Ivanka Trump gave a rare interview yesterday, appearing on the Diary of a CEO podcast. The show, hosted by the British entrepreneur Steven Bartlett, embodies the mix of individual hustle and mental health awareness that is rapidly becoming the dominant mode online. “You’re a bit of an empath, right?” asked Bartlett during a segment on business negotiation tactics. “Oh for sure,” answered his guest.
Trump came across as a frazzled and slightly besieged figure. She was tired of the “nasty swirl of social media” and the “gladiatorial” aspect of politics. She claimed to have found solace in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, the treatise on stoic philosophy now much in vogue among people like Bartlett. It was written “by a literal emperor,” Trump reminds us. She became emotional on two occasions when talking about her mother, who passed away in 2022. These were met with slightly irritating whispers of “it’s OK” from our host. “If you don’t know who you are, the mob wins,” Ivanka concludes.
Ivanka has had a varied career. After a stint as a model she made $800 million through her own fashion line, which then fell victim to the institutional backlash against her father’s politics as retailers such as Nordstrom cut ties. She then served as a senior advisor to Trump Sr. during his first administration, working alongside her husband Jared Kushner. Large parts of MAGA world, including Steve Bannon, would come to bewail the influence of “Javanka” over the Trump White House. It is perhaps no coincidence that the second administration, where different advisors have been chosen, has proven much more radical in terms of policy – though Kushner still plays a significant role in foreign policy this time around.
What has Ivanka been doing since she stepped back from politics in 2022? “Returning back to my real-estate roots,” she says. Most notable among these ventures has been Trump and Kushner’s $1 billion purchase of the island of Sazan off the coast of Albania, which they plan to develop into a luxury resort.
Ivanka makes much of mental wellness, self-knowledge, “finding joy” and so on, but there were still glimmers of her father. The best kinds of deals are with people you’ve built a “genuine connection” with, she says – these lead to “really beautiful kinds of transactions.” As Cockburn reached for the sick bag, he couldn’t help but be reminded of someone with that distinctly odd diction.
On our radar
POLY CRUEL The White House sent an internal email to staffers warning against using betting and prediction-market sites such as Polymarket and Kalshi last month.
INFLATION NATION The Consumer Price Index jumped 3.3 percent in March. Fuel oil is up 30.7 percent month on month, with gasoline rising 21.2 percent.
PLEASE NOEM MORE The Daily Mail has published more messages – text and audio – between Bryon Noem and one of the online dominatrixes he was paying.
The President turns on the podcast-sphere
What is MAGA these days, anyway? Is it, to use President Trump’s definition, “what I say it is” – or is it defined by consistent policy objectives such as “build the wall” and, er, “no new foreign wars”? A number of podcasters who’ve been branded “MAGA” for the last decade have broken with Trump over his Iran “adventure” and, particularly, his threat against their “entire civilization” on Tuesday. Candace Owens and Alex Jones called for Trump’s removal via the 25th Amendment, while Tucker Carlson compared Trump to the Antichrist for his profane Easter Sunday message. Megyn Kelly has also been critical of the administration over the war.
Yesterday afternoon, Trump hit back at the microphone brigade. In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump said Carlson, Kelly, Owens and Jones “have one thing in common, Low IQs. They’re stupid people.”
“They’ve all been thrown off Television, lost their Shows, and aren’t even invited on TV because nobody cares about them,” Trump continued. “They think they get some ‘clicks’ because they have Third Rate Podcasts, but nobody’s talking about them, and their views are the opposite of MAGA.” He called Carlson a “Hand Flailing Fool,” said that “the First Lady of France is a far more beautiful woman than Candace” and that Jones “says some of the dumbest things, and lost his entire fortune.”
The podcasters, for their part, gave as good as they got. “It may be time to put Grandpa up in a home,” said Owens. Carlson, meanwhile, blamed “Israel Firsters” for badgering the President. “He is facing a level of pressure that is dark enough to make him abandon his campaign promises and morph into the precise kind of politician he once vowed to destroy.” His online store is now stocking baseball caps with “LOW IQ” emblazoned on them.
Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt was also rather derisory toward new media this morning. After podcaster Shawn Ryan posted a summary of the Free Press’s story about the meeting between Elbridge Colby and the Vatican ambassador, Leavitt quote-tweeted him to say, “This is 100% garbage Fake News. The reporters who wrote it should immediately retract their stories, and the ‘influencers’ who fell for it should delete their tweets.”
The war on podcasters and the attention economy is yet another reversal on the part of Team Trump. After all, postmortems of the 2024 election were eager to stress how Trump’s interactions with the podcast-sphere – masterminded by Alex Bruesewitz and Barron Trump – helped him normalize his image and bring new voters into his coalition. Kelly and Carlson spoke at 2024 campaign rallies. Trump’s recent military exploits have earned him criticism from the likes of Joe Rogan, Andrew Schulz and Theo Von, “normie-bro” podcasters who proved useful in 2024. Trump appears to be reverting to type as the nation’s Fox News Grandpa-in-chief. But is it a tactical misstep for the right to dismiss broadcasters who’ve been “thrown off television” and instead bask in the plaudits of Sean Hannity and Mark Levin? Perhaps a clearer picture will emerge when we see how Trump is received at UFC 327 in Miami tomorrow – where the crowd will be closer to Rogan’s than Hannity’s.
TAC takes Taki
On Wednesday evening, Cockburn was chuffed to encounter a debonair Taki Theodoracopulos, dressed in a handsome robin’s-egg blue flannel suit and smoking a cigarette, as he stood sentry outside a four-story townhouse near Washington’s Dupont Circle.
Inside, about 100 revelers were celebrating not only President Trump’s ceasefire with Iran – a potent concoction called “Cease Fire Fizz” was advertised at the bar – but also the acquisition of Taki’s Magazine by the American Conservative, known to its fans as “TAC.” Executive editor Curt Mills explained that he plans to safeguard Takimag’s internet archive and regularly run columns by Taki and Ann Coulter.
Notables in attendance included Elizabeth C. Haney of the Claremont Institute, Paul Dans who is running for Senate in South Carolina, Scott McConnell, George O’Neill and Jude Russo of TAC, Justin Logan of the CATO Institute and The Spectator’s own Daniel McCarthy and Jacob Heilbrunn.
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