Ivanka Trump: Politics, Family, Real Estate, Fashion, Music, and Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #436
- The following is a
conversation with Ivanka Trump, businesswoman, real estate developer, and former senior advisor to the President of the United States. I've gotten to know Ivanka
well over the past two years. We've become good friends, hitting it off right away over our mutual love of reading, especially philosophical writings from Marcus Aurelius, Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, Viktor Frankl, and so on. She is a truly kind, compassionate, and thoughtful human being. In the past, people have attacked her, in my view, to get indirectly
at her dad, Donald Trump, as part of a dirty game of politics and clickbait journalism. These attacks obscured
many projects and efforts, often bipartisan, that
she helped get done, and they obscured the truth of
who she is as a human being. Through all that, she
never returned the attacks with anything but kindness, and always walked through the
fire of it all with grace. For this and much more,
she is an inspiration, and I'm honored to be
able to call her a friend. Oh, and for those living
in the United States, happy upcoming 4th of July. It's both an anniversary of this country's
Declaration of Independence, and an anniversary of my
immigrating here to the US. I'm forever grateful for
this amazing country, for this amazing life, for all of you who have given a chance
to a silly kid like me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I love you all. This is the "Lex Fridman Podcast." To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends,
here's Ivanka Trump. You said that ever since you were young, you wanted to be a builder,
that you loved the idea of designing beautiful city skylines, especially in New York City. I love the New York City skyline. So describe the origins
of that love of building. - You know, I think there's
both an incredible confidence and a total insecurity
that comes with youth. So I remember 15, I would look out over the city skyline for my bedroom window in New York, and imagine where I could contribute and add value in a way that, you know, I look back on and completely laugh at, you know, how confident I was. But I've known since some
of my earliest memories it's something I've wanted to do, and I think I fundamentally, I love art. I love expressions of beauty, and so many different forms. With architecture, there's the tangible, and I think that marriage of function and something that exists beyond yourself is very compelling. I also grew up in a family where my mother was in
the real estate business, working alongside my father. My father was in the business, and I saw the joy that it brought to them. So I think I had these
natural positive associations. They used to send me as a little girl renderings of projects they
were about to embark on with notes asking if I would hurry up and finish school, so
I could come join them. So I had these positive associations, but it came from something within myself. I think that as I got older and as I got involved in real estate, I realized that it was
so multidisciplinary. You have, of course, the design, but you also have engineering, the brass tacks of construction. There's time management,
there's project planning. Just the duration of time to complete one of these iconic
structures, it's enormous. You can contribute a decade
of your life to one project. So while you have to think big picture, it means you really have to care deeply about the details because
you live with them. So it allowed me to flex a
lot of areas of interest. - I love that confidence of youth. - It's funny because we're
all so insecure, right, in the most basic interactions, but yet our ambitions are so unbridled in a way that kind of like
makes you blush as an adult. And I think it's fun. It's fun to like tap into that energy. - Yeah, where everything is possible. I think some of the greatest
builders I've ever met kind of always have that little flame of everything is possible still burning. That is a silly notion from youth, but it's not so silly. You know, everybody tells
you something is impossible, but if you continue
believing that it's possible, and to have that sort of naive
notion that you could do it, even if it's exceptionally difficult, that naive notion turns into some of the greatest
projects ever done. - 100%. - You know, going out to space, or building a new company where like everybody said it's impossible, or taking on that gigantic
company and disrupting them and revolutionizing how stuff is done. Or doing to huge building
projects where, like you said, so many people are involved
in making that happen. - We get conditioned out of that feeling. - Yeah. - We start to become insecure and we start to rely on the input or validation of others,
and it takes us away from that sort of core drive and ambition. So it's fun to reflect on that, and also to smile, right? Because whether you can execute or not, time will tell. (laughs) But yeah, no, that was
very much my childhood. - Yeah, of course. It's important to also
have the humility of, once you get humbled and realize that it's actually a lot of work to build. I still am amazed just
looking at big buildings, big bridges, that human beings are able to get together and build those things. That's one of my favorite things about architecture is just like, wow. It's a manifestation of the fact that humans can collaborate and do something like epic,
much bigger than themselves. And it's like a statue
that represents that and it can be there for a long time. - I think in some ways you look out at different city skylines, and it's almost like a visual depiction of ambition realized, right? Like it's a testament to somebody's dream, to not somebody, a whole
ensemble of people's dreams and visions and triumphs,
and in some cases failures, if the projects weren't properly executed. So, you look at these skylines and it's a testament to that. I actually heard once architecture described as frozen music. That really resonated with me. - I love thinking about a city skyline as an ensemble of dreams realized. - Yeah. I remember the first time I went to Dubai and I was watching them dredging out and creating these manmade islands. And I remember somebody once saying to me, they're an architect, an architect actually
who collaborated with us on our tower in Chicago. He said that the only thing that limited what an architect could do in that area was gravity and imagination. (laughs) So it's, you know- - Yeah but gravity's a
tricky one to work against, and that's why civil engineer
is one of my favorite things. I used to build bridges in high school for physics classes. You have to build bridges and you compete on how much weight they can carry relative to their own weight. - Yeah.
- You study how good it is by finding its breaking point, and that was a deep appreciation for me on a miniature scale of, on a large scale, what people are able to
do with civil engineering, 'cause gravity is a tricky
one to fight against. - It definitely is. And bridges, I mean, some
of the iconic designs in our country are incredible bridges. - So if we think of skylines as ensembles of dreams realized, you spent quite a bit of time in New York. What do you love about and what do you think about
the New York City skyline? What's a good picture? We're looking here at a few. I mean, looking over the water. - Well, I think the water
is an unbelievable feature of the New York skyline, as
you see the island on approach. And oftentimes you'll
see, like in these images, you'll see these towers reflecting
off of the water surface. So I think there's
something very beautiful and unique about that. When I look at New York,
I see this unbelievable sort of tapestry of different
types of architecture. So you have the gothic form, as represented by buildings
like the Woolworth Building, or you'll have art deco as represented by buildings like 40 Wall Street or the Chrysler Building,
or Rockefeller Center. And then you'll have these unbelievable super modern examples,
or modernist examples like Lever House and Seagram's House. So you have all of these different styles, and I think to build in New York, you're really building
the best of the best. So nobody's giving New York
their sort of second rate work. And especially when a lot of
those buildings were built, there was this incredible
competition happening between New York and Chicago for kind of dominance of the sky, and for who could create
the greatest skyline, that sort of race to
the sky when skyscrapers were first being built,
starting in Chicago, and then New York surpassing that in terms of height at least with the Empire State Building. So I love sort of contextualizing
the skylines as well and thinking back to
when different components that are so iconic were added and the context in which
they came into being. - I gotta ask you about this. There's a pretty cool page that I've been following on X, Architecture & Tradition, and they celebrate sort of traditional schools of architecture. And you mentioned gothic, the tapestry. This is in Chicago, the
Tribune Tower in Chicago. So what do you think about that, sort of the old and the new mix together? Do you like gothic? - I think it's hard to look at something like the Tribune Tower and
not be completely in awe, like, this is an unbelievable building. Look at those buttresses, and you've got gargoyles
hanging off of it. And you know, this style was reminiscent of the cathedrals of Europe, which was very kind of in vogue in like the 1920s here in America. Actually, I've mentioned
the Woolworth Tower before. The Woolworth Tower was actually referred to as the Cathedral of Commerce, and because it also was
in that gothic style. - [Lex] Amazing. - So this was built maybe a decade before the Tribune Building. But the Tribune Building to me is, it's almost not replicable. It personally really resonates with me because one of the first projects I ever worked on was
building Trump Chicago, which was this beautiful, elegant, super modern, all glass
skyscraper right across the way. So it was right across the river. So I would look out the windows as it was under construction, or be standing quite literally on rebar of the building looking
out at the Tribune, and incredibly inspired. And now the reflective glass of the building reflects
back not only the river but also the Tribune Building and other buildings on Michigan Avenue. - Do you like it when the glass, the reflective properties of the glass is part of the architecture? - I think it depends. Like they have super reflective glass that sometimes doesn't
work, it's distracting. And I think it's one component of sort of a composition
that comes together. I think in this case, the glass on Trump
Chicago is very beautiful. It was designed by Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, a major architecture firm, who actually did the
Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is I think like
an awe inspiring example of modern architecture. But glass is tricky. You have to get the shade right. You know, some glass
has a lot of iron in it and get super green, and that's a choice. And sometimes you have
more blue properties, blue silver, like you see here, but it's part of the character. - How do you know what it's actually going to look like when it's done? Like, is it possible to imagine that? Because it feels like
there's so many variables. - I think so. I think if you have a vivid imagination, if you sit with it, and then if you also go
beyond the rendering, right? You have to live with the materials. So you don't build a 92 story
building glass curtain wall and not deeply examine the actual curtain wall
before purchasing it. So you have to spend a lot of time with the actual materials,
not just the beautiful sort of artistic renderings, which can be incredibly misleading. The goal is actually that the end result is much, much more compelling than what the architect
or artist rendered, but oftentimes, that's
very much not the case. You know, sometimes also you
mention context, you know, sometimes I'll see
renderings of buildings, I'm like, "Wait, what about the building right to the left of it that's
blocking 80% of its views?" You know, the architects, they'll remove things
that are inconvenient. So you have to be rooted in- - In reality.
- In reality, exactly. - And I love the notion of
living with the materials, in contrast to living in the
imagined world of the drawings. So both are probably important, 'cause you have to dream
the thing into existence, but you also have to be rooted in like what the thing is actually going to look like in the
context of everything else. - 100%. - One of the underlying principles of the page I just mentioned, and I hear folks mention this a lot is that modern architecture's
kind of boring, that it lacks soul and beauty. And you just spoke with admiration for both modern and for
gothic, for older architecture. So do you think there's truth that modern architecture is boring? - I'm living in Miami currently, so I see a lot of super
uninspired glass boxes on the waterfront, but I
think exceptional things shouldn't be the norm. You know, they're typically rare, so, and I think in modern architecture, you find an abundance of amazing examples of super compelling and
innovative building designs. I mean, I mentioned the Burj Khalifa. It is awe-inspiring. This is an unbelievably striking example of modern architecture. You look at some older examples, the Sydney Opera House, and, you know, so I think
there's unbelievable. There you go.
(Lex laughs) I mean, that's like a needle in the sky. - [Lex] (laughs) Yeah,
reaching out to the stars. - It's huge. And in the context of a city where there's a lot of height, so it's unbelievable. But I think one of the things that's probably exciting me the most about architecture right now is the innovation that's
happening within it. You know, there's example
of robotic fabrication, there's 3D printing. Your friend and who you introduced me to not too long ago, Neri Oxman, what she's doing at the intersection of biology and technology, and thinking about how to create more sustainable development practices, quite literally trying to create materials that will biodegrade back into the earth. I think there's something
really cool happening now with the rediscovery of
ancient building techniques. So you have self-healing concrete that was used by the Romans, an art and a practice of
using volcanic ash and lime that's now being rediscovered and is more critical than ever as we think about how much of our infrastructure relies on concrete, and how much of that is failing
on the most basic levels. So I think actually it's a
really, really exciting time for innovation in architecture, and I think there are
some incredible examples of modern design that are really exciting. But generally, I think Roosevelt said that comparison is the
thief of joy, so it's hard. You know, you look at
the Tribune Building, you look at some of
these iconic structures. One of the buildings I'm most proud to have worked on was the historical Post Office building in Washington, DC. You look at a building like that and it feels like it has no equal. - Also, there's a psychological element where people tend to want to complain about the new and celebrate the old. - Always. (both laughing) It's like the history of time, so. - There's just, people are
always kind of skeptical and concerned about change, and it's true that there's a lot of stuff that's new that's not good. It's not gonna last, it's not gonna stand the test
of time, but some things will. And there's just like in modern art and modern music, there's
going to be artists that stand the test of time, and we'll later look
back and celebrate them. "Those were the good times." - Yeah. - When you just step back, what do you love about architecture? Is it the beauty? Is it the function? - I'm most emotionally drawn
obviously to the beauty, but I think as somebody
who's built things, I really believe that the form
has to follow the function. Like, there's nothing uglier than a space that is ill conceived, that, you know, otherwise it's decoration. And I think that after sort
of that initial reaction to seeing something that's aesthetically really pleasing to me,
when I look at a building or a project, I love
sort of thinking about how it's being used. So having been able to
build so many things in my career and worked on
so many incredible projects. I mean, it's really, really rewarding after the fact to have
somebody come up to you and tell you that they got engaged in the lobby of your building, or they got married in the ballroom, and share with you some
of those experiences. So to me that's equally as beautiful, the use cases for these
unbelievable projects. But I think it's all of it. I love that you've got the construction, and you've got the design, and you've got then the interior design, and you've got the financing elements, the marketing elements, and it's all wrapped
up in this one effort. So, to me it's exciting to sort of flex in all those different ways. - Yeah, like you said,
it's dreams realized, hard work realized. I mean, probably on the bridge side is why I love the function, in terms of function being primary. You just think of like the millions- - Oh my gosh, look at that.
