White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump declined to say whether she would remain in Washington if her father wins reelection in 2020, describing the decision as one that will depend on what’s in the best interests of her children.
Trump, the eldest daughter of President Trump, made the remarks in an interview with CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that was taped Dec. 19 and aired Sunday. She and her husband, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, have three children: Arabella, Joseph and Theodore.
“I am driven first and foremost by my kids and their happiness,” Ivanka Trump said when asked by host Margaret Brennan whether she plans to remain in Washington should her father win a second term. “So, that’s always going to be my top priority. And my decisions will also be flexible enough to ensure that their needs are being considered, first and foremost. So they will really drive that answer for me.”
During her time in Washington, Ivanka Trump has sought to be the face of the Trump administration’s more centrist and bipartisan policy initiatives, even as she has faced criticism over her role as an aide to her father and her use of a private email account to conduct government business.
In the interview, she emphasized her work on agenda items such as workplace development. She declined to say, however, whether she might one day consider a political bid of her own.
“Oh, gosh. You know, for me, the politics is truthfully less interesting,” Ivanka Trump told Brennan. “The policy and the impact of lifting communities and changing people’s lives and the stories I’ve … heard from the people I’ve met across this nation are just amazing.”
Ivanka Trump also told CBS that “the day I walk into the West Wing and I don’t feel a shiver up my spine is the day I’ve been here too long.”
“And I still, every day, feel a tremendous humbling and sense of privilege that I’m able to do the work that I came to Washington to do, that the president’s empowered me,” she said. “And I feel just incredibly grateful to be able to give back to a country that’s given me so much.”