Ivanka Trump broke down in tears during a rare interview this week, opening up about the death of her mother, her husband Jared Kushner’s cancer battle, and watching her father narrowly survive an assassination attempt in real time.
Ivanka, the former White House adviser and mother of three, was overwhelmed with emotion while talking about her late mother, Ivana Trump, and the grandmother who raised her, during an interview with the Diary of a CEO podcast.
Ivana Trump died in July 2022 at 73 after a fall at her Upper East Side townhouse in New York. She was found unconscious at the bottom of her staircase. New York City’s medical examiner ruled the death accidental.
“My mother taught me a lot about bringing intention to what you do,” she said. “Losing a parent. It hits differently, you know, especially unexpectedly, especially sort of post-COVID, which kind of robbed so many of us of so many years.”
Ivanka also expressed her love for her 98-year-old maternal grandmother, Marie Zelnickova — known to the family as “Babi” — who lives with Ivanka and Jared in Florida in the heartfelt interview.
“Are you okay?” Bartlett asked.
“I have a lot of love for this woman,” Trump said through tears. “This doesn’t happen to me often.”
“She taught me so much about love. It’s been hard to see her now as she struggles.”
Ivanka said she sought therapy after leaving the White House in 2021 because of the numerous crises.
“Some of the challenges around Jared’s health. I had just left Washington. Our life was in flux. Jared was diagnosed with thyroid cancer for a second time and then my mother passed,” she said. “And I wanted to make sure— I’m really good at being tough, and I’m really good at kind of compartmentalizing. So it was more just like a check with myself that I was also taking time to sort of look inward. And like nurture myself.”
Kushner secretly battled thyroid cancer during Trump’s first term and disclosed the diagnosis in his 2022 memoir. He underwent a second thyroid surgery in August 2022.
Ivanka also opened up about watching the July 2024 assassination attempt on her father, President Donald Trump, at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally.
“The televisions were on so I saw it almost immediately,” she said. “It was almost real time, before he stood back up.”
“I was horrified and I was scared, and I was protective of my children,” she said. But as she watched her father rise from the stage, fist in the air and surrounded by Secret Service, she said she felt a sense of calm. “I just knew it wasn’t his time.”
She said she has since forgiven shooter Thomas Crooks.
“Forgiveness is a difficult thing in this regard but I think you have to,” she said. “His living was a blessing.”
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