- Of bridges. - Go down, you had... Look at that. (laughs) - Yeah, this is Devil's Bridge in Germany. - Yeah. I wouldn't say it's like
the most practical design, but look how beautiful that is. - Yeah, so this is probably,
well, we don't know. We need to interview some people whether the function holds up. But in terms of beauty, and then like what we're talking about, using the water for the reflection and the shape that creates. I mean, there's an elegance
to the shape of a bridge. - See, it's interesting that
they call it Devil's Bridge, because to me this is very ethereal. You know, I think about
the ring, the circle, life. - There's nothing about
this that makes me feel. Maybe they're just being
ironic in the names. - Unless that function's really flawed. - Yeah, exactly. Maybe- - Nobody's ever successfully crossed. - Could cross the bridge, yeah. But I mean, to me, there's just iconic, I love looking at bridges
because of the function. It's the Brooklyn Bridge
or the Golden Gate Bridge. I mean, those are probably my favorites in the United States. Just in a city to be able to look out and see the skyline combined
with the suspension bridge, and thinking of all the
millions of cars that pass, like the busyness, like
us humans getting together and going to work, building cool stuff. And just the bridge kind of represents the turmoil and the busyness
of a city as it creates. It's cool. - [Ivanka] And the connectivity as well. - [Lex] Yeah, the network
of roads all come together. So there, the bridge is
the ultimate combination of function and beauty. - Yeah. I remember when I was first
learning about bridges, studying the cable stay
versus the suspension bridge, and I mean, you actually
built mini replicas, so I'm sure you'll have
a point of view on this, but they really are so beautiful. And you mentioned the Brooklyn Bridge, but growing up in New York, that was as much a part
of the architectural story and tapestry of that skyline as any building that's seen in it, so. - What in general is your philosophy, philosophy of design and
building in architecture? - Well, some of the most recent projects I worked on prior to government service were the Old Post Office building, and almost simultaneously
Trump Doral in Miami. So these were both two
just massive undertakings, both redevelopments,
which in a lot of cases, having worked on ground up construction, redevelopment projects
are in a lot of ways much more complicated because
you have existing attributes, but also a lot of limitations
you have to work within, especially when you're repurposing a use. So, this, the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue was- - [Lex] So beautiful. - It's unbelievable. So this was a Romanesque revival building built in the 1890s on
America's main street to symbolize American grandeur. And at the time, there were
post office being built in the style across the country, but this being really the defining one. Still to this day, the tallest habitable
structure in Washington, the tallest structure being the monument. The nation's only vertical park, which is that clock tower. But you've got these thick granite walls, those carved granite turrets. Just an unbelievable building. You've got this massive atrium that runs through the whole center of it that is topped with glass. So having the opportunity to spearhead a project
like that was so exciting. And actually it was my
first renovation project, so I came to it with a tremendous amount of energy, vigor and humility
about how to do it properly, ensuring I had all the right people. We had countless federal and
local government agencies that would oversee every
single decision we made. But in advance of even having
the opportunity to do it, there was a close to two
year request for proposal, like a process that was put out by the General Services Administration. So it was this really arduous
government procurement process that we were competing against so many different people for the opportunity, which a lot of people said it
was a gigantic waste of time. But I looked at that and I think, so did a lot of the other bidders and say, it's worth trying to put
the best vision forward. - So you fell in love with
this project like this? - [Ivanka] I fell in love, yeah. - So what would, is there
some interesting details about what it takes to do renovation? Is there about some of the
challenges or opportunities? Because you wanna maintain
the beauty of the old, and now like upgrade the
functionality, I guess, and maybe modernize some aspects of it without destroying what made the building magical in the first place. - So I think the greatest
asset was already there, the exterior of the building,
which we meticulously restored and any addition to it had to
be done sort of very gently in terms of any signage additions. The interior spaces were
completely dilapidated. It had been in a post office, then was used for a
really rundown food court and government office spaces. It was actually losing $6 million a year when we got the concession to build it, and when we won, and became one of, I think a great example of public-private
partnerships working together. But I think the biggest
challenge in having such a radical use conversion
is just how you lay it out. So the amount of time I
would get on that Acela twice a week, three times a week to spend day trips down in Washington, and we would walk every single inch of the building, laying
out the floor plans, debating over the configuration of a room. There were almost 300 rooms and there were almost 300 layouts. So nothing could be repeated. Whereas when you have, when
you're building from scratch, you tend, you know, you have a box and you decide where you wanna add, you know, potential elements, and you kind of can stack the
floor plan all the way up. But when you're working
within a building like this, every single room was different. You see the setbacks, so the setback then required you to move the plumbing. So there was no, it was
really a labor of love, and to do something like this, and that's why I think renovation. We had it with Doral as well. It was 700 rooms over 650 acres of property, and so every single unit was very different and complicated. Not as complicated in some ways. The scale of it was so massive, but not as complicated
as the Old Post Office, but it required a level of precision. And I think in real estate, you have a lot of people
who design on plan, and a lot of people
who are in the business of sort of acquiring and flipping. So it's more financial
engineering than it is building. And they don't spend the time sort of sweating these details that make something great and
make something functional, and you feel it in the end result. But I mean, blood, sweat, tears, years of my life for those
projects and it was worth it. I enjoyed almost, I enjoyed almost every minute of it. - So to you, it's not about the flipping. To you, it's about the art and the function of the
thing that you're creating. - 100%. - What's design on plan? I'm learning new things today. - When proposals are put
forth by an architect and really just the plan is accepted, and in the case of a renovation, like if you're not walking those rooms, the number of times a
beautifully laid out room was on a blueprint, and
then I'd go to Washington and I'd walk that floor and I'd realize that there was a column that ran right up through the middle
of the space where, you know, the bed was supposed to be, or the toilet was supposed
to be, or the shower. So there's a lot of things that are missed when you do something conceptually without sort of rooting it
in the actual structure. And that's why I think even, you know, with ground up construction as well, people who aren't constantly
on their job sites, constantly walking the projects, there's just a lot that's, there's a lot that's missed. - I mean, there's a wisdom to the idea that we talked about before,
live with the materials and walking the construction
site, walking the rooms. I mean, that's what you hear from people like Steve Jobs, like Elon. That's why you live on the factory floor. That's why you constantly obsess about the details of the
actual, not of the plans, but the physical reality of the product. I mean, the insanity of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive working together
on like making it perfect, making the iPhone, the early designs, prototypes, making that perfect, like what it actually
feels like in the hand. You have to be there like
as close to the metal as possible to truly understand. - And you have to love
it in order to do that. - Right. It shouldn't be about how
much it's going to sell for, all that kind of stuff. You have to love the art. - 'Cause for the most part,
he can probably get 90, maybe even 95% of the end result, unless something has terribly
gone awry by not caring with that level of almost
like maniacal precision. But you'll notice that 10% for the rest of your life, you know. So I think that extra
effort, that passion, I think that's what
separates good from great. - If we go back to that young Ivanka, the confidence of youth, and if we could talk about your mom. She had a big influence on you. You told me she was an adventurer. - [Ivanka] Yeah. - Olympic skier and a businesswoman. What did you learn about
life from your mother? - So much. She passed away two years ago now, and she was a remarkable,
remarkable woman. She was a trailblazer in
so many different ways. As an athlete growing up in
communist Czechoslovakia, as a fashion mogul, as a real
estate executive and builder, just this all around
trailblazing business woman. I also learned from her, you know, aside from that element,
how to really enjoy life. You know, I look back and some of my happiest memories of her are in the ocean, you know,
just lying on her back, looking up at the sun and
just so, so in the moment. Or dancing. She loved to dance. So she really taught me a lot about living life to its fullest, and she had so much
courage, so much conviction, so much energy and a complete
comfort with who she was. - What do you think about that? I mean, Olympic athlete, the trade off between like ambition and just wanting to do big
things and pursuing that and giving your all to that, and being able to relax and
just throw your arms back and enjoy every moment of
life, like that trade off. - [Ivanka] Yeah. - What do you think about that trade off? - I think because she was this unbelievable formidable athlete and because of the discipline
she had as a child, I think it made her value
those moments more as an adult. I think she was a great balance of the two that we all hoped to find, and she was able to find both incredibly serious and formidable. I remember as a little girl, I used to literally trapes behind her at the Plaza Hotel, which she oversaw, and actually kind of
was her Old Post Office. It was this unbelievable
historic hotel in New York City. And I'd follow her around
at construction meetings, and on job sites, and
there she is dancing. See? That's funny that's the
picture you pull up. - I'm sorry. - That's great.
- The two of you just look great in that picture. - That's great. She had such a joy to her, and she was so unabashed in her perspective and her opinions. I mean, you know, she made my
father look reserved. (laughs) Whatever she was feeling, she was just very expressive and a lot of fun to be around. - So she, as you mentioned, grew up during the Prague Spring in 1968, and that had a big
impact on human history. I mean, my family came
from the Soviet Union and then, you know, the 20th century, the story of the 20th century
is a lot of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union tried
the ideas of communism, and it turned out that
a lot of those ideas resulted into a lot of suffering. So why do you think the
communist ideology failed? - I think fundamentally as
people, we desire freedom. We want agency. You know, and my mom was
like a lot of other people who grew up in similar situations where she didn't like to
talk about it that often. So one of my real regrets is
that I didn't push her harder. You know, so, but I think back to the conversations we did have and I try to imagine what it's like. She was at Charles University in Prague, which was really like a
focal point of the reforms that were ushered in
during the Prague Spring, and the liberalization
agenda that was happening. The dance halls were opening, the student activists, and she was attending university there right at that same time. So the contrast to this feeling of freedom and progress and liberalization in the spring, and then it so quickly being crushed in the fall of that same year when the Warsaw Pact countries and the Soviet Union rolled in to put down and ultimately roll
back all those reforms. So for her to have lived
through that, you know, she didn't come to North America until she was 23 or 24, so that was her life as a young girl. She was on the junior national ski team for Czechoslovakia. My grandfather used to train her. They used to put the skis on her back and walk up the mountain
in Czechoslovakia, because there were no ski lifts. She actually made me do
that when I was a child, just to let me know what
her experience had been. If I complained that it was cold out, she's like, "Well, you didn't
have to walk up the mountain. You'd be plenty warm if you had carried the skis up on your back up the last run." - I feel like they made
people tougher back then. Like my grandma, and you
mentioned, it's funny, they go through some of the darkest things that a human being can go through and they don't talk about it, and they have a general
positive outlook on life like that's deeply rooted in the knowledge of what life could be,
like how bad it could get. My grandma survived Holodomor in Ukraine, which was a mass starvation brought on by the collectivist policies
of the Stalin regime, and then she survived the
Nazi occupation of Ukraine. Never talked about it. Probably went through extremely dark, extremely difficult times, and then just always had a
positive outlook on life, and also made me do very
difficult physical activity, like as you mentioned, just to humble you. Like kids these days
are soft kind of energy, which I'm deeply, deeply
grateful for on all fronts, including just having hardship and including just physical
hardship flung at me, I think that's really important. - You wonder how much of who they were was a reaction to their experience. You know, would she have naturally had that sort of forward looking, grateful, optimistic orientation? Or was it a reaction to her childhood? I think about that, you know, I look at this picture of my mom and she was unabashedly herself. You know, she loved
flamboyance and glamour, and in some ways I think it
probably was a direct reaction to this very austere,
controlled childhood. You know, this was one expression of it. I think her, you know, how she dressed and how she presented, I think her entrepreneurial
spirit and love of capitalism and all things American was
another manifestation of it and one that I grew up with. I remember the story she used to tell me about when she was 14 and she was going to neighboring countries and, you know, as an athlete, you were given additional freedoms that you wouldn't otherwise be afforded in these societies under communist rules. So she was able to travel,
where most of her friends never would be able to
leave Czechoslovakia. And she would come back
from all of these trips and the first place
where she'd do ski races in Austria and elsewhere, and the first thing she had to do was check in at the local police. And she'd sit down and she had enough wisdom at 14 to know that she couldn't appear to be lying by not being impressed by what she saw, and the fact that you could
get an orange in the winter, but she couldn't be too excited by it that she'd become a flight risk. So give enough details-
- Oh, boy. - That you're believable, but not so many that you're not trusted. And imagine that as a 14-year-old, you know, that experience and having to navigate the world that way. And she told me that eventually all those local police
officers, they came to love her because one of the things she'd do is smuggle that stuff
back from these countries and give it to them to give their wives, perfume and stockings. So she figured out the
system pretty quickly. But it's a very different experience from what I was navigating
and the pressures and challenges me as a
14-year-old was dealing with. So, I have so much respect
and admiration for her. - Yeah, hardship clarifies
what's important in life. You and I have talked about
"Man's Search For Meaning," that book, having kind
of an ultimate hardship clarifies that finding joy in life is not about the environment, it's about your outlook
on that environment, and there's beauty to be
found in any situation. And also in that particular situation, when everything's taken from you, the thing you start to think
about is the people you love. So in the case of "Man's
Search For Meaning," Viktor Frankl thinking about his wife and how much he loves her, and that love was the flame, the warmth that kept him excited, the fun thing to think about
when everything else is gone. So we sometimes forget that
with the busyness of life, you get all this fun
stuff we're talking about, like building and being a
creative force in the world. At the end of the day, what matters is just like the other
humans in your life, the people you love.
- 100%. - It's the simple stuff. - You know, Viktor Frankl
is somebody, I mean, that book and just his
philosophy in general, it's so inspiring to me. But I think so many people,
they say they want happiness, but they want conditional happiness. You know, when this and
this, a thing happens, or under these circumstances,
then I'll be happy. And I think what he showed is that we can sort of cultivate
these virtues within ourselves regardless of the situation
we find ourselves in. And in some ways I think
the meaning of life is the search for meaning in life. It's the relationships
we have and we form. It's the experience we have. It's how we deal with the suffering that life inevitably presents to us. And Viktor Frankl does an amazing job highlighting that under the
most horrific circumstances, and I think it's just
super inspiring to me. - He also shows that you can get so much from just like small joys, like getting a little more soup today than you did yesterday. I mean, it's like, it's the little stuff. If you allow yourself to love the little stuff of life,
it's all around you. It's all there. So you don't need to like
have these ambitious goals, and the comparison being a thief
of joy, that kind of stuff. Just like it's all around
us, the ability to eat. Like, when I was in the jungle and I got severely dehydrated 'cause there's no water, you
run outta water real quick. And I mean, the joy I
felt when I got to drink. Like I didn't care about anything else. Speaking of things that matter in life. I would start to fantasize about water, and that was breaking me joy. (laughs) - You can tap into this
feeling at any time. - Exactly. I was just tapping in
just to stay positive. - Just go into your bathroom, turn on the sink and watch the water. - Oh, for sure, for sure. I mean, people really, it's good to have stuff
taken away for a time. That's why struggle is good,
to make you appreciate, to have deep gratitude
for when you have it. And water and food is a big one, but water is the biggest one. I wouldn't recommend it necessarily to get severely dehydrated
to appreciate water, but maybe every time
you take a sip of water, you can have that kind of gratitude. - There's a prayer in Judaism you're supposed to say every morning, which is basically thanking
God for your body working. It's something, you know, so basic, but it's when it doesn't
that we're grateful. So just reminding ourselves
every day the basic things of a functional body, of our health, of access to water, which
so many millions of people around the world do not have reliably is very clarifying and super important. - Yeah, health is a gift. Water is a gift. - Yeah. - Is there a memory with your mom that had a defining effect on your life? - I have these vignettes in my mind. You know, seeing her in action
in different capacities. A lot of times in the context of things that I would later go on to do myself. So, you know, I would go every day, almost every day after school, and I'd go to the Plaza Hotel and I'd follow her around as she'd walk the hallways,
and just observe her. And she was so impossibly glamorous. She was doing everything in, you know, four and a half inch heels with this bouffant.
- Nice. - And so it was almost,
it was almost like an, it's almost like an inaccessible visual. But I think for me, when I saw her experience the most joy tended to be by the sea, almost always. Not a pool, and I think
I get this from her. Pools, they're fine. I love the ocean. I love salt water. I love the way it makes me feel, and I think I got that from her. So we would just swim
together all the time, and you know, it's a lot of what I love about Miami actually, being
so close to the ocean, I find it to be super cathartic. But a lot of my memories of my mom, seeing her really like just in her bliss is floating around in
a body of salt water. - Is there also some aspect
to her being an example of somebody that could be sort
of beautiful and feminine, but at the same time powerful, a successful business woman that showed that it's possible to do that? - Yeah, I think she
really was a trailblazer. It's not uncommon in real estate for there to be multiple generations of people and so on job sites. It was not unusual for me to run into somebody whose grandfather had worked with my grandfather
in Brooklyn or Queens, or whose father had worked with my mother. And they'd always tell me
these stories about her, you know, rolling in and
they'd hear the heels first. And a lot of times the
story would be like, oh gosh, like, you know, really, it's two days after Christmas. Like, we thought we'd get a reprieve. But she was very exacting. You know, so I have this
visual in my mind of her, you know, walking on rebar, you know, on the balls of her feet
in these four inch heels. - Nice. - I'm assuming she actually
carried flats with her but I don't know. (laughs) That's not the visual I have. But she was, I loved the fact that she so embodied
femininity and glamour, and was so comfortable being tough and ambitious and determined, and this unbelievable businesswoman and entrepreneur at a time
when she was very much alone. Even, you know, for me
in the development world, and so many of the different
businesses that I've been in, there really aren't women outside of sales and of marketing. You don't see as many women
in the development space, in the construction space,
even in the architecture and design space, maybe
outside of interior design. So, and she was, you
know, decades ahead of me. So it was, I love hearing these stories. I love hearing somebody
who's my peer tell me about their grandfather and their father, and their experience
with one of my parents. It's amazing. - And she did it all in four inch heels. - And she did it. She used to say, "There's nothing that I
can't do better in heels." - (laughs) That's a good one. - That would be her exact thing. And when I complain
about wearing something, you know, it was like the early 90s, everything was all so like uncomfortable, these fabrics and materials, and I was, I would like go back and forth between being super
girly and a total tomboy. But she'd, you know, dress
me up in these things, and I'd be complaining about it, and she'd say, "Ivanka, pain for beauty," which I happen to totally disagree with, because I think there's nothing worse than being uncomfortable. So I haven't accepted or internalized all of this wisdom, so to speak. But it was just funny. You know, she had a very
specific point of view. - And full of good lines,
pain for beauty. (laughs) - It's funny because I
mean, just even in fashion, if something's uncomfortable, to me, there's nothing that looks worse than when you see somebody
like tottering around and like their heels hurt them, so they're kind of walking oddly. And you know, it doesn't, they're not embodying their
confidence in that regard. So I'm like kind of the opposite. I start with, well, I
wanna be comfortable, and that helps me be
confident and in command. - A foundation for fashion
for you is comfort, and on top of that you build things that are beautiful.
