When First Lady Melania Trump takes her star turn on the world stage during her husband’s historic second state visit to the United Kingdom this week, she’ll do so without a ‘thorn in her side’.
For this time, two distinguished Trump family members will not be among the Royal family’s honored guests.
First Daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner – best known by the portmanteau, Javanka – served as key advisers to the president in his first White House term. But they’re no longer counseling Trump in an official capacity and won’t be tagging along to Buckingham Palace as they did in 2019.
Ivanka – second child to Donald and his first wife Ivana – has since sworn-off politics, opting instead for the quieter, perhaps more consistently glamorous life of a Miami socialite, spouse to a multi-millionaire and mother to three.
Now, close observers of Melania tell the Daily Mail that the first lady likely wouldn’t have it any other way, especially as the notable anglophile is scheduled for several solo appearances representing the United States while across the pond.
Brace for ‘Peak Melania’, they say.
Hair up, gloves on and unencumbered.
After a full program of events alongside the president on Wednesday, Melania will visit alone with the Queen on Thursday, before joining The Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, at the King’s estate in Windsor.
‘The stepchildren are gone,’ Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicler of the first lady Mary Jordan told the Daily Mail.
And what a departure from Melania’s first stint as presidential partner.
According to Jordan – author of The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump – Melania, 55, felt ‘enormous animosity’ toward Ivanka, 43, and was continually ‘jockeying around’ the president’s daughter.
The first lady’s office and representatives for Ivanka and Jared Kushner did not respond to a request for comment. And while Trump’s daughter Tiffany and her husband Michael Boulos will accompany the president and first lady to the UK, a White House spokesperson confirmed that no other Trump family members will be attending state visit events this week.
‘[Ivanka] was always kind of vying for space and Melania wanted her own space,’ biographer Jordan said. ‘Melania didn’t need a second first lady that Ivanka had kind of become.’
Indeed, Trump’s first state visit to the UK in 2019 made for an enormous clash of egos, according to Melania’s former White House chief of staff and press secretary, Stephanie Grisham.
Grisham recounts in her memoir how Ivanka and Jared lobbied to appear alongside the president and first lady at a Buckingham Palace welcome ceremony hosted by Queen Elizabeth II, even though protocol would dictate they arrive with the rest of the staff.
Melania- a known stickler for proper procedure, who studies before every foreign trip – was reportedly upset.
‘It is inappropriate, it should just be the president and I,’ Melania protested, Grisham wrote.
‘It didn’t dawn on me at first,’ Grisham wrote, ‘but over the course of the next few days, I finally figured out what was going on: Jared and Ivanka thought they were the royal family of the United States – on the same level as William and Kate in the United Kingdom.’
The first lady and Grisham even reportedly nicknamed Ivanka ‘the princess’ over her behavior.
Eventually, the first lady’s wishes appeared to have been respected and Ivanka and Jared traveled to the Palace in the motorcade. In Melania’s eponymous 2024 memoir, she recalled her arrival.
‘The afternoon state visit at Buckingham Palace was truly unforgettable. Donald and I landed in Marine One on the perfectly manicured grounds and were greeted by Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, who escorted us to the entrance where Her Majesty the Queen awaited,’ she wrote.
At the same time, Javanka were captured in an iconic photograph, peering out of a large palace window, as the Trumps’ military helicopter touched down.
This reporting has been challenged by Therese Burch, a former White House staffer who was brought in by the Trump administration as a volunteer to coordinate the 2019 state visit.
Burch told the Daily Mail in 2021 that Ivanka and Jared were not barred from any state visit events. But the first lady’s contentious relationship with her stepdaughter has been widely reported.
Their tensions date to the early days of Trump’s first term when Melania delayed her move from Manhattan to Washington, DC until the summer of 2017, allowing her then 10-year-old son Barron to finish his school year in New York City.
During that interim period, from January 2017 to June 2017, the Kushners took up residence in DC and Ivanka installed herself in the White House.
Ivanka even reportedly requested that the traditional ‘Office of the First Lady’ in the East Wing be re-purposed as the ‘Office of the First Family.’
The suggestion left Melania furious, an insider has told the Daily Mail. And as Trump began his second term, a source familiar with both women said that ‘Ivanka will always be a thorn in [Melania’s] side.’
While the exact details of Melania and Ivanka’s relationship are uncertain, the first lady’s affection for the Royal family are not.
In Grisham’s 2021 tell-all, I’ll Take Your Questions Now, she claimed that while Trump ‘was apparently not as big a fan of Charles,’ the first lady was taken by the future king.
Grisham recounted the first couple’s feedback to a 2019 tea.
‘After Trump returned, he complained that the conversation had been terrible. “Nothing but climate change,” he groused, rolling his eyes,’ Grisham wrote.
‘Mrs. Trump laughed and said of her husband, “Oh yes, he was very bored”. She, on the other hand, had a lovely time.’
After that meeting Melania has said that she and Charles continued to correspond by letter.
The first lady also wrote in her memoir about meeting with Charles in New York in 2005. ‘I was seated next to Prince Charles, and it was an absolute pleasure,’ saying they discussed his ‘deep-rooted commitment to environmental conservation.’
She also recounted a carefree moment she shared with Camilla and Kate during the 2019 visit.
‘Amid the pomp of the ceremonial welcome by British guards, a sudden gust of wind ruffled my hat. I quickly grabbed at it to hold it in place and shared an unrestrained moment of laughter with the Queen and the Duchess,’ she recalled. ‘It was a lighthearted and spontaneous moment in an otherwise formal and dignified occasion.’
Perhaps, this trip will finally be the first lady’s moment to shine – without obstruction.
