Ivanka Trump recalled the moment her father was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the profound impact it had on her in a candid conversation on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast that was released Wednesday.
Podcast host Steven Bartlett asked Ivanka where she was when she found out there was an assassination attempt against her father.
She shared that she was in Bedminster, N.J., and heard “a lot of commotion.”
The first daughter recalled seeing it “almost immediately” on the television out by the pool.
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She said she saw it nearly in real-time, and her immediate reaction was to turn her children away, in a moment she described as “incredibly difficult.”
She shared that she knew her father was OK as he exited the stage with the Secret Service.
“I just knew that, like it wasn’t his time,” she said. “So I was horrified, and I was scared. I was protective of my children, but I also didn’t believe that the worst possible outcome transpired. Thank God.”
She revealed she saw her father that evening when he arrived home from the hospital back to Bedminster.
Ivanka paused and reflected on the profound realization of that experience, “You can’t take things for granted in life.”
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Along with the assassination attempt, Ivanka noted when her mother, Ivana, passed away “prematurely” and when her husband, Jared Kushner, had a cancer scare. All of those moments, she said, reminded her of how precious life is.
“All of these challenges that remind you how finite and how precious every moment of this life we live are, make you realize you just can’t take anything for granted,” Ivanka said. “As you move through them, and God willing, you are able to, and we were so fortunate that day that this was a failed attempt to take his life, not a realized one, you recommit to love and connection and to a recognition of how short our time here on this Earth is and how you got to value it.”
Bartlett noted that Ivanka’s experience is largely unrelatable, as most people cannot understand what it’s like to have others wish death on a parent.
“I wonder how that doesn’t make you negative to the world?” he asked.
“Because I don’t allow it to,” she responded.
“Even for the person that shot at your father?” he followed up.
“There’s a lot of sickness there, and I think that forgiveness is a difficult thing in this regard,” she said.
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Ivanka added, “His living was a blessing, so I could look at what happened and be rightfully traumatized by the experience and nobody could really argue with that, but you have to move through it and on the opposite side of that is the fact that he is – that he didn’t die, that he is with us today. That my father is alive, and that is an extraordinary blessing for me as his daughter. In life you have a choice, only in how you respond.”
Ivanka said she is choosing gratitude because her father survived. Although Ivanka acknowledged “it wasn’t the easiest thing” to see the moment replayed on the news.
She said her father surviving the attempt was a “miracle” and a “blessing” and she chooses to focus on that.