- And it's not comfort like dowdy, you know, there's that level of comfort, but- - Functional comfort. - But I think you have to, for me, I wanna feel confident, and you don't feel confident when you're like pulling at a garment or, you know, hobbling on heels that don't fit you properly. And she was never doing
those things either, so I don't know how she was
wearing stuff like that. That's like a 40 pound beaded dress, and I know this because I have it and I wore it recently, and I mean, I got a workout walking to the elevator. Like this is a heavy dress. And you know what, it was worth it. It was great. - She's making it look easy. - But she makes it look
very, very easy, so. - Do you miss her? - So much. It's unbelievable how dislocating the loss of a parent is. And her mother lives with me still, my grandmother who helped raise us, so that's very special. And I can ask her some of the
questions that I would've, sorry, I wanted to ask my
own mom, but it's hard. - It was beautiful to see, I've gotten a chance to spend time with your family, to see so
many generations together at the table and there's
so much history there. - No, she's 97, and
until she was around 94, she lived completely on her own. No help, no anything, no support. And now she requires really
sort of 24 hour care. And I feel super grateful
that I'm able to give her that because that's what she did for me. It's amazing for me to have my children be able to grow up and know
her stories, know her recipes. Czech dumplings and goulash. - [Lex] Yeah. - And kitza litza, and all the other things she used to make me in my childhood. But she really, she was a major, she was a major force in my
life, my grandmother, she, you know, my mom was working, so, you know, my grandmother was the person who was always home every day when I came back from school. And I remember I used to shower and it would almost be like comical. I feel like in my memory, and there is no washing
machine I've seen on the planet that can actually do this, but in my memory, I'd
go to shower, you know, and I'd drop something on the bed, and I'd come back into
the room after my shower and it was like folded, pressed. It was all my grandmother. She was like running after
me taking care of me, and so it's nice to be
able to do that for her. - Yeah. - I got from her reading, my grandmother. She would, she devoured
books, like devoured books. She loved the more sensational ones, so like some of these like romance novels, I would pick them up the covers. But she could tell you, she could look at like any
royal lineage across Europe and tell you all the mistresses- - All the drama. - All the drama. She loved it. But her face was always buried in a book. You know, my grandfather,
Dedo, he was the athlete. He swam professionally for, or, you know, on the national
team for Czechoslovakia, and he helped train my mom, as I was saying before, in skiing. So he was a great athlete,
and she was at home, and she would read and cook, and so that's something I
remember a lot from my childhood, and she would always say
like I got reading from her. - I mean, like speaking of drama, I had my English teacher in high school recommended a book from
me by D. H. Lawrence. It's supposed to be a classic. She's like, "This is a
classic you should read." It's called "Lady Chatterley's Lover." And so I've read a lot of classics, but that one is straight
up like a romance novel about a wife who like just
cheating with the gardener. And I remember reading this like, what? Like in retrospect, I
understand why it's a classic because it was so scandalous to talk about sex in a book
100 years ago, whatever. - In retrospect, do you know
why she recommended it to you? - I have no, I think maybe
she just sending a signal- - [Ivanka] Might need to think about that. - Hey, you need to get
out more or something. I don't know. (laughs) - Maybe she was seeking
to inspire you, Lex. - Yeah, exactly. (both laughing) Anyway, I mean, I love
that kind of stuff too, but I love all the classics, and they get, there's a lot of drama. Human nature, drama is part of it, so. What about your dad? Growing up, what did you learn
about life from your father? - I think my father's sense of humor is sometimes underappreciated. So, he had an amazing and has
an amazing sense of humor. He loved music. I think my mom loved music as well, but you know, my father always used to say that in another life he would've been a Broadway musical producer, which is hilarious to think about. But he loves, he loves music. - That is funny to think about. - Right? He does, now he DJs at Mar-a-Lago, so. - [Lex] Nice. - People get a sense of, you know, he loves Andrew Lloyd Weber and all of it, Pavarotti, Elton John. I mean, these were the same songs on repeat my whole childhood, so. I know the playlist. - [Lex] Probably Sinatra and all that. - Loves Sinatra, loves Elvis, you know, a lot of the greats. So I think I got a little
bit of my love from music from him, but my mom shared that as well. I think one of the things, you know, in looking back that I think I inherited from my father as well
is this sort of interest or understanding of the
importance of asking questions, and specifically questions
of the right people. And I saw this a lot on job sites. So I remember with the
Old Post Office building, there was this massive
glass topped atrium, so heating and cooling the structure was like a herculean lift. We had the mechanical engineers provide their thoughts on how we
could do it efficiently and so that the temperature never varied, and it was enormously expensive as an undertaking. And I remember one of his
first times on a site, because, you know, he
had really empowered me with this project and
he trusted me to execute and to also, you know, rope
him in when I needed it. But one of the first time he visits, we're walking the hallway and we're talking about how expensive this
cooling system would be, and heating system would be, and he starts stopping, and he's asking duct workers as we walk what they think of the system that the mechanical engineers designed. First few, fine, you
know, not great answers. The third guy goes, "Sir, if you want me
to be honest with you, it's obscenely over-designed. In the circumstance of a 1000 year storm, you will have the exact
perfect temperature, if there's a massive blizzard
or if it's unbearably hot. But 99.9% of the time,
you'll never need it, and so I think it's just an
enormous waste of money." And so we kept asking that guy questions, and we ended up overhauling the design pretty well into the
process of the whole system, saving a lot of money, creating a great system
that's super functional. And so I learned a lot, and that's just one example of countless, that one really sticks outta in my head because I'm like, oh my gosh, we're redesign the whole system. You know, we were actively
under construction so it was. But I would see him do that
on a lot of different issues. He would ask people on the work level what their thoughts were,
ideas, concepts, designs, and there was almost like a Socratic sort of first principles type of way he questioned people, trying to get down to sort of, trying to reduce complex things to something really
fundamental and simple. So I try to do that
myself to the best I can, and I think it's something I
very much learned from him. - Yeah, I've seen great engineers, great leaders do just that. You see, you wanna do that a lot, which is basically ask questions
to push simplification. Can we do this simpler? And like why, the basic question is like, why are we doing it this way? Can this be done simpler? - Yeah. - And not taking as an answer that this is how we've always done it, sort of not allowing yourself, like, it doesn't matter, that's
how we always done it. What is the right way to do it? And what is, and usually
the simpler it is, the more correct the way. It has to do with costs,
has to do with simplicity of production, manufacturer, but usually simple is best. - And it's oftentimes
not the architecture, the engineers, it's, you
know, in Elon's case, probably the line worker who
sees things more clearly. So I think making sure it's not just that you're asking good questions, you're asking the right people those same good questions. - That's why like a lot
of the Elon companies are really flat in terms
of organizational design, where anybody on the factory floor can talk directly to Elon. There's no, there's not
this managerial class, this hierarchy where to travel
up and down the hierarchy, which large companies often construct this hierarchy of managers
where no one manager, if you ask them the question of like, "What have you done this week?" The answer is like, it's
really hard to come up with. Usually it's gonna be
a bunch of paperwork. - [Ivanka] Yeah. - So like, nobody knows
what they actually do. So when it's flat, you can actually get as quickly as possible,
when problems arise, you can solve those problems
as quickly as possible. And also, you have a direct rapid iterative process where
you're making things simpler, making them more efficient and constantly improving, so yeah. It's interesting when large, I mean you see this in government, a lot of people get together,
a hierarchy is developed and that somehow, sometimes it's good, but very often just slows things down. And you see great companies,
great, great companies, Apple, Google, Meta, they have to fight against
that bureaucracy that builds, the slowness that large
organizations have. And to still be a big organization and act like a startup
is the big challenge. - It's super difficult to deconstruct that as well
once it's in place, right? It's circumventing layers
and asking questions, probing questions of
people on the ground level is a huge challenge to the
authority of the hierarchy, and there's tremendous
amount of resistance to it. So it's how do you grow something in the case of a company in terms of a culture that can scale but doesn't lose its connection to sort of real and meaningful feedback. It's not easy. - I've had a lot of
conversations with Jim Keller, who's this legendary engineer and leader, and he has talked about, like, you often have to kind of be a little bit of an asshole in the room. Not in a mean way, but
like, it's uncomfortable. Like a lot of these questions,
they're uncomfortable. They break the kinda general politeness and civility that people
have in communication. When you get a meeting, like, nobody wants to be like, "Can we do it way different?" Everyone wants to just like,
this lunch is coming up, you know, I have this trip planned on the weekend with the family. Everyone just wants comfort. When humans get together, they kind of gravitate towards comfort. Nobody wants that one person that comes in and says, "Hey, can we like do this way better and way different? And everything we've gotten comfortable with, throw it out." - Not only do they not want that, but the one person who comes in and does that puts a massive
target on their back, and is ultimately seen as a threat. I mean, nobody really gets fired for maintaining the status quo. - Right.
- Even if things go poorly. It's the way it was always done. - Yeah, humans are fascinating. But in order to actually
do great big projects, to reach for the stars, you
have to have those people. You have to constantly disrupt and have those
uncomfortable conversations. - And really have that first
principles type of orientation, especially in those large
bureaucratic contexts. - So amongst many other things, you created a fashion brand. What was that about? (laughs) What was the origin of that? - I always loved fashion as
a form of self-expression, as a means to communicate either a truth or an illusion, depending on
what kind of mood you were in. But this like sort of
second body, if you will. So I loved fashion, and look, I mean, my mother was a big
part of the reason I did. But I never thought I
would go into fashion. In fact, I was graduating from Wharton, it was the day of my graduation, and Anna Winter calls up and offered me a job at "Vogue," which is a dream in so many ways. But I was so focused, I wanted to go into real estate and I wanted to build buildings, and I told her that. So I really thought that that was going to be
the path I was taking. And then very organically
fashion, you know, it was part of my life,
but it came into my life in a more professional capacity by talking with my first
of many different partners that I had in the fashion space about. He actually had shown me a
building to buy his family, had some real estate holdings, and I passed on the real estate deal. But we forged a friendship and we started talking
about how in the space that he was in, fine jewelry, there was this lack of product and brands that were positioned for self purchasing females. So everything was about, you know, the man buying the Christmas gift, the man buying the engagement ring. The stores felt like that. They were all tailored
towards the male aesthetic. The marketing felt like that. And what about the woman who had a salary and was really excited to buy herself a great pair of earrings, or had just received a great bonus and was gonna use it to treat herself? So we thought there was a
void in the marketplace, and that was the first
category I launched, Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, and we just caught lightning in a bottle. It was really quickly after
that, I met my partner who had founded Nine West
Shoes, really capable partner, and we launched a shoe collection, which took off and did enormously well. And then a clothing
collection, and handbags, and sunglasses, and fragrance. So, we caught a moment
and we found a positioning for this self purchasing
multidimensional woman. And we made dressing
for work aspirational. At the time we launched, if
you wanted to buy something for an office context, like the brands that existed were the
opposite of exciting. Like nobody was, you know, taking pictures of like what they were wearing to work and posting it online with some of these classic legacy brands. Really, it felt very
much like it was designed by a team of men for what a woman would wanna wear to the office. So we started creating this
clothing that was feminine, that was beautiful, that was versatile, that would take a woman
from the boardroom, to an afterschool soccer game, to a date night with a boyfriend, to a walk in the park with her husband. Like all the different
ways women live their lives and creating a wardrobe for that woman who works at every aspect of their life, not just sort of the
siloed professional part. And it was really compelling. We started creating great brand content, and we had incredible
contributors like Adam Grant, who was blogging for us at the time, and creating aspirational
content for working women. It was actually kind of a funny story, but I now had probably close to 11 different product categories, and we were growing like wildfire, and I started to think about
what would be a compelling way to sort of create interesting content for the people who were buying
these different categories, and we came up with a website
called Women Who Work. And I went to a marketing
agency, you know, one of the fancy firms in New York, and I said, you know, "We
wanna create a brand campaign around this multidimensional
woman who works, and what do you think? Like, can you help us?" And they come back and
they say, "You know what? We don't like the word work. We think it should be women who do." And I just start laughing
because I'm like, women who do. And the fact that they couldn't conceive of it being sort of
exciting and aspirational and interesting to sort
of lean into working at all aspects of our lives
was just fascinating to me. But showed that that
was part of the problem. And I think that's why ultimately, I mean, when the business grew to be hundreds of millions of dollars, and sales were distributed
at all the best retailers across the country from, you
know, Neiman Marcus to Sachs, to Bloomingdale's and beyond, and I think it really
resonated with people in an amazing way. And probably not dissimilar to how I have this incredible experience every time somebody comes up to me and tells me that they
were married in a space that I had painstakingly designed. I have that experience now
with my fashion company. The number of women who
will come up tell me that they loved my shoes
or they loved the handbags, and I've had women show
me their engagement rings, they got engaged with us, and it's really rewarding. It's really beautiful. - Yeah, when I was hanging
out with you in Miami, the number of women that came up to you saying they love the clothing, they love the shoes. It's awesome.
- All these years later. - All these years later.
