Let’s count the national atrocities that Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to the President of the United States, has weathered with few public reprimands from her former and current social circle in the upper echelons of New York society.
There’s been Charlottesville, kids in cages, and the Muslim ban. Then there are the numerous rollbacks of many civil rights impacting people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community. The affront of the moment is the disinterest of the president in protecting the First Amendment rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans protesting law enforcement’s brutal treatment of African-Americans, who are two-and-a-half times more likely to be killed by the police than whites. And over the weekend the hashtag #ByeIvanka trended online in response to her tone-deaf video commencement address amid nationwide unrest.
With this backdrop, will the first daughter, the alleged mastermind of the infamous Bible pic, finally become radioactive to the largely white, wealthy fashion, tech, and media milieu she deems interesting and relevant enough to follow on social media?
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If Instagram is a bellwether of polite society’s behavior, then the tide may be turning.
Last week, Tavi Gevinson, the magazine editor and actress, took to the social medium to dress down a member of Ivanka’s inner circle, sister-in-law Karlie Kloss, for hypocrisy. Gevinson responded to Kloss’s Instagram post about ending racism by calling out the supermodel’s chutzpah of making “a show of championing girls’ coding and other causes while only politely disowning your family in public.” Tevinson went where no public cultural figure has dared to go—calling out someone in Ivanka’s inner circle who has done the right virtue signaling about social issues but hasn’t uttered a critical word about the first daughter.
An exasperated Gevinson further vented that Kloss “only publicly disown[s] their politics in polite ways.” The future Gossip Girl reboot actress then took on writer-influencer Derek Blasberg, the reigning prince of well-mannered New York society and professional best friend to a who’s-who of high-profile socialites, including Lauren Santo Domingo, Kloss, and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Gevinson told Blasberg to go “talk to your neo fascist friends.” Blasberg, who until this incident followed the first daughter on Instagram, has been photographed with her numerous times. (He also attended Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017 to comment on the fashion.) New Yorker writer Naomi Fry chimed in saying: “ivanka literally a dm away.” Blasberg responded to Gevinson and Fry: “If I thought DM’ing with Ivanka would have any impact, don’t you think I would have done it?”
And that, in a nutshell, encapsulates the default approach among many of the New York City glitterati. They throw their hands up issuing half-hearted defenses for their silence because it won’t, in their mind, do anything to publicly condemn Ivanka. (Blasberg did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.)
While posh New Yorkers may be slow to pick up on the awkward contradictions of being silent toward Ivanka while being very vocal about their opposition to President Trump, college students are on it.
Wichita State University students made the connection between Ivanka and the actions and positions of the administration in which she serves. They recently dropped the first daughter as a graduation speaker because of the president’s response to protests over police brutality.
“What’s the point of saying anything? I’m going to get someone breaking into my Twitter account saying racist things. That is what we are dealing with here. They are poisonous,” a college classmate from Wharton and former friend of Ivanka’s told me. “I made one comment after Trump got elected and I got many people attacking and threatening me. There is nothing to gain and only a bunch of psychos coming after me for saying anything bad about these people,” the college classmate said in an interview last week.
This mindset—which dozens of people I’ve interviewed over the last four years who have or had some personal connection to Ivanka have shared—sheds light on why she may not be as radioactive as one might think, even among the woke, socially connected New Yorkers who are posting blackouts on their Instagram, donating feverishly to the NAACP, and buying their children books like Antiracist Baby.
Very few, if any, of the magazine editors, heiresses, real-estate magnates, entrepreneurs, and socialites she follows on social media have made public statements about the first daughter’s role in an administration that stands for the very things many of them are railing against on social media. If the Wichita college students can make the connection, why can’t the Instagram elite?
Dating back to Donald Trump’s birtherism slander of President Obama (which Ivanka never called out as racist), she has been protected by the forbearance of polite upper-crust society. In keeping with these social mores is the idea that family is sacrosanct and disagreement with one’s bloodline should only happen behind closed doors. Further, confronting others in the elite over politics or ethical lapses is outré; ruffling feathers is for Fox News and MSNBC telecasts, not for people with estates in Southampton and tony Connecticut horse country.
A friend of Ivanka’s conceded, as many have, that she does get a bit of a “free pass” but how radioactive she becomes to people in New York City will depend on whether “reasonable people start to turn on her.”
“I’m talking about the sensible Republicans, not the Lincoln Project Republicans. Those bridge people will be important,” the friend said. In other words, there is a possible breaking point, even for the Upper East Side Republicans who have benefited from the Trump administration’s tax policies, have done real-estate deals with Jared, and have known Ivanka since her days at the Chapin School. Adding: “The further down [President Trump] goes, there is a drag on her, regardless of her role. I’m not sure if the Bible thing was her or Hope’s idea but it was fucking horrible.”
How much social shunning, if any, Ivanka will receive if she decides to return to her hometown as a private citizen is anyone’s guess. “This is a city of many, many circles, and Jared and Ivanka will be welcome in some places and unwelcome in many,” says Michael Gross, the author of non-fiction books on wealthy New Yorkers.
Mr. Gross, who has met both Jared and Ivanka and described them each as “intelligent,” says it is unlikely the couple will be able to walk into an ACLU fundraiser or even the PEN American Literary Gala. “It is likely they’d encounter hisses and boos. I can imagine some people will throw pies in their face,” he says. As for where they will be welcome, “I don’t know,” Mr. Gross said in a telephone interview. “Gatherings of evangelical friends of pussy grabbers? Or kosher restaurants favored by hedge fund hogs?”
The Manhattan-based college classmate told me “it’s hard to imagine that Jared and Ivanka would ever want to come back to New York City.”
“There is an entirely different view of society and humanity there. There’s now such a chasm that exists between them and so many of the people they socialized with,” the college classmate said.
In the media world, it might take a bit more finesse or an aggressive PR campaign to get Ivanka back in the good graces of the women’s magazines, which, until quite recently, fawned over her and helped her cement a public image as a champion of working women. But it’s not out of the question. One friend of the first daughter surmised that Ivanka might do some image rehabilitation by getting the word out about how she disagreed with parts of the administration’s policies and emphasize how she secured money for female entrepreneurs and tried to speak up about climate change and kids at the border.
And remember just a few years ago, in 2017, Anna Wintour, the creative director of Condé Nast, brought Ivanka in to meet with editors. Wintour, as New York magazine reported, introduced the first daughter as “brave” for being willing to come before them. “The message was: ‘Be polite’, an editor in the room said.” (Brave is a strange adjective to describe someone coming back to a publication—Vogue—where Wintour had offered Ivanka a job right out of college, not to mention that Condé-owned magazines have run many flattering stories about Ivanka over the years.)
But how complicit are Ivanka’s friends and acquaintances at a moment when the country is reeling from the consequences of systematic silence? Her college classmate, for one, thinks the responsibility is with her real friends. “If she has any,” the former friend said.
