The Trump family members stepping up in the race to the White House

As the election campaign reaches the home stretch, Donald’s eldest sons are front and centre… but other relatives are notably absent

As they flanked Donald Trump on stage at the Republican National Convention (RNC) this summer, the former-president’s offspring conveyed a carefully choreographed message: this is now America’s most powerful political family. There was a jubilant atmosphere in the arena: the thousands of grinning Republican voters and officials congregated in Milwaukee marking the moment of Trump’s coronation in the 2024 White House race.
The 78-year-old had survived an assassination attempt just days before. (He would face a second apparent attempt on his life just this month). The image of his defiant response – fist in the air, shouting ‘fight!’ – could not have struck a greater contrast to his frail 81-year-old opponent, Joe Biden. For many, it appeared to seal the election. Polls and pundits differed only on Trump’s expected margin of victory. His address at the RNC’s four-day gathering was not so much a campaign manifesto launch as a gleeful victory parade.
The event’s grand finale came as the Trump family gathered on stage next to their patriarch, an image of the White House projected on to a screen behind them. There they stood, basking in the revelry, regally waving to the adoring supporters below, as red, white and blue balloons cascaded from the ceiling.  
But the tableau of a beaming family on course to return to the cradle of power masked conflicting interests and concerns. While some of the Trump clan have been instrumental in helping to secure his dominance over the Republican party, others appear much less enamored with the idea of four more years on the global stage. Standing next to Trump was his 54-year-old wife, Melania. The family member who has been most conspicuously absent from the 2024 campaign, her sole appearance in Milwaukee marked a significant departure from American political tradition.
In years past, the former first lady had dutifully followed custom, delivering prime-time speeches at the last two GOP conventions in support of her husband’s presidential bids. More than one Trump insider claims intensive efforts were made to convince Melania to follow suit this year with an address before her husband’s speech in Milwaukee. She resisted every entreaty, the campaign sources said.
Melania had already signaled she intends to steer clear of her husband’s third White House bid. She was absent during his June debate against Biden, which ultimately turned the tide of the race, and rarely appears at fund-raisers, let alone Trump rallies. Charting her own course, Melania entered the RNC’s convention site alone, and only for the gala’s final night. A spotlight and the lenses of dozens of cameras were trained on her ascent to the family box to watch her husband speak. Later, she stood silently next to him on stage as he entertained the crowd.
If sources within the Trump orbit are to be believed, she intends to take no further active role in his third presidential bid. Should he regain the White House, her earlier approach suggests Melania may continue the trend.
In American Woman, an appraisal of recent first ladies, the White House reporter Katie Rogers casts Melania as ‘reluctant’ in the role. ‘Mrs Trump spent four years flouting many of the expectations about what a modern first lady should be,’ Rogers writes, revealing aides described how she visited her East Wing domain ‘so infrequently that her empty office had been converted into a gift-wrapping room’.
Melania has stayed largely out of the public eye since departing the White House in 2021, spending most of her time ensconced in Mar-a-Lago, the Trumps’ main residence in Palm Beach, Florida. ‘She rarely exits Mar-a-Lago, it’s a strange, isolated life they have in that place,’ Laurence Leamer, author of a book about the private members’ club and a longtime Palm Beach resident, told The Telegraph last year.
That is not to say Melania has been idling away her time. Financial disclosures show she makes significant income from rental properties in New York and her native Slovenia, and earned more than $300,000 (£232,000) from licensing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – digital assets stored on blockchain – in the last year.
Her occasional appearances at Republican fundraisers have been lucrative. She received a $237,000 (£183,000) payment for a single speaking engagement for Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay rights group, hosted at Mar-a-Lago in April. Despite her low profile, the former first lady also intends to release a memoir, Melania, next month, just weeks before the presidential election on 5 November.
A Trump family member who has proved even more elusive on the campaign trail is her son, Barron, whom sources say she is fiercely keen to protect from the spotlight. The youngest of the Trump offspring, Barron’s school years coincided with his time in the White House, meaning the First Son went largely unremarked on by the media out of consideration for his tender age.