- Yeah. - What does it take to make a shoe where somebody would come
up to you years later and just be just full of love for this thing you've created? What's that mean, like, what
does it take to do that? - Well, I still wear
the shoes, so. (laughs) - I mean, that's a good
starting point, right, is to create a thing
that you want to wear. - I feel like the product,
I think first and foremost, you have to have the right partner. So shoe, building a shoe, if you talk to a great shoe designer, it's like it's architecture. Like making a heel that's four inches that feels good to walk
in for eight hours a day, that is an engineering feat. And so I found great partners
in everything that I did. My shoe partner had founded Nine West, so he really knew what went into making a shoe wearable and comfortable, and then you overlay
that with great design. And we also created
this really comfortable, beautifully designed, super
feminine product offering that was also affordably priced. So I think it was like the trifecta of those three things that made, I think it made it stand
out for so many people. - Can you speak to, I
don't know if it's possible to articulate, but can
you speak to the process you go through from
idea to the final thing? Like, what you go through
to bring an idea to life? - So not being a designer, and this was true in real estate as well, I was never the architect, so I didn't necessarily have the pen, and in fashion, the same. I was kind of like a conductor. I knew what I liked and didn't like, and I think that's really important, and that became honed for me over time. So I would have to sit a lot longer with something earlier on then later when I had more refined my
aesthetic point of view. And so I think first of all, you have to have a pretty strong sense of what resonates with you. And then as in the case
of my fashion business, as it grew and became
quite a large business and I had so many different categories, everything had to work together. So I had individual
partners for each category, but if we were selling at Neiman Marcus, we couldn't have a pair of shoes that didn't relate to a dress, that didn't relate to a pair of sunglasses and handbags all on the same floor. So, you know, in the beginning, it was much more collaborative. As time passed, I really sort
of took the point on deciding, and this is the aesthetic for the season, these are the colors we're
gonna use, these are fabrics, and then working with our partners on the execution of that. But I needed to create
an overlay that allowed for cohesion as the collection grew. And that was actually really fun for me because that was a little different. You know, I was typically
initially responding to things that were put in front of me, and towards the end, it was my partners who were responding to the
things that myself and my team. But it's still, you know, I would always, I always wanted to bring
the best talent in, so I was hiring great
designers, and printmakers, and copywriters. And so I had this, you know, almost like that conductor analogy. I had this incredible group of, in this case, women assemble to, who had very strong
points of view themselves, and it created a great team. - So yeah, I mean, great team
is really sort of essential. It's the essential thing behind any successful story. - 100%.
- But there's this thing of taste, which is really interesting 'cause it's hard to kinda
articulate what it takes. But basically knowing A
versus B, what looks good, or without A-B comparison
to say like, if we did, if we changed this part,
that would make it better. That sort of designer taste, that's hard to make explicit what that is, but the great designers
like have that taste, like this is gonna look good. And it's not actually,
again, the Steve Jobs thing, it's not the opinion, but like you can't pull people and ask 'em what looks better. You have to have the vision of that. And as you said, you also have to develop eventually the confidence
that your taste is good, such that you can like curate, you can direct teams. You can argue that no,
no, no, this is right, even when there's several people that say this doesn't make any sense. If you have that vision,
have the confidence, this will look good, that's how you come up with great designs. It's a mixture of great taste you develop over time and the confidence. - And that's a really
hard thing, especially, and I think one of the
things that I love most about all of these creative pursuits is that ability to work
with the best people. Right now I'm working with my husband, we have this 1400 acre
island in the Mediterranean, and we're bringing in the best architects and the best brands. But to have a point of view and to challenge people who
are such artists respectfully, but not to be afraid to ask questions, it takes a lot of confidence
to do that and it's hard. So these are actually just
internal early renderings. So we're in the process of doing the master planning now of it. - [Lex] This is beautiful. I mean, it's on the side of a mountain. - [Ivanka] Yeah, this is
an early vision, yeah. It's gonna be extraordinary. Aman's gonna operate the hotel for us, and they're gonna be
villas, and we have Carbone, who's gonna be doing
the food and beverage. But it's amazing to bring
together all of this talent, and for me to be able to play around and flex the real estate muscles again and have some fun with it is- - The real estate, the design, the art. How hard is it to bring
something like that to life? 'Cause that's like, that looks surreal, out of this world. - Well, especially on an island, it's challenging, meaning the logistics of even getting the building materials to an island are no joke. But we will execute on it, so. And it may not be this, this is sort of, as I said, early conceptual drawings, but it gives a sense of sort of wanting to honor the topography that exists. And, you know, this is
obviously very modern, but making it feel right
in terms of the context of the vegetation and
the terrain that exists, and not just have, you
know, a beautiful glass box. Obviously you want
glass, you wanna look out and see that gorgeous blue ocean, but how do you do that in a way that doesn't feel generic, and isn't a squandered opportunity
to create something new? - Yeah, and it's integrated
with the natural landscape. It's a celebration of the
natural landscape around it. So I guess you start from this dreamlike because this feels like a dream, and then when you're
faced with the reality of the building materials and all the actual
constraints of the building, then it evolves from there, right? - Yeah, and so much, I mean, so much of architecture you don't see, but it's decisions made. So, how do you create
independent structures where you look out of one
and don't see the other? You know, how do you
ensure sort of the stacking and the master plan works
in a way that's harmonious? And view corridors, and
all of those elements, all of those components of decision making are super appreciated but
not often thought about. - [Lex] What's a view corridor? - [Ivanka] Like to make
sure that the top unit, you're not looking out and
seeing a whole bunch of units, you're looking out and seeing the ocean. - So you have to-
- So that's where you take this and then you start
angling everything, and you start thinking about, well, in this context, do we have green roof? So if there's any hint of a roof, it's camouflaged by
vegetation that matches what already exists on the island. That's where the engineers
become very important. - Well, yeah. - How do you build into a mountain side while being sensitive to
the beauty of the island? - It's almost like a mathematical problem. I took a class, computational
geometry in grad school where you have to think about
like these view corridors. It's like a math problem. Well, but it's also an art problem because it's not just about making sure that there's no occlusions to the view. You have to figure out
when there is occlusions, like what is the vegetation? So you have to figure all that out, and there's probably,
so every single room, every single building is a thing that adds extra complexity. - And then the choices, like how does the sunrise and set? - [Lex] Yeah. - So how do you wanna angle
the hotel in relation- - That's awesome.
- To the sunrise and the sunset. Do you obviously want
people to experience those? So which do you favor? The directionality of the wind, and on an island, and
you know, in this case, the wind's coming from the north and the vegetation is less
lush on the northern end. So do you focus more on the southern end and have, you know, the
horseback riding trails and amenities up towards the north? So there are these really
interesting decisions and choices you get to reflect on. - That's a fascinating sort
of discussion be having. And probably there's
like actual constraints on like infrastructure
issues, so all of those are constraints.
- Yeah, well, the grade of the land, right? If it's super steep. So also finding the areas of
topography that are flatter, but still have the great
views, and so it's fun. I think real estate and building, it's like a giant puzzle
and I love puzzles. Every piece relates to another, and it's all sort of interconnected. - Yeah, like you said
in the Old Post Office, like every single room is different, so every single room is a puzzle when you're doing the renovation. - [Ivanka] Yeah. - That's fascinating. - And if you're not thoughtful, like it's like at best
really quirky. (laughs) At worst, completely ridiculous. - Quirky is such a funny word. It's such a like-
- You've walked into, I'm sure you've walked
into your fair share of like quirky rooms. - Yeah.
- You know, and sometimes like that's charming, but most often it's charming
when it's intentional- - Yeah.
- Through like smart design. - Yeah, you can tell if it's by accident or if it's intentional
because you can tell. So much, I mean, the
whole hospitality thing, it's not just like how it's designed, it's how once the thing is operating, if it's a hotel, like how
everything comes together, the culture of the place. - And the warmth. Like I think with spaces, you can feel like the soul of a structure. And I think on the hotel side, you have to think about
like flow of traffic, use, all these things. When you're building
condominiums or your own home, you wanna think about like
the warmth of a space as well. And especially with super modern design, sometimes like warmth is sacrificed, and I think there is a
way to sort of marry both. And that's where you get into sort of the interior
design elements and disciplines, and how fabrics can
create tremendous warmth in a space which is
otherwise sort of colder, raw building materials. And that's a really interesting, like how texture matters,
how color matters. And I think oftentimes
interior design is not, it doesn't take the same priority, and I think that underestimates the impact it can have on how you
experience a room or space. - Yeah, especially when
it's working together with the architecture. Yeah, fabrics and color. That's so interesting. - Finishes, you know, the choice of wood. - It's making me feel horrible about the space we're sitting in now. It's like black curtains. The warmth, I need to work on this. - No comment.
- This is a big two door. - [Ivanka] But you know what I love- (Lex laughs) - This is a big two item. You're making me feel.
- You know, I think you may need-
- I'll listen back to this over and over. - There may be like a
woman's touch needed. - A lot, a lot.
- But I actually, I appreciate the vegetation. (laughs) - Yeah, the fake plant, fake green plants. - You know what I love
about this space though is like you come through. Like every single element- - There's a story behind it. - There's a story behind it. So it's not just some, you didn't have some
interior designer curate your bookshelf.
- No. No. (laughs) - You know, there's
like, nobody came in here with books by the yard. - This is basically an Ikea, like this is not, this is
not deeply thought through, but it does bring me joy. - [Ivanka] Yeah. - Which is one way to do design, as long as you're happy, that usually means if your
taste is decent enough, that means others will be happy, or will see the joy radiate through it. But I appreciate you were grasping for compliments and you
eventually got there. - No, I actually, I love it. I love it. Do you have like a
little, I love this guy. - There's, yeah, you're
holding onto to a monkey looking at a human skull, which is particularly irrelevant. - This, I mean, I feel like you've really thought about all of these things. (laughs) - Yeah, there's robot, I don't know if, I mean,
I don't know how much you've looked into robots, but there's a way to communicate love and affection from a robot that I'm really fascinated by, and a lot of cartoonists do this too. You have to, when you create cartoons and non-human like entities, you have to bring out the joy. So with WALL-E or robots in "Star Wars," to be able to communicate emotion, anger and excitement through a robot is really interesting to me. And people that do it successfully are awesome, are awesome. - To make you smile. - Yeah, that makes me smile, for sure. There's a longing there. - How do you do that successfully as you bring them, your projects to life? - I think there's so
many detailed elements that I think artists know well, but one basic one is
something that people know and you now know 'cause you have a dog, is the excitement that a dog
has when you first show up. Just the recognizing you
and like catching your eye and just showing its excitement by wiggling its butt and
tail and all this kind of, this intense joy that overtakes its body. That moment of recognizing something. It's the double take that you're, that moment of like, where
this joy of recognition takes over your whole cognition, and you're just like there
and there's a connection, and then the other person gets excited and you both get excited together. It's kind of like that feeling, what would I put it? You know like when you go to airports and you get to see people
who haven't seen each other for a long time all of a
sudden recognize each other, and they're meeting, and they all like run towards each other and a hug, that moment. By the way, that's awesome to watch. There's so much joy. - And dogs though will
have that every time. You could walk into the other room to get a glass of milk and you come back and your dog sees you
like it's the first time. So I love replicating that in robots. They actually say children, like one of the reasons why
peekaboo is so successful (both laughing) is that they actually don't remember not having seen you a few seconds prior. There's a term for it, but I remember when my kids were younger, you leave the room and you
walk back in 30 seconds later and they experience the
same joy as if you had been, you know, gone for four hours. And we grow out of that. We become very used to one another. - I kind of wanna forever be excited by the peekaboo phenomena. The simple joys. We were talking about on fashion having the confidence of taste to be able to sort of push through on this idea of a design. But you've also mentioned
somebody you admire is Rick Rubin and his book
of "The Creative Act." It has some really interesting ideas, and one of them is to accept
self-doubt and imperfection. So is there some battle within yourself that you have on sort of
striving for perfection and for the confidence, and always kind of having it together versus like accepting that things are always going to be imperfect? - I think every day. I think I wake up in the morning and, you know, I wanna be better. I wanna be a better mom,
I wanna be a better wife, I wanna be more creative. I wanna be physically stronger. And so that very much lives
within me all the time. You know, I think I also
grew up in the context of being the child of two extraordinarily successful parents, and that could have been
debilitating for me. And I saw that in a lot of my friends who grew up in circumstances
similar to that, they were afraid to try for
fear of not measuring up. And I think somehow early on, I learned to kind of harness the fear of not being good enough, not being competent enough. And I harnessed it to make me better and to push me outside of my comfort zone. So I think that's always lived with me and I think it probably always will. I think you have to have
humility in anything you do that you could be better
and strive for that. I think as you get older,
it softens a little bit as you have more reps, you know, as you have more examples of having been thrown in the deep end and figured out how to swim. You get a little bit more comfortable in your sort of abstract competency. But if that fear is not in you, I think you're not
challenging yourself enough. - Harness the fear. The other thing he writes
about is intuition, that you need to trust your
instincts and intuition. That's a very recruitment
thing that's to say. But so what percent of
your decision making is intuition or what percent is through rigorous careful
analysis would you say? - I think it's both. It's like trust but verify, you know. I think you, I think that's also where age and experience comes into play because I think you always
have sort of a gut instinct, but I think intuition, like, well honed intuition comes from a place of accumulated knowledge, right? So oftentimes when you feel
really strongly about something, it's because you've sort
of, you've been there, like you know what's right. Or on a personal level, if you're acting in accordance
with your core values, you know, it just feels good. And even if it would be the
right decision for others, if you're acting outside
of your sort of integrity or core values, it doesn't feel good, and it, you know, your intuition
will signal that to you. You'll never be comfortable. So I think because of that, I start oftentimes with my intuition and then I put it through
like a rigorous test of whether that is in fact true. But very seldom do I go against what my initial instinct was, at least at this point in my life. - Yeah, I had actually
a discussion yesterday with a big time business owner investor who was talking about being
impulsive and following that. Like on a phone call shifting
like the entire everything, like giving away very
large amounts of money and moving it in another
direction on an impulse. Making a promise that he
can't at that time deliver, but knows if he works hard, he'll deliver, and all doing, just following
that impulsive feeling. And he said now that, you
know, he has a family, that probably some of that impulse has quieted down a little bit. He's more rational and
thoughtful and so on, but wonders whether it's sometimes good to just be impulsive, and to just trust your
gut and just go with it. Don't deliberate too long
'cause then you won't do it. It's interesting. It's the confidence is
stupidity maybe of youth that leads to some of the
greatest breakthroughs, and it's like there's a cost
to wisdom and deliberation. - There is, but I actually
think in this case, as you get older, you
may act less impulsively, but I think you're more like attuned with. You have more experience, so your gut is like more
well honed, you know? - That's true.
- So your instincts are more well honed. I think I found that to be true for me. You know, it doesn't feel as like reckless as when I was younger. - Amongst many other things, you were on "The Apprentice." People love you on there. People love the show. So what did you learn about business, about life from the various
contestants on there? - Well, I think you can learn everything about life from Joan Rivers, so I'm just- - [Lex] Got it from just that one human. - Gonna go with that. She was amazing. But you know, it was such
a wild experience for me because I was quite
young when I was on it, just getting started in business, and it was the number one
television show in the country, and it went on to be
syndicated all over the world, and it was just this wild
like phenomenal success. You know, a business show had never crossed over
in this sort of way. So it was really a moment in time. And you had regular "Apprentice" and then the "Celebrity Apprentice." But the task, I mean,
they went on to be studied at business schools across the country. - Yeah, that's great.
