What Ivanka Trump's ex-best friend tells about Ivanka Trump
Lysandra Ohrstrom reconstructs the life of the first daughter from high school to today through the filter of a lost friendship: whose fault?
"Ivanka Trump was my best friend in high school." It begins without the emphasis of once upon a time one of the most unexpected post-US 2020 election stories. Author Lysandra Ohrstrom, freelance journalist specializing in the Middle East, long-time friend of Ivanka Trump's heart. Almost sisters from the early nineties at Chapin, a girls-only school on the Upper East Side, until the early 10s of the new millennium. Parties, trips to Europe and South America for study programs, holidays in company between the Trump fiefdom in Mar-a-Lago in Florida and the beaches of the wealthy on the east coast. To unite the community of intentions, the hint of youth rebellion (always well financed by father Donald in the case of Ivanka), the upper class provenance to make the queen bees Blair Waldorf and Serena Van der Woodsen of Gossip Girl pale. A background that in the TV series seems too much to be true. On the other hand, there is very little fiction in Lysandra Ohrstrom's story of her friendship with Ivanka Trump.
“Ivanka and I really bonded in the last July of school, when a group of girls from Chapin went to Paris. After that trip, we became inseparable.” Amid back and forth of anecdotes and judgments, the behavioral legacies of the Donald Trump's favorite daughter. But Ohrstrom's long essay is not just the story of a friendship that came to an end immediately after Ivanka Trump's marriage to Jared Kushner, when he was her bridesmaid. It is above all a slow photograph revelation of who Ivanka Trump really is, initially written as an intimate memoir for fear of public retaliation. "The more I wrote, the more I felt I didn't owe her my silence. Although friends and family have warned me that this article may not be understood the way I wanted it, I believe it is time that one of the many criticisms of Ivanka's childhood could be expressed. If only to make sure that she, Ivanka, never recovers from her decision to tie her fate to that of her father. "Until the smell of family (and other people's) money began to plague the air, Ivanka she was just yet another enriched teenager, with so many possibilities available. The Bignami story about Ivanka Trump is up to The Cut: "A classist, callous and racist woman." Not exactly a prize for kindness. "Which was expected. , anyhow? As much as Ivanka tried to portray herself as the moderate voice of reason during her father's presidency, it has always been clear that after all she, like her old man, only wants number one. "And we could close it here.
But it is worth savoring some points from the story about Ivanka Trump before she became a first daughter in all respects. Blonde girl always ready to have fun and overdo it. The seeds of what Ivanka Trump would become today, a woman of power in a pink suit, were already visible when she casually asked Dad for a credit card to shop in Manhattan, and Donald Trump responded by complaining about the alimony he passed to Ivanka's mother. Trump. Not without first complimenting Lysandra Ohrstrom, but only in case of weight loss or noticeable changes in the body. And daughter Ivanka also tended to pay close attention to physical form. "She liked to talk about herself and was shamelessly vain, but she was also funny, loyal, and to be honest, incredibly stimulating. At twenty it seemed that Ivanka and I were always on the same line, or ready for the same adventures". Ivanka was able to conquer everyone, at first it seemed to be less Trump than previously thought. "She was polite, refined, funny. There was a moment, at the end of college, when it seemed that a kind of quieter life for money and privileges might please Ivanka, as if she could give up the path marked by her father for she". A very short period of time while in private the family topoi emerged without hesitation: the passion for junk food, swear words, the Trumpian radar for status, money and power. "It is her father's instinct to undermine others to save herself". As long as you are adolescents, school of life; from adults, an unacceptable perspective.
The social-character differences began with college entrance. Lysandra Ohrstrom became a reporter, starting with an assignment in Lebanon to cover the war; Ivanka Trump first devoted herself to real estate and finally to the magic circle of power, by reflex and in prison. "He was the only person who didn't ask me about the war, and I knew he wouldn't do it." After returning from Lebanon, Lysandra Ohrstrom wore a necklace with her name written in Arabic, which greatly annoyed Ivanka Trump, who was recently engaged to Jared Kushner, from an Orthodox Jewish family. "Sometimes he said to me" I hate her. "Once, we were at dinner, he looked at the necklace and said" how does your Jewish boyfriend have sex with you, with that necklace banging in his face? How do you carry it? Practically terrorist screams. "Straight, aggressive expressions from those used to being in charge. But there was also the deeply generous side of the First Daughter, like apartments loaned at the last second, valuable contacts for work, appointments combined with bachelors of the New York upper class. Yet, something in the friendship was slowly disintegrating. The final separation immediately after the wedding of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, when Lysandra Ohrstrom was the bride's maid of honor. A lack of friendship feedback in front of a important event triggered the definitive removal, although some contact remained. "She was never rude, but we just don't belong to the same circles anymore" specifies Ohrstrom. Not without a bittersweet reminder of what they were: "Sometimes I my old friend is missing. "
The piece is a ruthless analysis of how growing up in a certain environment means a doom, but also how the rich and likeable teenager Ivanka Trump has become today. "The Ivanka I knew has spent her career developing and embodying the educated and intellectual side of the Trump brand": a linguistic / aesthetic mix that has taken over from millennial white feminism, from the mythical narrative of a family business entrepeneur (widely disavowed by journalistic and financial inquiries into Donald Trump's fortune). This allowed her to cultivate her commitment to high society, but at the same time to become a sort of inspirational example for the American middle class housewives, first buyers of her (later failed) fashion brand. Slowly, inexorably, the ascent of the steps of white American power has definitively transformed Ivanka. Which overturned the preferred paradigm of safeguarding family status instead of itself, united in the protection of the patriarch and the ultimate vision of Trump men and women: all together passionately. Even if Melania and Ivanka can't be seen and there are plenty of memes and images to prove it, they are all compact. But the percentages of the electoral recount have crumbled the last chance of a second term of Donald Trump, and consequently eroded the resistance of his daughter. "I hope Ivanka finds a comfortable spot in Palm Beach, where casual white supremacy is de rigueur and crap is forgiven if you have enough money," concludes Lysandra Ohrstrom. "It's the best way to fly low, protected from the social and economic consequences of the policies it has been pursuing for four years." And that despite everything, at the end of the game, they could cost you dearly.