Now aged 18, and enrolled at New York University, interest in the 6ft 7in student has ramped up. Trump has acknowledged as much in interviews, saying recently of his young son: ‘He had such a nice easy life, now it’s a little bit changed.’
Those in contact with the intensely private Melania describe her as rattled by the prospect of her husband’s presidential bid prompting further media intrusion into Barron’s life, particularly following not one but two assassination attempts on the former president. Ric Grenell, a former Trump administration official, told Bloomberg recently: ‘I think she’s shaken. Barron goes to [university] this summer, so it’s a difficult time for parents, to go from having your child around all the time to leaving the nest.’
Earlier this year, Barron was rumored to be preparing to take on a more active political role in his father’s third presidential bid. He appeared at one of his rallies, and was named as a delegate for the Florida GOP, conferring on him a formal role in the vote to confirm his father as the Republican presidential nominee.
Soon after the news emerged, Melania’s office, far from a regular communicator with the media, sprung into gear to refute any suggestion Barron would take up the role. ‘While Barron is honored to have been chosen,’ her office said, ‘he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments.’ In the end, Barron was not only absent from the Florida delegation in Milwaukee, but skipped the entire Republican convention – the only one of Trump’s children not to appear. The former president jokingly acknowledged the absence as he namechecked his offspring and their partners in his speech to formally accept his party’s nomination. ‘I also want to thank my entire family,’ he said. ‘Don and Kimberly, Ivanka and Jared, Eric and Lara, Tiffany and Michael, Barron, we love our Barron. And of course, my 10 wonderful grandchildren.’ 
Tiffany, 30, the fourth child of the ex-president – the only one with his second wife Marla Maples, rarely delves into the political fray. Raised in California rather than New York – ‘outside of the spotlight’, in her mother’s words – her childhood did not involve the same proximity to her father as her half-siblings, although she was at university in Washington, DC during Trump’s term in office. 
She graduated from Georgetown University Law Center during his final year in power, and delivered a speech to the 2020 GOP convention months later, but has since maintained a far lower profile than her siblings. On stage with her at the 2024 convention was her husband, Michael Boulos, the son of a wealthy Lebanese-American businessman, whom she married at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.
The inclusion of Ivanka and Jared Kushner on stage was a surprise to many political spectators, who noted it was the couple’s first, and likely only, foray into the 2024 presidential race. Once at the nexus of political power, ‘Javanka’, as the pair are known in Washington, wielded immense influence within the West Wing during the first Trump era. Both served as senior advisers to the president, a perch from which they rubbed shoulders with world leaders at state dinners and exchanged WhatsApp messages with princes and prime ministers.
In his unpaid role, Jared took a lead in the Trump administration’s Middle East policy, and later in the president’s 2020 re-election bid. Ivanka, meanwhile, steered the role of first daughter into uncharted territory: the first ever to have a chief of staff and a West Wing office a short walk from the president’s Resolute Desk.
Her proximity to power came with its downsides. She made the decision to shutter her namesake fashion brand to ‘focus’ on her work in Washington, amid questions over how the Trump family might profit from his presidency.
Perhaps more lasting was the impact on her standing within the pecking order of her elite Manhattan Upper East Side set. Ivanka often walked a difficult line: perceived as the most politically liberal of the family, but deemed to have her father’s ear, many expected her to be a moderating influence on his most contentious and inflammatory statements. If the role ascribed to her was true, few deemed her successful.
What was left of Jared and Ivanka’s social capital was spent in the aftermath of the 6 January 2021 riots, when a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and delayed the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential race. With Trump still refusing to concede defeat, even Karlie Kloss, Jared’s supermodel sister-in-law, broke her silence to condemn the situation as ‘anti-American’. Asked by her followers to make that case to her brother- and sister-in-law, she bluntly replied: ‘I’ve tried.’
The power couple quit Washington soon afterward, retreating to Florida, where they built a mansion on a private island near Miami. Despite being just an hour’s drive from her father’s base in Palm Beach, in the intervening years, Ivanka, 42, and Jared, 43, have worked to distance themselves from politics, focusing instead on their three children and lucrative business and charitable ventures, including volunteering at a food bank and launching a $3 billion investment fund.