- So every other week, I'd be reading case studies of how "The Apprentice" was being examined and taught to classes in this university in Boston or, you know, so it was extraordinary. And this was like a real
life classroom I was in. So I think because of
the nature of the show, you learn a lot about, you know, teamwork, and you're watching it and
analyzing it real time. You learned a lot about, a lot of the tasks were
very marketing oriented because of, you know, the
short duration of time they had to execute. A lot of, you learned a
lot about time management because of that short duration. So, you know, almost every episode would devolve into people hysterical over the fact that they
had 10 minutes left with this herculean lift ahead of them. So, it was a fascinating, it was a fascinating experience for me. And we would be filming, I mean, we would film first thing in the morning at like 5:00 or 6:00 AM
in Trump Tower oftentimes, like in the lobby of Trump Tower. That's where the war rooms and board rooms of the candidates were, the contestants were. And then we would go up in
the elevator to our office, we would work all day,
and then we'd come down and we'd evaluate the task. It was this weird like
real life television thing experience in the middle of our, sort of on the bookends of our work day. So it was intense. - So you're like curating
the television version of it and also living it. - Living, and oftentimes
there was like an overlay. Like there were episodes that they came up with brand campaigns
for my shoe collection, or my clothing line, or designed challenges
related to, you know, a hotel I was responsible for building. So there was this unbelievable crossover that was obviously great for
us from a business perspective, but it's sometimes surreal to experience. - What was it like? Was it scary to be in front of a camera when you know so many people watch? I mean, that's a new experience
for you at that time, just the number of people watching. - Yeah.
- Was that weird? - It was really weird. I really struggled watching
myself on the episodes. Like I really, I still to this day, like television as a medium, like the fact that we're taping this, I'm more self-conscious
than if we weren't. I just, it's- - Hey, I have to watch myself, as after we record this,
before I publish it, I have to listen to my stupid
self talk, so. (laughs) - [Ivanka] So you're saying
it doesn't get better. - It doesn't get better. - I still, I hear myself, I'm like, "Does my voice
really sound like that?" You know, why do I do
this thing or that thing? And I find it, some
people are super at ease, and who knows, maybe they're not either, but some people feel like
they're super at ease. You know, my father was. I think like who you saw is who you get, and I think that made him
so effective in that medium because he was just himself, and he was totally unselfconscious. I was not. I was totally self-conscious. So it was, it was extraordinary but also a little challenging for me. - I think certain people are just like born to be entertainers, like Elvis, like on
stages, they come to life. This is where they're truly happy. I've met guys like that,
like great rock stars. Like this is where they feel
like they belong on stages. It's not just a thing they do and there's certain aspects they love, certain aspects they don't. No, this is where they're alive. This is where they've
always dreamed of being. This is where they want to be forever. - Michael Jackson was like that. - Michael Jackson. I saw pictures of you hanging
out with Michael Jackson. That was cool. (laughs) - He came once to a performance. I wanted to be, one moment in time, I wanted to be a professional ballerina. - [Lex] Okay, yes, yes. - And I was, you know,
working really hard. I was going to the School
of American Ballet. I was dancing at the Lincoln
Center in "The Nutcracker." I was super serious, you
know, 9, 10-year-old. And my parents came to
a Christmas performance of "The Nutcracker" and my father brought Michael Jackson with him. And everyone was so excited
that all the dancers, they wore one glove. But I remember he was so shy. He was so quiet when you'd see him like
in smaller group settings, and then you'd watch him walk onto stage and it was like a
completely different person. Like the vitality that came into him, and you say that's like someone who was born to do what he did. And I think there are a lot
of performers like that. - And I just in general love to see people that have found the thing
that makes them come alive. Like I, as I mentioned,
went to the jungle recently with Paul Rosalie, and he's a guy who just belongs in the jungle. Like, that's a guy where
like when I, (laughs) I got a chance to go with him
from the city to the jungle, and you just see this person
change of the happiness. The joy he has when he first is able to jump in the water of the Amazon River, and to feel like he's home with
the crocodiles and all that. And he's calling friends and he probably dances around
in the trees with the monkeys. So this is where he belongs,
and I love seeing that. - You felt that. I mean, I watched the interview you did with him and you felt that, like his passion and
enthusiasm, like it radiated. I mean, I love animals, like I love all animals. Never loved snakes so much. And he almost made me, now I appreciate the beauty of them much more than I did prior to listening to
him speak about them. But it's an infectious thing. He actually, we were talking
about skyscrapers before. I loved, he called trees
skyscrapers of life, and I thought that was so great. - Yeah, and they are, they're so big. I mean, just like skyscrapers or large buildings, they
also represent a history, especially in Europe. I like to think, looking at
all these ancient buildings, you like to think of all the
people throughout history that have looked at
them, have admired them, have been inspired by them, you know, great leaders of history. In France, it's like Napoleon, just the history that's
contained within a building, you almost feel the
energy of that history. You could feel the stories
emanate from the buildings. And that same way when
you look at giant trees that have been there for
decades, for centuries, in some cases, you feel the history, the stories emanate. I got a chance to climb some of them, so you feel like there's
a visceral feeling of the power of the trees. It's cool.
- Yeah. That's an experience I'd love to have, be that disconnected. - Yeah. Being in the jungle among
the trees, among the animals, you remember that you're
forever a part of nature. You fundamentally are nature. That this is, earth is a living organism, and you're a part of that organism. And that's humbling, that's beautiful, and you get to experience
that in a real, real way. It sounds simple to say, but when you actually like experience it, it stays with you for a long time, especially if you're out there alone. I got a chance to spend
time in the jungle solo just by myself, and you
sit in the fear of that, in the simplicity of that, all of it, and just no sounds of humans and anywhere. You're just sitting there and listening to all the monkeys and the birds trying to have sex with each other, all around you just screaming. And there's like romantic, I mean, I romanticize everything. There's like birds that
are monogamous for life, like macaws, you could see
like two of them flying. They're also, by the way,
screaming at each other. And I always wonder like, are they arguing or is this their love language? - That's very funny.
- Like you just have these like two birds that you know have been
together for a long time, and they're just screaming
at each other in the morning- - That's really funny because there aren't
that many animal species that are monogamous. And you highlighted one example, but they literally sound
like they're bickering. - But maybe to them, it's beautiful. You know, I don't wanna judge, but they do sound very
loud and very obnoxious. But amidst all of that
is just, I don't know. - I think it's so humbling
to like feel so small too. Like I feel like when we get busy and when we're running around, it's easy to feel we're so in our head and we feel sort of so consequential, like in the context of even our own lives. And then you find yourself
in a situation like that and I think you feel
so much more connected knowing how minuscule you
are in the broader sense. And I feel that way when I'm
on the ocean on a surfboard. You know, you just, it's really humbling to be so small amidst that vast sea. And it feels, it feels really beautiful, you know, with no noise, no
chatter, no distractions. Just being in the moment. And it sounds like you experienced that in a very, very real way in the Amazon. - Yeah, the power of the waves is cool. I love swimming out into the ocean and feeling the power of
the ocean underneath you, that you're just like this speck. - And you can't fight it, right? You just have to sort of be in it. And I think in surfing, one of the things I love about it is I feel
like a lot of water sports, you're like manipulating
the environment, you know? And there's something that can be a little like violent about it, like
you look at wind surfing, whereas with surfing, you're
like in harmony with it. So you're not fighting it, you're flowing with it. And you still have like the agency of choosing which waves you're gonna surf, and you sit there and you read the ocean, and you learn to understand it, but you can't control it. - What's it like to like fall on your face when
you're trying to surf? Like, what, I haven't surfed before. It just feels like, I always see videos of when everything goes great. I just wonder like when it doesn't. - Those are the ones people post. No, well, I actually had
the unique experience of one of my first time surfing. I only learned a couple of
years ago, so I'm not good. I just love it. I love everything about it. I love the physicality, I
love being in the ocean. I love everything about it. The hardest thing with
surfing is paddling out because when you're like committing, you catch a wave obviously
sometimes like, you know, you flip over your board
and that doesn't feel great. But when you're in sort
of the line of impact and you've maybe surfed a good wave in and now you're going out for another set, and you get sort of stuck
in that impact line, there's like nothing you can do. You just sort of sit there and you try to dive underneath it, and it will pound you and pound you. So I've been stuck there while, you know, four or five, six waves just
like crash on top of your head. And the worst thing you
can do is get reactive, and you know, and scared and
try and fight against it. You kind of just have to flow with it until inevitably there's a break, and then paddle like hell
back out to the line, or to the beach, you know,
whatever you're feeling. But that's, to me,
that's the hardest part, the paddling out. - How did life change
when your father decided to run for president? - Wow, everything changed, you know, almost overnight. We learned that he was planning to announce his candidacy two
weeks before he actually did. And nothing about our lives had been constructed
with politics in mind. You know, most often
when people are exposed to politics at that level,
that sort of national level, there's first like city council run, and then maybe a state level run, and maybe, maybe, you
know, congress, senator, ultimately the presidency. So it was unheard of for him never to have run a campaign and then run for president and win. So it was an extraordinary
experience there. There was so much intensity
and so much scrutiny and so much noise. So that took for sure like
a moment to acclimate to. I'm not sure I ever fully acclimated, but it definitely was a
super unusual experience. But I think then the process that unfolded over the next couple of years was also like the most extraordinary growth experience of my life. You know, suddenly I was
going into communities that I probably never would've been to, and I was talking with people who in 30 seconds would reveal to me their deepest insecurity,
their gravest fear, their wildest ambitions, all of it, with the hope that in
telling me that story, it would get back to a
potential future president of the United States and have
impacts for their family, for their community. So the level of candor and vulnerability people have with you is unlike anything I've ever experienced. And I had done "The Apprentice" before. People may know who I was in some of these situations
that I was going into, but they wouldn't have shared with me these things that you got the impression that oftentimes their own
spouses wouldn't know, and they wouldn't do so within 30 seconds. So you learn so much about what motivates people, what drives people, what their concerns are, and you grow so much as a result of it. - So when you're in the White House, people, unlike in any other position, people have a sense that all the troubles they're going through, maybe you can help, and so they put it all out there. - And they do so in such a raw, vulnerable, and real way. It's shocking and eye-opening, and super motivating. I remember once I was in New Hampshire, and early on, right after my father had announced his candidacy, and a man walks up to
me in the greeting line, and within around five seconds he had started to tell me a story about how his daughter
had died of an overdose, and how he was worried his son was also addicted to opioids. His daughter's friends, his son's friends, and it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking and it's something that I would experience every
day in talking with people. - And those stories just stay with you. - [Ivanka] Always. - You know, I took a long road trip around the United States in my 20s, and I'm kind of thinking of doing it again just for like a couple of
months for that exact purpose. And you can get these stories when you go to like a bar
in the middle of nowhere and just sit and talk to people, and they start sharing. And it reminds you of like
how beautiful the country is. It reminds you of several things. One, that people, well, it shows you that there's a lot of different
accents, that's for one. But aside from that, that people are struggling
with all the same stuff, and at least at that time. I wonder what it is now, but at that time, I don't remember, on the surface there was like political divisions. There's Republicans and
Democrats and so on, but like underneath it,
people are all the same, their concerns are all the same and there's not that much of a division. Right now, the surface division has been amplified even more, maybe because of social media. I don't know why. So I would love to see what
the country's like now, but I suspect probably
it's still not as divided as it appears to be on the
surface, what the media shows, what the social media shows. But what did you experience
in terms of the division? - Well, I think a couple
reactions to what you just said. I think the first is, when you connect with people like that, you are so inspired by their courage, you know, in the face of
adversity and their resilience. And it's like a truly
remarkable experience. For me, the campaign
lifted me out of a bubble I didn't even know I was in. You know, I grew up on the
Upper East Side of New York, and I felt like I was well
traveled and well educated, and I believed that,
I believed at the time that I'd been exposed
to divergent viewpoints. And I realized during the campaign how limited my exposure had been, relative to what it was becoming. So there was a lot of
growth in that as well. But I do think, you know, you think about the vitriol
in politics, and you know, whether it's worse than it's
been in the past or not, I think that's up for debate. I think, you know, there have been, there have been duals. - Right?
- There's been screaming and there's, you know, politics has always been a blood sport and it's always been incredibly vicious. I think in the toxic
swirl of social media, it's more amplified, and there are, there's more sort of democratization around participating in it perhaps. And it seems like the voices are louder, but it's always been, it feels
like it's always been that. But I don't believe most
people are like that, and, you know, you meet
people along the way, and they're not leading with
what their politics are. You know, they're telling you about their hopes for themselves
and their communities, and it makes you feel that we are a whole lot less divided than, you know, the media and
others would have us believe. - Although I have to say, having duals sounds pretty cool. Maybe I just romanticize
Westerns but anyway. All right, I miss Clint Eastwood movies. Okay. (laughs) But it's true, like, you
read some of this stuff, like in terms of what politics used to be in the history of the United States, those folks went pretty rough, like way rougher actually. But they didn't have social media, so they had to go like real hard, and the media was rough too. So all like the fake news, all of that, that's not recent. (laughs) It's been nonstop. You know, I look at the surface division, the surface bickering, and that might be like
just a feature of democracy that it's not a bug of
democracy, it's a feature. We're in a constant conflict, and it's the way we resolve, we try to figure out
the right way forward. So in the moment, it feels like people are just tearing each other apart, but really we're trying to find the way where like, in the long arc of history, it will look like progress,
but in the short term, it just sounds like
people making stories up about each other and
calling each other names, and all this kind of stuff. But in that there's a purpose to it. I mean, that's what freedom looks like I guess is what I'm trying to say, and it's better than the alternative. - Well, I think that the vast majority of people aren't participating in it. - Sure, yes, that's true also. - You know, I think there's
a minority of people that are doing most of
the yelling and screaming, and the majority of Americans just wanna send their
kid to a great school, and want their communities to thrive, and want to be able to realize their dreams and aspirations. So I saw a lot more of that than it would feel obvious if you looked at like a Twitter feed. - What went into your decision to join the White House as an advisor? - You know, the campaign, I never thought about joining. It was kind of like, get to the end of it. And when it started, I was like, everything in my life was
almost firing on all cylinders. I had two young kids at home. During the course of the campaign, I ended up, I was pregnant with my third, so this young family, my businesses, real estate, and fashion, and working alongside my brothers running the Trump Hotel collection. And we had so many, my
life was full and busy, and so there was a big part of me that just wanted to get
through, just get through it without really thinking forward to what the implications were for me. But when my father won, he asked Jared and I to join him, and in asking that question, you know, keep in mind he was a total outsider. So there was no bench of
people as he would have today. He had never spent the night
in Washington DC before staying in the White House. And so when he asked us to
join him, he trusted us. He trusted in our ability to execute. And there wasn't a part
of me that could imagine this 70 or 80-year-old version of myself looking back and having been
okay with having said no, and going back to my
life as I knew it before. I mean, in retrospect, I
realized there is no life as you know it before, you know. But just the idea of not saying yes wherever that would lead
me and so I dove in. You know, I was also, during
the course of the campaign, I was just much more sensitive to the problems and
experiences of Americans. I gave you an example before of the father in New Hampshire. But even just in my
consumption of information, you know, I had a business that was predominantly
young women, you know, many of which were thinking
about having a kid, had just had a child, were
planning on that life event. And I knew what they needed to be able to show up every day and realize this dream for themselves, and the support structures they
would need to have in place. And I remember reading
this article at the time in one of the major newspapers of a woman, she had had a very solid job working at one of the blue
chip accounting firms, and the recession came, she lost her job around the same time as
her partner left her, and over a matter of
months, she lost her home. So she wound up with her two young kids, after bouncing around between neighbors, living in their car. She gets a call back from
one of the many interviews she had done for a second interview where she was all but guaranteed the job should that go well. And she had arranged childcare for her two young children with a neighbor in her
old apartment block. And the morning of the
interview, she shows up and the neighbor doesn't
answer the doorbell. And she stands there 5, 10
minutes, doesn't answer, so she has a choice. Does she go to the
interview with her children or does she try to cancel? She gets in her car,
drives to the interview, leaves her two children
in the backseat of the car with the window cracked,
goes into the interview and gets pulled out of
the interview by police because somebody had called the cops after seeing her children
in the backseat of the car. She gets thrown in jail,
her kids get taken from her, and she spends years
fighting to regain custody. And I think about, that's
an extreme example, but I think about something like that. And I say, if I was the mother and we were homeless, like, would I have gone to that interview? And I probably would've. And that is not like an
acceptable situation. You know, so you hear stories like that and then you get asked,
"Will you come with me?" And it's really hard to say no. You know, I spent four
years in Washington. I feel like I left it all in the field. I feel really good about it, and I feel really privileged to have been able to do what I did. - A chance to help many people. Saying no means you're
kind of turning away from those people. - It felt like that to me. - Yeah. Yeah, but then it's
the turmoil of politics that you're getting into, and it really is a leap
into the abyss. (laughs) What was it like trying to
get stuff done in Washington? In this place where politics is a game. It feels that way, maybe
from an outsider perspective. And you go in there trying, given some of those stories,
trying to help people. What's it like to get anything done? - It's an incredible cognitive lift. (both laughing) - That's a nice way to put it, yeah. - To get things done. You know, there are a lot of people who would prefer to cling to the problem and their talking points about
how they're gonna solve it, rather than sort of roll up their sleeves and do the work it takes to
build coalitions of support and find people who are willing to compromise and move the ball. And so it's extremely difficult, and you know, Jared and I
talk about it all the time, it probably should be, because these are highly
consequential policies that impact people's lives at scale. Shouldn't be so easy to do them, and they are doable but it's challenging. You know, one of the
first experiences I had where it really was
just a full grind effort was with tax cuts and the work I did to get the child tax credit
doubled as part of it. And it just meant meeting
after meeting after meeting after meeting with lawmaker, convincing them of why
this is good policy. Going into their districts, campaigning in their districts. Helping them convince their constituents of why it's important, of why childcare support is important, of why paid family leave is important, of different policies that
impact working American families. So it's hard but it's really rewarding. And then to get it done, I mean, just the child tax credit alone, 40 million American
families got an average of $2,200 each year as a result of the doubling of the child tax credits. That was one component of tax cuts. - When I was like researching this stuff, you just get to think the scale of things. The scale of impact is
40 million families. Each one of those is a story,
is a story of struggle, of trying to give a large
part of your life to a job, while still being able
to give love and support and care to family, to kids,
and to manage all of that. Each one of those is a little puzzle that they have to solve, and it's a life and death puzzle. You can lose your home, your security, you can lose your job. You can screw stuff up with parenting. So you can mess all that up and you're trying to hold it together, and government policies
can help make that easier, or can in some cases make that possible. And you get to do that a scale not of like 5 or 10 families, but like 40 million families, and that's just one thing.
