Rumors swirl about Ivanka Trump weighing US Senate run
Her Instagram feed has recently featured stories touting President Trump’s achievements, illustrated by pictures and text detailing her own role in the White House.
By HANNAH BROWNJared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at the White House in 2017.(photo credit: JOSHUA ROBERTS / REUTERS)
Rumors that Ivanka Trump might challenge Marco Rubio for his US Senate seat in 2022 are “just noise,” according to Florida Republican Party chairman Joe Gruters. But they continue to swirl around the First Daughter.“We have a great governor,” he told the Orlando Weekly in late December. “We have a great US senator. I would expect both of those individuals to run for reelection and to win their respective primaries.”“The Trump brand and Trump family is probably the strongest brand that’s ever existed within the base of the party,” Gruters said. “My guess is they could almost run for anything in the whole country and be successful within the primary.”Whether that means Trump will actually run is another story and one that she has not commented on. But she and her husband, Jared Kushner, both of whom are advisers to her father, President Donald Trump, recently bought property in the Indian Creek Village enclave along Miami’s Biscayne Bay from pop star Julio Iglesias for over $30 million, according to the New York Post.If the family were to relocate there after leaving Washington, where they have been living during the Trump presidency, she would be able to meet Florida residency requirements to run for the US Senate.The neighborhood has been nicknamed “Billionaire Bunker” due to its wealthy residents, who include billionaire investor Carl Icahn and supermodel Adriana Lima.“Ivanka only got into politics to help her father and help his agenda, but what’s now clear is that Ivanka is a political powerhouse in her own right,” Trump adviser Jason Miller was quoted as saying by Slate online magazine on Sunday.Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has been talking up her potential as a candidate, recently saying on his podcast: “The second-most fire-breathing populist in the White House was Ivanka Trump.”He has changed his tune dramatically from statements he made early during the Trump presidency, when he called Ivanka “dumb as a brick” in a quote from Michael Wolff’s 2018 bestseller, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.“One person in contact with the president” said Kushner is working to “protect and promote” his wife’s political career and reported that two sources, including a top GOP fundraiser, said Republican donor Tom Barrack was trying to drum up solid financial support for an Ivanka Trump US Senate candidacy, Politico reported.Her Instagram feed has recently featured stories touting President Trump’s achievements, illustrated by pictures and text detailing her own role in the White House. Her most recent tweets spotlight a job-training program launched by the president and show her visiting job-training sites.But another recent tweet, now deleted, has garnered more attention – the one she posted on January 6 as rioters were overrunning the Capitol during the Senate vote to certify the Electoral College results, in which she called for an end to the violence but addressed those invading the building as “American Patriots.”