Acquaintances of Ivanka describe her as seeking a less ‘complicated’ life for her family, pursuing philanthropic work and rekindling relationships strained by her time in the White House. ‘Ivanka made the calculation a long time ago that it was not in her best interests to remain in any way associated with the rest of her family,’ her cousin, Mary Trump, recently told MSNBC. ‘All of these relationships are transactional. She is a legitimately wealthy person because of the person she is married to. She doesn’t need Donald for anything.’ Ivanka has been more active in public recently, sharing images of herself at Adele concerts, learning to surf, and at birthday parties with Kim Kardashian and Lauren Sánchez, partner of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
‘She basically wants a new life to compensate for what she lost when she spent four years in her father’s Washington,’ a source close to her told People magazine earlier this year. Rather than attending the launch of her father’s third White House bid at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, Ivanka released a statement declaring: ‘I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics.’ It was interpreted by many as a repudiation of her father’s continued refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 race, as much as an expression of her fatigue from the unrelenting scrutiny that comes with presidential campaigns.
Nor, it soon became clear, did she intend to become involved in her father’s multiple court cases. She strenuously tried to avoid testifying in the family’s $250 million (£193 million) civil fraud trial earlier this year, claiming in one attempt that she needed to be at home with her children during the school week.
Her efforts were rejected and she was ultimately compelled to appear in a New York court. She also opted against attending her father’s historic criminal trial in Manhattan, which saw him convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to a porn star. 
However, insiders say Ivanka showed her solidarity in private, making discreet visits to the ex-president via a private entrance and a connecting lift direct to his penthouse in his Manhattan base, Trump Tower. Following his conviction, she said: ‘I love my father. I love my country. Today, I am pained for both.’ 
While she had availed herself of prized speaking slots in the last two Republican conventions, this time she was only there for the photo finish. Her three children, Arabella, 13, Joseph, 10, and Theodore, eight, were absent from the stage, in contrast to some of Donald Trump’s other grandchildren. But Ivanka and her husband Jared had still decided to be present: a quiet endorsement of Donald Trump’s bid.
It is actions like these that have led some Republican insiders to describe Ivanka as a ‘political weathervane’. They noted her absence from Trump’s campaign launch, when much of the party believed his rival Ron DeSantis offered better prospects, but also her reappearance following her father’s attempted assassination and ascendancy in the polls.
Some party insiders are skeptical of her ability to resist the temptation to reprise a White House role, should the opportunity arise, although Ivanka herself has ruled it out. ‘I feel like I left it all on the field. I feel really good about it, and I feel really privileged to have been able to do what I did,’ she told friend and podcaster Lex Fridman during a three-hour interview. But, she said of politics: ‘It’s a pretty dark world… And, you know, it’s a really rough business. So for me and my family, it feels right to not participate.’
It has not quelled speculation that Jared Kushner could be under consideration to serve as the secretary of state in a second Trump administration. Such an appointment would carry both risks and rewards, given his deep financial ties to the Middle East, which would inevitably face Congressional scrutiny if he returned to Washington.
Jared and Ivanka are aware there would be revived controversy over their incomes – they reported earning as much as $640 million in outside income during their time in the White House, according to the Citizens for Ethics watchdog – raising questions over potential conflicts of interest. Their government roles led Barack Obama’s former ethics adviser, Norman Eisen, to accuse Trump of operating ‘like something out of a tin-pot oligarchy’, although other experts suggested Trump’s breach of convention did not amount to violating any laws.
Kushner has since opened an investment fund, with around 99 per cent of its $3 billion coming from foreign investors with whom he worked when he served as a senior adviser to the president. The majority of the funding comes from the Middle East, including $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. A source close to Kushner said he was ‘focused on his family and his business’ rather than potential administration roles at the present.
Sam Nunberg, a former senior Trump campaign official, had his own theory on the couple’s absence from the 2024 campaign. ‘The major difference is that he [Donald] just won’t let Jared come back in and take over the franchise of day-to-day operations,’ he told The Telegraph. ‘It’s just not happening because Jared lost [the 2020 race],’ he said, referencing Kushner’s involvement in Trump’s unsuccessful re-election bid.