- Yeah. The people who shared
with me their experience and, you know, during the campaign it was what they hoped to see happen. Once you were in there, it was what they were seeing,
what they were experiencing, the result of the policies, and that was the fuel, you know. On the hardest days,
like that was the fuel. Child tax credit, I remember visiting with a
woman, Brittany Houseman. She came to the White House. She had two small children. She was pregnant with her third. Her husband was killed in a car accident. She was in school at the time. Her dream was to become a
criminal justice advocate. That was no longer on the table for her after he passed away and she became the sole earner and provider for her family. And she couldn't afford childcare, she couldn't afford to stay in school, so she ended up creating a childcare center in her home. And her center was so successful because in part of different
policies we worked on, including the childcare block grants that went to the state. She ended up opening additional centers. I visited her at one of them in Colorado. Now she has like a huge
focus on helping teenage moms who don't have the resources
to afford quality childcare for their kids, come into
her centers and programs. And you know, it's stories like that of the hardships people face, but also what they do with opportunity when they're given it that
really like powers you through tough moments
when you're in Washington. - What can you say about the process of like bringing that to life? So the child tax credits, so doubling them from
1000 to 2000 per child. Like what are the challenges of that, getting people to compromise? I'm sure there's a lot of politicians playing games with that, because maybe it's a Republican
that came up with an idea or a Democrat that came up with an idea, and so they don't want to
give credit to the idea, and there's probably all
kinds of games happening. When the game is happening, you probably forget about the families. Each politician thinks about how they can benefit themselves. You forget like the serving part of the role you're supposed to be in. - There were definitely people
I met with in Washington who I felt that was true of. But you know, they all go
back to their districts, and I assume that they all
have similar experiences to what I had where people
share their stories, so there'd be something really cynical about thinking they forget, but, you know, some do. - You helped get people
together, what's that take? Trying to get people to compromise, trying to get people to
see the common humanity. - Well, I think first and foremost, you have to be willing to talk with them. So, you know, one of the policies I advocate for was paid family leave. We left and 9 million
more Americans had it through a combination of securing it for our federal workforce. I had people in the White
House who were pregnant who didn't have access to paid leave. So we want to keep people
attached to the workforce, yet when they have an important
life event like a child, we create an impossibility for that. You know, some people
don't even have access to unpaid leave if
they're part-time workers. So that and then we also put in place the first ever national tax credit for workers making under $72,000 a year, where employers could then
offer it to their workers. That was also part of tax cuts. So, you know, part of it is
really taking the arguments as to why this is good,
smart, well-designed policy to people, and you know, it
was one of my big surprises that on certain policy issues that I thought would've
been well socialized, the policies that
existed were never shared across the aisle. So people just lived with them, maybe in hopes that one day
they would have the votes to get exactly what they want, but I was surprised by how
little discussion there was. So, I think part of it is be willing to have those tough
discussions with people who may not share your viewpoint, and be an active listener
when they point out flaws and they have suggestions for changes. Not believing that you have
a monopoly on good ideas. And I think there has
to be a lot of humility in architecting these things, and a policy should benefit from that type of well-rounded input. - Yeah, be able to see, like you said, well-designed policies. There's probably like the
details are important too. Like just like with architecture, and you walk the rooms, there's probably really
good designs of policies, like economic policy that helps families, that delivers the maximum amount of money or resources to families that need it, and is not a waste of money. So like that, there's a probably
really nice designs there, nice ideas that are bipartisan that has nothing to do with politics, has to do with just great economic policy, just great policies, and
that requires listening- - Requires trust too. - Trust.
- Like I learned, tax cuts was really interesting for me because I met with so many people across the political spectrum
on advancing that policy. I really figured out who was willing to deviate from their talking points when the door was closed and who wasn't. You know, and it takes
some courage to do that, especially without surety that
it would actually get done. You know, especially if they've campaigned on something that was slightly different. And you know, not
everyone has that courage. So through tax cuts, I learned the people who did have that courage, and I went back to that
well time and time again on policies that I thought were important. You know, some were bipartisan. The Great American
Outdoors Act is something, it's incredible policy- - [Lex] I love that one. - Yeah, it's amazing. It's one of the largest pieces of conservation legislation since the National Park
system was created. And you know, over 300 million people visit our national parks, the vast majority of them
being Americans every year. So this is something that is real and beneficial for people's lives, getting rid of the deferred maintenance, permanently funding them. But there are other issues like that, that just weren't being prioritized. Modernizing Perkins CTE, you
know, in vocational education, and it's something I became
super passionate about and helped lead the charge on. I think in America for a
really long period of time, we've really believed that education stops when you leave
high school or college, and that is not true, and
that's a dangerous way to think. So how can we both
galvanize the private sector to ensure that they
continue to train workers for the jobs they know are coming? And how they train
their existing workforce into the new jobs with
robotics or machinery, or new technologies that
are coming down the pike. So galvanizing the private
sector to join us in that effort. So whether it's the legislative side, like the actual of Perkins CTE, which was focused on vocational education, or whether it's the ability
to use the White House to galvanize the private sector. We got over 16 million commitments from the private sector to retrain or re-skill workers into
the jobs of tomorrow. - Yeah, there's so many aspects of education that you helped on. Access to STEM and
computer science education. So the CTE thing you're mentioning. Modernizing career and
technical education, and that's millions, millions of people. The act provided nearly
$1.3 billion annually to more than 13 million students to better align the employer needs and all that kind of stuff. Very large scale policies that help a lot of people. It's fascinating. - Education often isn't
like the bright shiny object everyone's running towards. So one of the hard things in politics when there's something
that is good policy, sometimes it has no momentum because it doesn't have a cheerleader. So where are areas of good policy that you can like literally just carry across the finish line? Because people tend to run towards what's the news of the day, sort of to try to address whatever issue is being talked about on
the front pages of papers. And there's so many issues that need to be addressed, and you know, education is one of them that's just underprioritized. You know, human trafficking, that's an issue that I didn't go to the White House
thinking I would work on, but you hear a story of a survivor, and you can't not wanna eradicate one of the greatest evils that the mind can even imagine. You know, the trafficking of people, the exploitation of children. And I think for so many, they assume that this is a problem that doesn't happen on our shores. You know, it's something
that you may experience at far-flung destinations
across the world, but it's happening there and
it's happening here as well. And so through a coalition of people that on both sides of the aisle that I came to trust
and to work well with, we were able to get legislation,
which the President signed, passed nine pieces of legislation combating trafficking at home and abroad, and digital exploitation of children. - How much of a toll does that take? Seeing all the problems in the world at such a large scale,
the immensity of it all. Was that hard to walk around with that, just knowing how much suffering
there is in the world? As you're trying to help all of it, as you're trying to
design government policies to help all of that, it's also a very visceral recognition that there is suffering in the world. How difficult is that to walk around with? - You feel it intensely. You know, we were just talking
about human trafficking. I mean, you don't design these policies in the absence of the input
of survivors themselves. So you hear their stories. I remember a woman who
was really influential in my thinking, Andrea Hipwell, who she was in college
where she was lured out by a guy she thought was a
good guy, started dating him. He gets her hooked on drugs, convinces her to drop out of college, and spends the next
five years selling her. She only got out when she was arrested. And all too often that's happening too, that the victim's being targeted, not the perpetrator. So we did a lot with DOJ
around changing that. But now she's helping other survivors get skills and job training, and the therapeutic
interventions they need. But you speak with people like Andrea and so many others, and
I mean, you can't not, your heart gets seized by it. And it's both, it's motivating and it's hard, it's really hard. - I was just talking to a brain surgeon, many of the surgery he has to do, he knows the chances
are very low of success, and he says that that wears
at his armor, it chips away. It's like only so many
times can you do that. - And thank God he is doing it because I bet you there
are a lot of others that don't choose that particular field because of those low success rates. - But you could see the pain in his eyes, like maintaining your humanity
while doing all of it, you could see the story, you could see the family
that loves that person. Just you feel the immensity of that, and you feel the heartbreak involved with mortality in that case, and with suffering also in that case. And in general in all
these, in human trafficking. But even helping families
try to stay afloat, trying to break out or escape poverty, all that, you get to see those stories of struggle, it's not easy. But the people that really
feel the humanity of that, feel the pain of that are
probably the right people to be politicians, but it's probably also why you
can't stay in there too long. - It's the only time in my life where you actually feel, like there's always a conflict, right, between work and life, and making sure, you know, as a woman, I'd often get asked about, you know, how do you balance work and family? And I never liked that question because balance, it's like elusive, right? You're one fever away from
like no balance, you know? Like your child's sick one day, oh, what do you do? There goes balance, or you know, you have a huge project with a deadline, there goes balance. Like I think a better way to frame it is, am I living in accordance
with my priorities? Maybe not every day, but every week, you know, every month, and reflecting on, have
you architected a life that aligns with your priorities, so that more often than not, you're where you need
to be in that moment. And service at that level was the one time where you really, you feel incredibly conflicted about having any priorities
other than serving. It's finite. You know, in every business I've built, you're building for duration, you know, and then you go into the White House, and it is sand through an hourglass, whether it's four years or eight years, it's a finite period of time you have, and most people don't last four years. I think the average in the
White House is 18 months. It's exhausting. But it's the only time when you're at home with your own children that you feel, you think about all the people you've met and you feel guilty about
any time that's spent not advancing those interests to the best of your capacity. And that's a hard thing. That's a really hard feeling as a parent. And it's really challenging
then to be present, to always need to answer your phone, to always need to be available. It's very difficult. It's taxing, but it's also the greatest privilege in the world. - So through that, the turmoil of that, the hardship of that, what was the role of
family through all of that, Jared and the kids? What was that like? - That was everything. You know, to have that, to have the support systems I had in place with my husband. And, you know, we had left New York and wound up in Washington. In New York, I lived 10 blocks
away from my mother-in-law, who if I wasn't taking my
kids to school, she was. So we lost some of that,
which was very hard, but we had what mattered,
which was each other. And you know, my kids were
young when I got to Washington. Theo, my youngest was eight months old, and Arabella my oldest, my daughter was five years old. So they were still quite young. We have a son, Joseph, who was three. And I think for me,
like the dose of levity coming home at night and having
them there and just joyful, and it was super grounding and important for me. I still remember Theo,
when he was around three, three and a years old, Jared used to make me
coffee every morning, and it was like my great
luxury that I would sit there. He still makes it for me every morning. I told him, I'm never,
even though I secretly know how to actually work the coffee machine, but I've convinced him that I have no idea how to work the coffee machine. Now I'm gonna be busted. But it's a skill I don't wanna learn because it's one of his like acts of love. He brings me coffee every morning in bed while I read the newspapers, and Theo would watch this, and so he got Jared to teach
him how to make coffee. And Theo learned how to make
like a full blown cappuccino. - Nice.
- And he was so, he had so much joy every morning bringing me this cappuccino. And I remember like the
sound of his little steps, you know, like the slides. It was so cute coming down the hallway with my like perfectly foamed cappuccino. Now I try to get him to make me coffee and he is like, "Come on, mom." (laughs) That was a moment in time, but we had a lot of like
little moments like that that were just amazing, so. - Yeah, I got a chance to chat with him and he has, his silliness
and sense of humor, it's, yeah, it's really joyful. I could see how that could be an escape from the madness of
Washington, of the adult life, the quote unquote adult life.
- And they were young enough, we really kept like our home life pretty sheltered from everything else, and we were able to do so
because they were so young and because they weren't
connected to the internet. They were too young for smartphones, all of these things. We were able to shelter and protect them and allow them to have
as normal upbringing as was possible in the
context we were living. And they brought me like, and continue to bring
me so much, so much joy. But they were, I mean, without Jared and without the kids, it
would've been much more lonely. - So three kids, you've now upgraded, two dogs and a hamster. - Well, our second dog,
we rescued him thinking, we thought he was probably
like part German Shepherd part lab is what we were told. He's now, I don't even know
if he qualifies as a dog. He's like the size of a horse, a small horse.
- Yeah, basically a horse. - Simba. So I don't think he has much lab in him. (both laughing) Joseph has not wanted to do a DNA test because he really wanted
a German Shepherd, so he's a German Shepherd.
