctantly obliged.
Ms Ward wrote: “It was a seminal moment that demonstrated Ivanka has real influence over her father, the limit of which had not yet been found.”
