Deposed presidential spawn Ivanka Trump and hubby Jared Kushner would fit in great in New York City—in Staten Island, that is. But Manhattan—where Ivanka was photographed last Friday, enjoying a brief return to the Kushners’ Park Avenue digs—happened to vote overwhelmingly for Biden/Harris.
There was no discernible fraud, as a whopping 84 percent of Manhattan voters emphatically endorsed the team that wasn’t Trump/Pence. What’s more, in Manhattan—where a gigantic Black Lives Matter slogan is laid out in front of Trump Tower, à la “Surrender, Dorothy”—we’re extremely vocal about what we like and don’t like. And we detest whispery-voiced princess Ivanka and slumlord Jared, who many have dubbed the two least qualified people to ever populate the White House. (I sincerely doubt that their ascent was a result of the “skill-based hiring” Ivanka’s always touting.)
In New York, we care about queers, women, immigrants, diversity, housing, the workplace, COVID, and the media. Considering their record on those things, these two would be about as welcome in Manhattan as Rudy Giuliani at an open-mic night.
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Besides, why on earth would Ivanka and Jared want to move back to the place that daddy calls “a ghost town” and is always trying to spite, most recently saying he’d withhold a COVID vaccine from New York State in April because of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resistance to an unproven remedy (though Trump won’t even be in power when that becomes an issue, making this just random antagonism, as usual)?
I guess because deep down, they know that NYC isn’t really over—that it’ll always “be best” and that the alleged lawless ghost town is actually the site of swarms of people shopping, eating outdoors, and wearing masks in a way that’s brought COVID deaths from over 1,000 a day to about 28. (You know how we would really have become a ghost town? If we had adopted Donald Trump’s nonchalant approach to the pandemic rather than heed Cuomo’s urgency.)
Alas for the Kushners, it also means that throngs not only rallied to vote daddy out of office, they clanged pots and cheered in the streets when it was clear that Biden/Harris won and “the Infector General” was on the way out, ending our communal nightmare.
This is no longer their town at all, even if they pull an Ebenezer Scrooge and suddenly start randomly handing out turkeys. Of course, staying in D.C. wouldn’t be such a great option for them either; a pitiful 5.5. percent of the voters there backed Trump, no doubt because they’ve had to observe him up close for four years. But I’m begging the Kushners to not move back to New York, if just to spare us years of New York Times articles about their attempted social exploits here.
We remember every cringe-making moment and have screenshotted every tweet. For example, we vividly remember when Ivanka promised that she had the LGBTQ community’s back. Yeah, with a cleaver; she smilingly posed with bigotry-blessed evangelicals and didn’t update us with any complaints as pops took away queer protections that had been implemented by Obama/Biden, one by one.
Jared himself reportedly said that “That’s their problem” when New York City begged for COVID supplies back when the pandemic was ravaging the city hardest.
We also recall with a grimace when Ivanka claimed that workers didn’t want guaranteed jobs or higher minimum wage—they supposedly don’t want to be “given” anything—later adding that in the midst of the Depression caused by the pandemic, people should maybe just rethink things and “Find Something New.”
Unemployed Americans were practically selling their body parts on eBay in order to pay the rent, but Ivanka’s advice was, basically, to just become a concert violinist or a court stenographer! And now, poetically enough, she will have to take her own advice and dramatically change directions.
Will she restart her fashion shtick, pursue art collecting, up her participation in the Trump Organization, or prepare her 2024 run, thereby competing with her dad and brother Donny Jr. for the nomination? Whatever the case, she would be more likely to be thrown a muzzle than a parade if she settled back on Park Avenue.
Yes, there will always be some starry-eyed ninnies who’d be excited to have anyone famous in their midst, but for the most part there would be so much hooting and jeering that the sale of bullhorns would surely go up even faster than “46” hats. This is the town, after all, which richly appreciated the Lincoln Project’s Times Square billboards of Jared and Ivanka perversely smiling about all the COVID casualties—an image they furiously threatened to sue over. Apparently, defending their honor is what it took for these two to take decisive action regarding COVID, lol.
My gut feeling is that the Trump clan longs to be embraced by the “cultural elite” they claim to scorn, but that’s not ever going to happen. While Ivanka might fancy herself on the cover of Vogue, I bet Hillary-adoring editor Anna Wintour won’t even invite her to buy a table for the Met Gala when that event starts up again.
Living in New York, but avoiding—or being shunned by—so many swell soirees could make you feel like Glenn Close at the Oscars. As a controversial social columnist, I’ve had periods of feeling that way myself!
At least daddy is sure to avoid New York, except for the barrage of court cases that he’ll be strongly invited to attend. According to his ex-partner in crime Michael Cohen, Trump will probably head to Mar-a-Lago for Christmas and never come back. (Or maybe he can nab a Cabinet position—in Russia—or become French roommates with Roman Polanski.)
As for Melania, she will no doubt file for divorce on Jan. 20, but I echo over 78 million people when I say, “I really don’t care, do u?” The vast majority of Manhattanites don’t want to see these creatures again any more than we crave a return to “Stop and frisk.”
Don’t forget that New York City knows Trump even better than D.C. does. We had to deal with him for decades, all through the Central Park Five years, and the cheating era, and the misogyny moments, and the money mishandling. We have always seen through him, so he loathes us and perennially wants to get us back, in Pee-wee Herman fashion (“I know you are, but what am I?”).
Carl Bernstein says that about half the Republican senators privately find Trump distasteful, but I guess they cower in fear of a bad tweet, so they’ve enabled every hideous thing he’s said and done. But now they won’t have to do that anymore—ding dong, the witch, etc. After the Senate runoffs, they should be freer to crawl out of yesterday’s whine cellar and breathe a little fresh air.
As for the Trump clan, maybe Donald, Ivanka and Jared can all just double-lock themselves inside the White House and keep pretending that they didn’t get the memo. More realistically, they need to go to a red state where they’ll be welcome. How about Kentucky? They would no doubt find sharing oxygen with their poorly educated MAGA fans a living hell, but at least they’d be invited to the local galas.