- He's gigantic. All right. - He is gigantic. And we also have a hamster
who's the newest addition because my son Theo, he tried to get, he tried to get a dog as well. Our first dog Winter
became my daughter's dog, as she wouldn't let her
brothers play with him, or sleep with him, and was old enough to bully them into submission. So then Joseph wanted a dog and got Simba. Theo now wants the dog and has Buster the hamster
in the interim, so we'll see. - What advice would you give to other mothers just
planning on having kids? And maybe advice to
yourself how to continue figuring out this puzzle? - I think being a parent, you have to cultivate within yourself like heightened levels of empathy. You have to really look at each child and see them for who they are, what they enjoy, what they love, and meet them where they're at. And I think that can be
enormously challenging when your kids are so
different in temperament. You know, as they get older, that difference in temperament may be within the same child, depending on the moment of the day. But it's really, I think
it's actually made me a much softer person,
a much better listener. I think I see people more
truly for who they are, as opposed to how I want
them to be sometimes. And I think being a parent to three children who are all exceptional and all in incredibly different
has enabled that in me. I think for me though, they've also been like some of my greatest teachers in that we were talking about the presence you felt when
you were in the jungle, and the connectivity you felt, and sort of the simple joy. And I think for us as we grow older, we kind of disconnect from that. Like, my kids have taught
me how to play again and that's beautiful. I remember just a couple of weeks ago, we had one of these crazy
Miami torrential downpours, and Arabella comes down, it's
around eight o'clock at night. It's really raining, and she's got rain boots
and pajama pants on, and she's gonna take the dogs for a walk in the rain.
- Nice, nice. - Which, you know, she
had all day to walk, but she wasn't doing it because they needed to go for a walk. She was like, this would be fun. And I'm standing at the
doorstep watching her, and she goes out with Simba and Winter, this massive dog and this little tiny dog. And I'm watching her walk
to the end of the driveway and she's just dancing and it's pouring. And I took off my shoes and
I went out and I joined her and we danced in the rain. And even as like a preteen
who normally, you know, she like allowed me to
experience the joy with her, and it was amazing. We can be so much more fun if we allow ourselves to be more playful. We can be so much more present. I look at, Theo loves games, so we play a whole lot of
board games, any kind of game. So it started with board games. We do a lot of puzzles,
then it became card games. I just taught him how to play poker. - [Lex] Nice. - He loves backgammon,
like any kind of game. And he's so fully in them, you know, when he plays, he plays. My son Joseph, he loves nature, and he'll say to me sometimes when like I'm taking a picture of something he's observing, like a beautiful sunset, he's like, "Mom, just experience it." Like, "Yes, you're right Joseph. Just experience it." You know, so those kids have taught me so much about sort of reconnecting with what's real and what's true and being present in the moment and experiencing joy. - They always give you permission to sort of reignite the inner child, just be a kid again, yeah. And it's interesting what you said, the puzzle of noticing each human being, like what makes them beautiful, the unique characteristics, like what they're good at. The way they want to be mentored. Like I often see that, especially with coaches and athletes, young athletes aspiring to be great, each athlete needs to be
trained in a different way. Like I, for example, with some, you need a softer approach. Like with me, I always like
a dictatorial approach. I like the coach to be
this like menacing figure. That brought out the best in me. I didn't want to be
friends with the coach. Like I want to almost,
like it's weird to say, but yelled at, like to be pushed. But that doesn't work for everybody. And that's a risk you have to take in the coach context of like, 'cause you can't just yell at everybody. You have to figure out like,
what does each person need? And when you have kids, I imagine the puzzle is even harder. - And when they all need different things, but yet coexist and are sometimes competitive with one another. So you'll be at a dinner table, the amount of times I get,
"Well, that's not fair. Why did you let," and I'm like, "Life isn't fair, and by the way, like, I'm not here to be fair." I'm like, "I'm trying to
give you each what you need." Especially when I've
been working really hard, and you know, in the White House, I'd say, okay, well, now we have a
Sunday, and we have these hours, and I'll have like a grand plan, you know, and we're gonna make it count, and it's gonna involve, you know, hot chocolate and sleds, you know, whatever it is that
like my great adventure. That we're gonna go play mini golf, and then I come down all psyched up, all ready to go and the
kids have zero interest. (both laughing) And there have been a lot of times where I've been like,
"We're doing this thing," and then I realized,
wait a second, you know, like sometimes you just
like plop down on the floor and start playing magnet tiles, you know, and like that's where they need you. And so those of us who have sort of like alpha personalities who sometimes it's just witness, like witness what they need. Don't, like play with them and
allow them to lead the play. Don't force them down a road you may think is more interesting, or productive, or educational, or edifying. You know, just be with them, observe them and then show them that
you are genuinely curious about the things that they
are genuinely curious about. I think there's a lot of
love when you do that. - Also, there's just fascinating puzzles. I was talking to a friend yesterday and she has four kids,
and they fight a lot, and she generally wants
to break up the fights, but she's like, I'm not sure if I'm just supposed to let them fight. Can they figure it out? But you always break them up because I'm told that it's
okay for them to fight, kids to do that. They kind of figure out
their own situation. That's part of like
the growing up process. But you wanna always,
especially if it's physical, they're like pushing each other, you want to kind of stop it. But at the same time, it's
also part of the play, part of the dynamics, and that's a puzzle you
also have to figure out. And plus you're probably worried that they're gonna get hurt if they're- - Well, I think there's
like, when it gets physical, that's like, okay, we have to intervene. I know you're into martial arts, but that's normally like the red line, you know, once it tips into that. But there is always that, you know, like you have to allow them to problem solve for themselves. Like a little interpersonal
conflict is good. It's really hard when you
try to navigate something because everyone thinks
you're taking their sides. You have oftentimes
incomplete information. I think for parents,
what tends to happen too is we see our kids
fighting with each other in a way that all kids do, and we start to project into the future and like catastrophize. You know, if like my two sons
are going through a moment where they're like oil and water, anything one wants to do, the other doesn't wanna do. It's like a very interesting moment. And so my instinct is, "They're not gonna like
each other when they're 25." You know, you sort of
project into the future as opposed to recognizing this is a stage that I too went through, and it's normal, and it's not building it in your mind into something that's
unnecessarily consequential. - It's short term formative conflict. - [Ivanka] Yeah. - So ever since 2016, the number and the level of attacks you've been under has
been steadily increasing, has been super intense. How do you walk through the fire of that? You've been very stoic
about the whole thing. I don't think I've ever seen
you respond to an attack. You just let it pass over you. You stay positive and you
focus on solving problems. And you didn't engage, while being in DC, you didn't engage into
the back and forth fire of the politics. So what's your philosophy behind that? - I appreciate your saying that I was very stoic about it. I think, you know, I feel
things pretty deeply, so initially some of that
really took me off guard. Like some of the
derivative love and hatred, some of the intensity of the attacks. And there were times when it
was so easy to counter it, I'd even write something out and say, "Well, I'm gonna
press send" and never did. I felt that sort of getting into the mud, fighting back, it didn't run true to who I am as a human being. Like it didn't, it felt
at odds with who I am and how I wanna spend my time. So I think as a result, I was oftentimes on the receiving end of a lot of cheap shots. And I'm okay with that
because it's sort of the way I know how to be in the world. I was focused on things
I thought mattered more. And you know, I think part
of me also internalized, there's a concept in
Judaism called lashon hara which is translated into I think quite literally evil speech. And the idea that, you know, speaking poorly of another is almost the moral equivalent to murder, because you can't really repair it. You can apologize, but
you can't repair it. Another component of that is
that it does as much damage to the person saying the words than it does to the person receiving them. And I think about that a lot. I talk about this concept
with my kids a lot. And I'm not willing to pay the price of that fleeting and
momentary satisfaction of sort of swinging back, because I think it would be
too expensive for my soul. And that's how I kind
of made peace with it because I think that's just,
that feels more true for me. But it is a little bit
contrarian in politics. It's definitely, it's definitely a contrarian viewpoint to not get into the fray. Actually, somebody I love,
Dolly Parton says that she doesn't condemn or criticize, she loves and accepts and I like that. It feels right for me. - I also like that you
said that words have power. It's not, sometimes people say, well, words, when you
speak negatively of others, ah, that's just words. But I think there's a cost to that. There's a cost, like
you said, to your soul, and there's a cost in terms of the damage it can do to the other person, whether it's to their reputation publicly or to them privately, just as a human being psychologically. And in the place that it puts them because they start thinking
negatively in general, and then maybe they respond, and there's this vicious
downward spiral that happens that almost like we don't intend to, but it destroys everybody in the process. You quoted Alan Watts. I love him. In saying, "You're under no obligation to be the same person you
were five minutes ago." So how have the years in DC and the years after changed you? - I love Alan Watts too. I listen to his lecture
sometimes falling asleep, he's got like, and on planes. He's got like the most soothing voice. But I love what he said about, "You have no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago," because we should always
feel that we have the ability to evolve and grow and better ourselves. I think further than that,
if we don't look back on who we were a few years ago with some level of embarrassment, we're not growing enough, right? So there's nothing, when
I look back, I'm like, oh, you know, I feel like that feeling is, you know, because you're growing into, hopefully, you know, sort of
a better version of yourself. And I hope and feel that that's
been true for me as well. I think the person I am today, you know, we spoke in the beginning
of our discussion about some of my earliest ambitions in real estate and in fashion, and those were amazing adventures, and incredible experiences in government. And I feel today that all of those ambitions are more fully integrated into me as a human being. I'm much more comfortable with the various pieces of my personality, and that any professional drive is more integrated into
more simple pleasures. Like everything for me has gotten like much simpler and easier in terms of what I wanna
do and what I wanna be. And I think that's where, you know, my kids have been my teachers,
just being fully present and enjoying like the little moments. And it doesn't mean I'm any less like driven than I was before. It's just more a part of me than being sort of the
all consuming energy one has in their twenties. - Yeah, just like you said with your mom, be able to let go, enjoy the
water, the sun, the beach. - Yeah.
- And enjoy the moment, the simplicity of the moment. - I think a lot about
the fact that, you know, for a lot of young people, they really know what they wanna do, but they don't actually know who they are. And then I think as you get older, hopefully you know who you are, and you're much more comfortable with ambiguity around what
you wanna do and accomplish. You're more flexible in your
thinking around those things. - And give yourself
permission to be who you are. - Yeah. - You made the decision not to engage in the politics of the 2024 campaign. If it's okay, let me read
what you wrote on the topic. "I love my father very much. This time around I'm choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we're
creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics. While I will always love and support my father going forward, I will do so outside the political arena. I'm grateful to have had the honor of serving the American people and I will always be proud of many of our administration's
accomplishments." So can you explain your thinking, your philosophy behind that decision? - I think first and foremost, it was a decision rooted
in me being a parent, really thinking about what
they need from me now. You know, politics is a
rough, rough business, and I think it's one that
you also can't dabble in. I think you have to either
be all in or all out. And I know today the cost they would pay for me being all in, emotionally in terms of my absence at such a formative point in their life, and I'm not willing to
make them bear that cost. I served for four years and feel so privileged to have done it. But as their mom, I think
it's really important that I do what's right for them. And I think there are a
lot of ways you can serve. You know, I think there's, obviously we talked about the enormity, the scale of what can be accomplished in government service. But you know, I think there's something equally valuable about helping within your own community. And I volunteer with the kids a lot, and we feel really good
about that service. It's different, but
it's no less meaningful. So I think there are other ways, there are other ways to serve. I also think for, you know, politics is, it's a pretty dark world. Like there's a lot of
darkness, a lot of negativity, and it's just really at odds with what feels good
for me as a human being. And, you know, it's a really, it's a really rough business. So, for me and my family, it
feels right to not participate. - So it wears on your soul, and yeah, there is a bit, at least from an outsider's perspective, a bit of darkness in
that part of our world. I wish it didn't have to be this way. - Me too. - I think part of that darkness is just watching all the
legal turmoil that's going on. What's it like for you to see that, your father involved in
that, going through that? - On a human level, it's my father and I love him very much, so it's painful to experience. But ultimately, I wish it
didn't have to be this way. - I like it that underneath all of this, "I love my father" is the
thing that you lead with. And that's so true, it is family. And I hope amidst all this turmoil, love is the thing that wins. - It usually does. - In the end, yes.
- In the end. - But in the short term, there is, like we were talking about, there's a bit of bickering,
but at least no more duals. - (laughs) No more duals. - You mentioned Dolly Parton. (laughs) - That's a segue. (laughs) - Listen, I'm not very good at this thing. I'm trying to figure it out. Okay, we both love Dolly Parton. (laughs) So, you're big into live music, so maybe you can mention
why you love Dolly Parton. I definitely would love to talk to, I would love to interview her. She's such an icon. She's such an incredible human. - What I love about her, and I've really come to
love her in recent years is she's so authentically herself, and she's obviously so talented and so accomplished and
this extraordinary woman. But I just feel like she has no conflict within herself as to who she is. She reminds me a lot
of my mom in that way, and it's super refreshing
and really beautiful to observe somebody who's
so in the public eye being so fully secure in who they are, what their talent is,
and what drives them. So I think she's amazing, and she leads with a lot of
like love and positivity. So I think she's very cool. I hope you have a long
conversation with her. - Yeah, she's like, okay, so there's many things to say about her. First, like incredibly great musician, songwriter, performer. Also can create an image
and have fun with it. You know, like have fun being
herself like over the top. - It feels that way, right? Like she's really, she enjoys, after all these years, it
feels like she's enjoying, she like enjoys what she does. And you also have the sense that if she didn't, she wouldn't do it. - That's right. And just an iconic country musician, country music singer.
