Ivanka Trump, the daughter of former President Donald Trump, broke her silence on her father’s felony conviction in a new interview released this week.
The elder Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to covering up an alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. Ivanka Trump did not attend the New York trial unlike her two brothers, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
“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,” Ivanka Trump said on the Lex Fridman Podcast.
This was the junior Trump’s first detailed comment since she posted a photo of herself and her father on Instagram with the words “I love you dad” overlaying the photo.
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, served as senior advisers in the Trump administration, but in 2022, she announced she would not be part of a second term if her father won reelection.
“I think first and foremost, it was a decision rooted in me being a parent, really thinking about what they need from me now,” she explained to Fridman. “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.”
“I also think for politics, it’s a pretty dark world,” she later said. “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 it’s a really rough business. So for me and my family, it feels right to not participate.”
The mother of three children said she was unwilling to bear the cost of the day-to-day political work that would take away from being present in her children’s lives.
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“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,” she added. “And I think there are a lot of ways you can serve.”
Her comments come as the sentencing for her father’s conviction, originally scheduled for July 11, was pushed back to Sept. 18.