Over the weekend, something happened to Ivanka Trump that hasn’t happened since her father was elected president: celebrities were willing to be seen with her.
On Friday evening, Ms. Trump, a White House adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, attended Kim Kardashian’s 43rd birthday party at Funke Restaurant in Beverly Hills, California, where she was photographed posing with Ms. Kardashian and Lauren Sanchez, fiancée of Jeff Bezos, in a photo that Ms. Kardashian and Ms. Trump both shared on social media.
Also in the tableau: Lydia Kives, the wife of former Hollywood agent Michael Kives; and Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, who is married to venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Other attendees included models Hailey Bieber, Kimora Lee Simmons and various members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan.
“It’s a great blessing to have hit the Friends jackpot!” Ms Kardashian wrote beneath a carousel of photos she shared on Instagram with her 364 million followers – including the snap with Ms Trump, in what was considered the biggest public show of support for Mrs. Trump by an A-list celebrity has been true for years.
Over the course of two presidential campaigns and four years working in the Trump White House, which ended with a deadly insurrection at the Capitol, Ms. Trump’s reputation as a New York socialite welcome at events like this was destroyed. In a tweet that she later deleted, Ms. Trump described the rioters on January 6, 2021 as “American patriots” and called on them to stop the violence at the Capitol that day.
In texts released by the committee on Jan. 6, Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director, wrote to another adviser about Ms. Trump’s predicament. Using an expletive, Ms. Hicks asked whether Ms. Trump knew how much she and her family had been personally damaged by the day’s events.
But the high-profile birthday celebration in deep blue California two years later is a reminder that the rich and powerful are never completely exiled, are never beyond repair – and that for the politically vilified and reputation-damaged, there is always a way back with enough time, money and influence .
Ms. Kardashian did not respond to a request for comment. Ms. Trump and Ms. Sanchez declined to comment.
Tina Brown, the journalist and author, predicted the re-entry years ago. “There’s a myth that Jared and Ivanka are socially rejected,” she told Town & Country Magazine ahead of President Biden’s inauguration. “The rich are never rejected – until they go to prison or lose their money.”
It’s been a long, cold season for Ms. Trump, who since leaving the White House has found herself in a no-man’s land between her father’s MAGA world and the Manhattan socialite circle she used to socialize with.
To distance herself from Mr. Trump, she issued a statement in November 2022 declaring that she would not participate in his 2024 campaign.
Ms. Trump never returned to New York after her father left the White House. Instead, she started a new life with her family in Florida, where she lives in a gated community in Indian Creek Village near Miami known as the “Billionaire’s Bunker.”
In Miami, Ms. Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, are regulars at Carbone — a branch of the New York restaurant — where they are friends with one of the owners, Jeff Zalaznick, and treated like royalty. She was spotted at Art Basel in Miami and chatted with Prince William at Jordan’s Crown Prince Hussein’s wedding in Amman. For the most part, Ms. Trump is now minding her own business and people around her think it’s time for her to move on with her new life.
Still, it’s not the level of influence Ms. Trump has sought for years. She has not yet been invited back to the top events where she was once a fixture: the Met Gala, the Vanity Fair party at the Tribeca Film Festival, the front rows of New York Fashion Week.
Ms. Kardashian’s birthday celebration may not be on that level; One attendee described it as a dinner with only a few dozen guests. But Ms. Trump sat next to Ms. Kardashian and was greeted by the crowd, one attendee said.
Ms. Kardashian’s public embrace comes at a difficult time for the Trump family. Ms. Trump has been called as a witness and is fighting to avoid testifying in a New York civil fraud trial against her father, brothers and the Trump Organization.
Paparazzi outside the party shouted after her, and a photographer asked if she was “afraid to testify at the trial.” She ignored the question.
Ms. Kardashian first came into contact with Ms. Trump during the Trump administration when it came to criminal justice reform. When Ms. Kardashian came across the case of Alice Marie Johnson, who was serving a life sentence in an Alabama prison for a nonviolent drug offense, Ms. Trump’s first call was to the White House. (Mr. Trump commuted Ms. Johnson’s sentence and later featured her story in a Super Bowl campaign ad designed to appeal to black voters.)
Other long-time society chroniclers were decidedly unimpressed with the caliber of both the invitee and the hostess. Graydon Carter, the former editor of Vanity Fair, said he was put off by the pairing of Ms. Trump and Ms. Kardashian, comparing it to the meeting of two deposed dictators. “I doubt that Ceausescus ever met the Duvaliers, but I imagine it would have been a little like what you describe here,” he said in an email.
For some of Ms. Kardashian’s supporters, Ms. Trump was seen as out of place and unwelcome at the otherwise uncontroversial gathering.
One wrote: “Not Ivanka!” and implored Ms Kardashian to “use your power for good.”