SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Darlene Superville and Adriana Gomez Licon
When Donald Trump returns to the White House on Tuesday morning Australian time, his family circle will look a little different than it did when he first arrived eight years ago.
Family members can provide presidents with a ready source of moral and sounding-board support, companionship and even relief from the world’s problems. Not to mention creating headaches for the president at times, too.
Donald Trump’s family has mixed influence within the White House.Credit:
“Family can do things that other people can’t, and they can be trusted in a way that other people also can’t,” said Tevi Troy, an official in George W. Bush’s administration and author of several books about the presidency. “Everyone needs someone they can talk to late at night when you let your hair down, so to speak.”
THEN: She spent the opening months of Trump’s term at the family’s Manhattan penthouse so that 11-year-old Barron wouldn’t have to switch schools in the middle of the year. After moving to the White House, she travelled around the United States and to other countries, alone and with Trump, partly to promote her “Be Best” children’s initiative while fiercely guarding her privacy.
NOW: She avoided active campaigning during Trump’s 2024 run, limiting her public appearances to key moments, such as the campaign’s launch, the Republican National Convention and election night. She released a self-titled memoir late last year and will be the subject of a documentary distributed by Amazon Prime Video to be released later this year. Some doubt the 54-year-old will spend much time at the White House, although she said on Fox News’ Fox & Friends that she has already packed and selected the furniture she wants to take to the executive mansion.
THEN: Trump’s eldest son, now 46, campaigned for his father in 2016 and 2020.
NOW: His influence has grown to the point that he lobbied his father to choose close friend JD Vance for vice president. He also pushed for former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president-elect’s respective picks for director of national intelligence and health and human services. He helps run the family real estate business, is an honorary chairman of Trump’s transition, has a podcast and has said his role is to prevent “bad actors” from getting into the administration. He recently flew on his father’s jet to Greenland; the president-elect has expressed a desire to take control of the mineral-rich Danish territory.
THEN: Ivanka, 43, campaigned for her father in 2016 and moved her family from New York City to Washington to work in his White House as a senior adviser. She was on the campaign trail in 2020, too, but she and her family moved to Florida and retreated from the spotlight after his loss.
NOW: As Trump geared up for the 2024 run, Ivanka announced that she loved and supported him but was getting out of politics to focus on her husband and their three kids. She did, however, join her father and other family members on election night and when he rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange in early December after Time magazine named him Person of the Year. She told “The Skinny Confidential” podcast that she just wanted to “show up for him as a daughter” and be there to watch a movie or a sports game.
THEN: He helped run the family business and participated in his father’s campaigns.
NOW: Eric, 41, also an honorary chair of the transition and a close adviser to his father, is focused more on running the family business. In September, he and his brother started a crypto platform called World Liberty Financial, and their father helped launch it in an interview on the X social media platform.
THEN: Trump’s daughter with second wife Marla Maples was 23 and a recent University of Pennsylvania graduate who kept a low profile when Trump was first elected.
NOW: She was more present in the 2024 campaign but still largely avoids the spotlight. At 31, she and husband Michael Boulos are expecting their first child. Boulos is a businessman who travelled with Trump in the final stretch of the campaign. His father is Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American who helped Trump with the influential Arab American community in the swing state of Michigan. Trump has named the elder Boulos as a senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.
THEN: At the start of Trump’s first term, Barron and his mother stayed at the family’s Trump Tower penthouse in Manhattan so he could finish his school year. When they got to Washington, his soccer net appeared in what’s known as the first lady’s garden.
NOW: Barron, 18, is a freshman New York University business student. His parents and Trump campaign officials credit him for recommending podcasts popular with young men on which the president-elect appeared during the campaign. Barron will have a bedroom in the White House, Melania Trump said on the Fox & Friends TV show. Donald Trump said Barron had helped introduce him to people he had never heard of before. “It’s the new wave,” the president-elect told NBC News in a telephone interview on Saturday, “and he was very helpful.”
THEN: Married to Eric since 2014, she campaigned for him and, after Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, she considered running for a US Senate seat from her home state of North Carolina, ultimately deciding against it. She became a Fox News commentator.
NOW: As Trump revved up his 2024 campaign, he installed Lara as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, where she was a TV-ready advocate overseeing fundraising, voter outreach and the party’s “election integrity” initiative. She stepped down from the RNC after the election and removed her name from consideration as a successor to Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for secretary of state.
THEN: Kushner was also a key figure in Trump’s 2016 campaign. He joined his wife in the White House as a senior adviser, a role that included working on U.S. policy toward Israel and the broader Middle East.
NOW: Kushner, 44, has stepped out of the political spotlight – but his father could soon step in. Trump announced after the election that he intends to nominate Charles Kushner, a real estate developer, to be US ambassador to France. Trump pardoned the elder Kushner in December 2020 after he pleaded guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign contributions.
AP