- Yeah, yeah. - There's a lot, we've talked
about a lot of musicians. Who do you enjoy? You mentioned Adele, seeing her perform, hanging out with her. - Yeah, I mean, she's extraordinary. Her voice is unreal. So she is, I find her to be so talented. And she's so unique in that
three year olds love her music. She was actually the first concert Arabella ever went to
at Madison Square Garden when she was around four, and 90 year olds love her music. And that's pretty rare to have that kind of bandwidth of resonance. So, I think she's so talented. We actually just saw her, I took all three kids in Las
Vegas around a month ago. Alice Johnson, whose case I had worked with in the White House, my father commuted her sentence. Her case was brought to me by a friend, Kim Kardashian, and she came to the show. We all went together
with some mutual friends. And that was like a very profound, it was amazing to see Adele, but it was a very
profound experience for me to have with my kids
because she rode with us in the car on the way to the show, and she talked to my
kids about her experience and her story, and how her
case found its way to me. And I think for young children, it's very abstract, you know, policy, and so for her to be able
to share with them this was a very beautiful moment, and led to a lot of really
incredible conversations with each of my kids
about our time in service because, you know, they gave
up a lot for me to do it. Actually, Alice told them
the most beautiful story about the plays she used
to put on in prison, how these shows were like
the hottest ticket in town. Like you could not get into them, they always extended their run. But for the people who were in them, a lot of those men and women
had never experienced applause. Nobody had ever shown up at their games or at their plays and clapped for them, and the emotional experience
of just being able to give someone that, you
know, being able to stand and applaud for someone and
how meaningful that was. And she was showing us pictures from these different productions, and it was a really, it
was a beautiful moment. Alice actually after her
sentence was commuted and she came out of prison, together we worked on 23
different pardons or commutations. So the impact of her experience and how she was able
to take her opportunity and create that same
opportunity for others who were deserving and who she believed in was very beautiful. So anyway, that was an
extraordinary concert experience for my kids to be able
to have that moment. - What a story. So just, that's the sort of- - Then here we are
dancing at Adele. (laughs) - [Lex] Exactly, exactly,
it's like that turning point- - Six years later, was almost
to the day six years later. - Yeah, so that policy,
that meeting of the minds resulted in a major turning point in her life and Alice's life, and now you're dancing with Adele. - And now we're at Adele. - Yeah, I mean you mentioned also there, I've seen commutations
where it's an opportunity to step in and consider the ways that the justice system
does not always work well. Like in cases when it's nonviolent crime and drug offenses,
there's a case of a person you mentioned that
received a life sentence for selling weed. (laughs) - [Ivanka] Yeah, yeah. - You know, and it's just the number, it's like hundreds of thousands of people are in the federal prison, in jail, in the system for selling drugs, that's the only thing, with no violence on
their record whatsoever. And obviously there's a lot of complexity, the details matter, but oftentimes the justice system does not do right in the way we think right is. And it's nice to be able to step in and help people like, and directly- - They're overlooked and
they have no advocate. Jared and I helped in a
small way on his effort, but he really spearheaded the effort on criminal justice reform
through the First Step Act, which was an enormously
consequential piece of legislation that gave so many people
another opportunity, and that was amazing. So working with him closely on that was a beautiful thing for us to also experience together. But in the final days
of the administration, you know, you're not
getting legislation passed, and anything you do administratively is gonna be probably overturned by an incoming administration. So, you know, how do you use
that time for maximum results? And I really like dug in on pardons and commutations that I thought were overdue and were worthy. And my last night in Washington DC, the gentleman you mentioned Corvain, I was on the phone with his mother at 12:30 in the morning telling her that her son would be
getting out the next day. You know, so, and it felt
really, it's one person, but you see with Alice
like the ripple effect of, you know, the commutation granted to her, and her ability and the impact she'll have within her family with her grandkids. And now she's an advocate for so many others who are voiceless. You know, it felt like the
perfect way to end four years to be able to call those parents, and call those kids in some cases, and give them the news that
a loved one was coming home. - And I just love the cool image of you, Kim Kardashian and Alice just dancing at an Adele
show with the kids. I love it. - Well, Kim wasn't at the
Adele show, but we had- - Oh, she's the, got it. - She had connected us. It was beautiful. It was really beautiful. - The way Adele like can hold just like the badassness she has on stage. - [Ivanka] Oh yeah. - She does like heartbreak songs like better than anyone, or
no, it's not even heartbreak. Like what's that genre of song? Like "Rolling in the
Deep," like a little anger, a little love, a little like
something, a little attitude, and just like one of the
greatest voices ever. All that together, just by herself. - You can strip it down
and the power of her voice. You know, I think about that, one of the things we were
talking about live music, one of the amazing things now is there's so much
incredible concert material that's been uploaded to YouTube. So sometimes I just sit there and watch these like old shows. We both love Stevie Ray Vaughan, like watching him perform. You can even find old videos of like Django Reinhardt. - [Lex] You got me- - I got you.
- You got me Stevie Ray Vaughan.
- "Texas Flood." - We had this moment, which is hilarious that you said like one of the songs you really like of
Stevie's is "Texas Flood." - Well, my bucket list is
to learn how to play it. - It's a bucket list, it's just a bucket list item. You made me feel so good because for me, "Texas Flood" was the first solo on guitar I've ever learned, because for me, it was like the impossible solo, and then that was, so I worked
really hard to learn it. It's like one of the most
iconic sort of blues songs, Texas blues songs. And now you made me fall
in love with the song again and wanna play it live, at the very least put it up on YouTube, 'cause it is, it's so fun to improvise, and when you lose yourself in the song, it truly is a blues song. You can have fun with it. - I hope you do do that. - Throw honesty-
- And regardless, I want you to play it for me. (laughs) - 100%, 100%. - But he's amazing, and you know, there's so many great performers that are playing live now. You know, I just saw Chris Stapleton show. He's an amazing country artist. - [Lex] He's too good. - He's so good.
- That guy is so good. - [Ivanka] Lucas Nelson's- - Lucas Nelson.
- One of my favorite to see live, and there's
so many incredible songwriters and musicians that
are out there touring today. But I think you also, you can go online and watch some of these old performances. Like Django Reinhardt was the first, because I torture myself,
was the first song I learned to play on the guitar, and it took me like nine months to a year. It was, I mean, I should
have chosen a different song, but "Ou es-tu mon amour?" one of his songs was, and it was like finger style, and I was just going
through and grinding it out, and that's kind of how I
started to learn to play by playing that song. But to see these old
videos of him playing, you know, without all his fingers, and the skill and the dexterity. One of my favorite live
performances is actually, who really influenced
Adele is Aretha Franklin. And she did this, she did a
version of "Amazing Grace." Have you ever seen this video? - No.
- I cried. Look up, it was in LA, it was like the Temple
Missionary Baptist Church. Talk about stripped down. She's literally, I mean,
just listen to this. (Aretha singing) (Lex laughs) - You could do one note
and you could just kill it. The pain, the soulfulness. - The spirit you feel like in her when you watch this. - That's true. Adele carries some of
that spirit also, right? - Yeah. And you can take away all
the instruments with Adele and just have that voice, and it's so commanding and it's so. (Lex laughs) Anyway, you watch this and you see like the arc
of also the experience of the people in the choir, and them starting to join in. Anyway, it's amazing. - I love watching Queen, like Freddie Mercury Queen performances like in terms of vocalists, and just like great stage presence. - That Live Aid performance is like considered one of the best of all. - I think I've watched that so many times. He's so cool. - Can we pull up that for a second? (Lex laughs) Go to that part where
he's saying Radio Ga Ga and they're all mimicking his arm moves. It's so cool. ♪ Radio ga ga ♪ ♪ All we hear is ♪ - Look at that. ♪ Radio ga ga ♪ - Oh man, I miss that guy.
- So good. So good. - So that's an example of a person that was born to be on stage. - So good. Well, we were talking surfing, we were talking jiu-jitsu. I think live music is one of
those kind of rare moments where you can really be present, where something about the anticipation of choosing what show
you're going to go to, and then waiting for the date to come. And normally it happens in
the context of community, you go with friends, and
then allowing yourself to sort of fall into it is incredible. - So you've been training jiu-jitsu? - (laughs) Yes, trying. - I mean, I've seen you do jiu-jitsu. You're extremely, you're
very like athletic. You know how to use your
body to commit violence. (both laughing) Maybe there's better ways of
phrasing that, but anyway. - It's been a skill that's
been honed over time. - (laughs) Yeah. I mean, what do you like about jiu-jitsu? - Well, first of all, I
love the way I came to it. It was my daughter. I think I told you this story. At 11, she told me that she wanted to learn self-defense, and she wanted to learn
how to protect herself, which I just, as a mom,
I was so proud about, because at 11, I was not
thinking about defending myself. You know, I loved that she had sort of that desire and awareness. So I called some friends, actually a mutual friend of ours, and I asked around for people who I could work with in Miami, and they recommended the
Valente Brothers' studio. And you've met all three of them now. They're these remarkable human beings, and they've been so
wonderful for our family. I mean, first starting with Arabella, I used to take her and then
she'd kind of encouraged me, and she'd sort of pull me into it, and I started doing it with her. And then Joseph and Theo saw us doing it, they wanted to start doing it, so now they joined and then Jared joined. So now we're all doing jiu-jitsu. - Great.
- And for me, there's something really empowering, knowing that I have some
basic skills to defend myself. I think it's something as humans, we've kind of gotten away from. You look at any other animal, and you know, even the giraffe,
they'll use their neck. The lion, the tiger, every species, and then there's us, you
know, who most of us don't, and I didn't know how to protect myself. And I think that it gives
you a sense of confidence and also gives you kind
of a sense of calm, you know, knowing how to deescalate rather than an escalate a situation. I also think as part of the training, you develop more natural awareness when you're out and about. And I feel like especially, you know, you get on an elevator, and like the first thing people
do is pick up their phone. You're walking down the street, people are getting hit by cars because they're walking into traffic. I think as you start to get this training, you become much more aware of the broader context of
what's happening around you, which is really healthy and good as well. But it's been beautiful. They actually, the Valente Brothers, they have this 7-5-3
code that was developed with some of the sort of
samurai principles in mind. And all of my kids have memorized it, and they'll talk to me about it. Theo, he's eight years old, he'll able to recite all 15. So, you know, benevolence, and fitness, and nutrition, and flow,
and awareness, and balance. It's an unbelievable thing. And they'll actually integrate
it into conversations where they'll talk about
something that happened. Yeah, rectitude, courage. - Benevolence, respect,
honesty, honor, loyalty. So this is not about jiu-jitsu techniques or fighting techniques. This is about a way of life, about the way you interact with the world, with other people. Exercise, nutrition,
rest, hygiene, positivity, that's more on the
physical side of things. Awareness, balance, and flow. - It's the mind, the body, the soul effectively is how they break it out. And the kids can only advance and get their stripes if
they really internalize this, they give examples of each of them. And my own kids will come home from school and they'll tell me examples
of how things happened that weren't aligned with the 7-5-3 code. So it's a framework, much like religion is in our house and can be for others. It's a framework to discuss things that happen in their
life, large and small, and has been beautiful. So, I do think that like
body mind connection is super strong in jiu-jitsu. - So there's many things I love
about the Valente Brothers, but one of them is how
rooted it is in philosophy and history of martial arts in general. You know, a lot of places, you'll practice the sport of it, maybe the art of it, but
to recognize the history and what it means to be
a martial artist broadly on and off the mat, that's really great. And the other thing is great is they also don't forget
the self-defense route, the actual fighting routes. It's not just a sport, it's
the way to defend yourself on the street in all situations. And that gives you a confidence
in, just like you said, an awareness about your own body and awareness about others. It is, you know, sadly we forget, but it's a world full of violence or the capacity for violence, so it's good to have an awareness of that, and a confidence how to
essentially avoid it. - 100%. I've seen it with all
of my kids and myself how much they've benefited from it. But that self-defense component and the philosophical
elements of either they, Pedro will often tell
them about like wuwei, and sort of soft resistance, and some of these sort of
more Eastern philosophies that they get exposed to
through their practice there that are sort of non-resistance that are beautiful, and hard concepts to
internalize as an adult, but especially, you know, when you're 12, 10 and 8 respectively. So it's been an amazing
experience for us all. - I love people like Pedro 'cause he's like finding books that are like in Japanese
and translating them to try to figure out like the details of a particular history. Like he's like an ultra scholar of martial arts and I love that. I love when people give everything, every part of themselves to the thing they're practicing. You know, people have
been fighting each other for a very long time. And I love, from the coliseum, you can't fake anything, you can't lie about anything. It's truly honest. You're there and you either win or lose, and it's simple, and that's like, it's also humbling that, the reality of that is humbling. - And oftentimes in life
things are not that simple, not that black and white. - So it's nice to have that sometimes. That's the biggest thing
I gain from jiu-jitsu is getting my ass kicked,
which is the humbling. And it's nice to just get
humbled in a very clear way. Sports in general are great for that. I think surfing probably, I can imagine, just, you know, yeah, face planting, not being able to stay on
the board, it's humbling. And the power of the wave is humbling. So just like your mom,
you're an adventurer. Are there, your bucket list
is probably like 120 pages. - It's a lot but- (both laughing) - Is there things that just pop to mind that you're like thinking about especially in the near future? Just anything. - Well, I hope it always is long. You know, I hope I've never like exhausted exploring all the things
I'm curious about. I always tell my kids whenever they say, you know, "Mom, I'm bored." Only boring people get bored. Like, there's too much to learn. There's too much to learn. So I've got a long one. You know, I think obviously there are some like immediate tactical, you know, interesting
things that I'm doing. I'm incubating a bunch of businesses. I'm investing in a bunch of companies that hopefully I'll always
continue to do that. Some of the fun things I'm
doing in real estate now. So those are all on the list of things I'm passionate and excited about continuing to explore and learn. But in terms of like the ones that are more pure sort
of adventurer hobby, I think I'd like to
climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Actually, I know I would. And the only thing keeping me from doing it in the short term is I feel like it'd be
such a great experience to do with my kids, and I'd love to have that
experience with them. I also told Arabella, we were talking about
this archery competition that happens in Mongolia and
she loves horseback riding. So I'm like, I feel like that
would be an amazing thing to experience together. I wanna get barreled by a wave and learn how to play "Texas Flood." I wanna see the Northern lights, like, I wanna go and experience that. I feel like that would
be really beautiful. I wanna get my black belt, like you have. - Black belt. Nice. - I asked you to, how long did it take? But, so I wanna get my
black belt in jiu-jitsu. That's like a, that's gonna
be a longer term goal, but within the next decade. Yeah, a lot of things.
- Go to space? - You know, I'd love to go to space. Not just space, I think
I'd love to go to the Moon. - Like step on the Moon. - Yeah, or float, you
know, in close proximity, like that famous photo. - Yeah. Just you in a- - The spacesuit. I feel like Mars is- - A little too far.
- At this point in my life, well, the Moon's like four days, feels more manageable. - I don't know. But the sunset on Mars is blue, it's the opposite color. I hear it's beautiful. Might be worth it, I don't know. - You negotiate with Theo. (laughs) - [Lex] Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, bring the whole family.
- Let me know how it goes. - Right?
- Let me know how it goes. - I think actually just
even going to space where you can look back on Earth. I think that just to see this little- - Pale blue dot-
- Pale blue dot, just all the stuff that ever happened in human civilization is on that, and to be able to look
at it and just be in awe. And I don't think that's
a thing that will go away. - I think being interplanetary, my hope is that that heightens for us how rare it is what we have, like how precious the Earth is. I hope that it has that effect because, you know, I think
there's a big component to interplanetary travel that kind of taps into this kind of manifest
destiny inclination, like the human desire to conquer territory and expand the footprint of civilization that sometimes feels much more rooted in like dominance and conquest
than curiosity, wonder. And obviously I think there's, you know, maybe an existential imperative for it at some point, or a
strategic and security one. But I hope that what feels inevitable at this moment, I mean, you know Elon Musk and what he
is doing with SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos and others. It feels like it's not an if, it's a when at this point. I hope it also underscores like the need to protect what we have here. - Yeah, and I hope it's the curiosity that drives that exploration, and I hope the exploration will give us a deeper appreciation of
the thing we have back home, and that Earth will always be home and it's a home that we
protect and celebrate. What gives you hope about the future of this thing we have going on? Human civilization, the whole thing. - I think I feel a lot of
hope when I'm in nature. I feel a lot of hope when
I am experiencing people who are good, and honest, and pure, and true, and passionate, and that's not an uncommon experience. So those experiences give me hope. - Yeah, other humans,
we're pretty cool. (laughs) - I love humanity. We're awesome. You know, not always, but
we're a pretty good species. - Yeah, for the most part on the whole- - We can be.
- We do all right, we do all right. We create some beautiful stuff, and I hope we keep creating, and I hope you keep creating. You've already done a
lot of amazing things, build a lot of amazing things, and I hope you keep building and creating and doing a lot of beautiful
things in this world. Ivanka, thank you so
much for talking today. - Thank you, Lex. - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ivanka Trump. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Marcus Aurelius. "Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars and see
yourself running with them." Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.