‘Not that Jared wants to, by the way, or should want to,’ Nunberg added, arguing that while there was a professional uncoupling from Trump, there was no ‘personal separation’. ‘Even if they’re in Miami, Ivanka and Jared are by his side,’ he said.
The vacuum left by Jared and Ivanka has been filled by Trump’s two eldest sons, Don Jnr and Eric. The brothers took a lead role in managing the family business empire during their father’s presidency, but have become more prominently involved in the business of politics since the launch of his third White House bid. They are believed to be more ideologically aligned with their father, in particular Don Jnr, who is widely expected to mount his own run for office one day. The 46-year-old has been seen as a kingmaker for the next generation of his father’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, working to unseat GOP critics and lobbying in support of loyalists.
His influence has only been underscored by his successful lobbying to have his close friend JD Vance become his father’s 2024 running mate. ‘Worlds apart’ in their upbringings, as Don Jnr noted in his convention speech, their unlikely friendship was forged by a mutual appreciation of their combative approach on social media. Don Jnr was also an admirer of Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and, more importantly, the zeal of the Ohio senator’s conversion to Trumpism. A budding texting relationship is said to have developed into near-daily communication between the pair. The decision to anoint the 40-year-old Vance as Trump’s de facto successor has bound the Republican Party to the legacy of his populist MAGA movement for another generation.
Both Don Jnr and Eric, 40, are intimately involved in vetting other potential recruits for a second Trump term, to ensure they are true devotees to the America-first agenda. The brothers were announced in August as ‘honorary chairs’ of the Trump transition team. The pair are believed to be focusing on identifying the political ideology of potential senior administration figures as well as White House staffers to ensure their father’s recruits possess the quality he prizes above all others: loyalty.
They are eager to avoid a repeat of the first Trump administration, where senior figures such as the former national security advisor John Bolton, former defense secretary Mark Esper, and former chief of staff John Kelly later sharply rebuked Trump’s presidency. Aides to the 78-year-old Trump say he still feels aggrieved that his one-time advisers would later offer insider accounts of his time in office on cable news, and is determined to avoid a repeat should he win a second term.
Don Jnr cast his own position as one of exercising ‘veto power’. ‘I don’t want to pick a single person for a position of power, all I want to do is block the guys that would be a disaster,’ he said at an Axios-hosted event at the RNC this summer. Insiders suggest it is unlikely that either of Trump’s adult sons will hold an official role in his administration, but their influence behind the scenes will be pivotal to shaping it. The Trumps’ goal is to ensure they do not face the same resistance from the Washington establishment or, in their own vernacular, ‘the swamp creatures’. Those selected for the most senior roles must first demonstrate ‘resolute’ support for the Republican presidential candidate’s ‘vision’, one senior source said.
The Trump family takeover goes further still. Donald Trump has already moved to instal loyalists within the Republican Party apparatus, including parachuting his daughter-in-law Lara Trump into a leadership role at the Republican National Committee. Lara, the wife of Eric Trump, was recently mocked for releasing a music single instead of focusing on helping Republicans win in November’s general election. Online critics were unimpressed by Lara’s musical talents, but the 41-year-old has suggested the ridicule originates from the ‘liberal media’ and has not ruled out releasing more songs in future.  
Both Lara and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jnr’s fiancée, two former TV insiders, were given prominent speaking slots at this year’s RNC. Even Don Jnr’s 17-year-old daughter, Kai, was granted coveted speaking time. ‘A lot of people have put my grandpa through hell, and he’s still standing,’ the teenager told the crowd.
Trump himself has frequently acknowledged that his closest relationships are with his family. ‘I have a lot of good relationships,’ he once said. ‘I have good enemies, too, which is OK. But I think more of my family than others.’ As far back as 2015 he sketched out their importance to his rise to power in an interview with CNN. 
To Melania he has ascribed the political acumen of a ‘pollster’, Ivanka, ‘could be president’ herself one day, and, his sons, he said, ‘wanna be out there’. They will ‘be fantastic’, he added. 
The Trump campaign has since suffered a change in fortune. Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race, and Kamala Harris’s entry, has shaken up the polls – and disrupted what mere weeks ago appeared to be Donald Trump’s gilded path back to the White House. But whether in power or out, the Trump family will assert its dominance over American politics for years to come.