What's next for Ivanka Trump - social pariah or in line for the top job?

Pariah, philanthropist, political trailblazer or socialite: it seems everyone has a view on what the future holds for Donald Trump’s favourite child Ivanka as she reluctantly prepares to leave the White House.

With opinion over her next steps as divided as it was about her exact role in her father’s administration, a clue has emerged in the form of plans Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner have submitted to expand their “cottage” on the grounds of the Trump National Golf Club.

The property, in Bedminster, New Jersey, is an hour’s limo drive from Ivanka’s former haunts on New York’s Upper East Side, suggesting she may confound critics who speculated she would stay away from the East Coast through fear of social ostracisation.

Certainly it appears remaining in Washington DC is not an option after the Kushners, both White House advisers, were asked to remove their children from their private elementary school when parents complained about their very public failure to abide by social distancing rules or wear masks.

Days after the election, the couple popped up in New York, where Ivanka was born and raised, leading to speculation they would seek to regain their role in the social scene – and even more gossip over whether they would be welcome back to a city which, in liberal circles at least, feels its health and values were trampled on by the Trumps.

Posting on Twitter, Republican strategist Steve Schmidt wrote: “Goodbye @IvankaTrump. You will be loved by the people you disdain and disdained by the people you want to be loved by.”

“There will never be a Met Ball for you again,” he added of the highlight of New York’s social calendar, the grand ball at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue. “You are fated to live out your years as an aging, corrupt, villainous Barbie paying the price for what you did.”

In an equally excoriating article for Vanity Fair, Ivanka’s former friend Lysandra Ohrstrom told a series of vignettes about their time at the elite Chapin High School, painting a picture of a cold, entitled young woman and predicting the President’s oldest daughter would seek refuge at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

“I expect Ivanka will find a soft landing in Palm Beach…,” she wrote, “where casual white supremacy is de rigueur and most misdeeds are forgiven if you have enough money.”

The New York Times too speculated that Ivanka and Jared might find a way round their social embarrassment by splashing the cash. “The dispiriting truth is that you can always eat lunch in this town again,” one columnist opined, predicting that for all their talk of snubbing the Kushners, no major New York cultural institution would turn them away if they waved a large enough donation cheque.

But do Javanka, as Ivanka and Jared are known, really still care about such fripperies as ballgowns and lunching at Gavroche?

As well as resuming her successful business career to bolster the family finances, Ivanka may well seek a position similar to that of Chelsea Clinton, who has carved out a role as an advocate in such impeccably irreproachable areas as global health reform.

But if this doesn’t sound full-blooded enough for the boundlessly energetic Ivanka, there’s always politics.

The Bush and Kennedy families both offer examples of the power of political dynasties, and the heady Trump mixture of populism and conservatism is unlikely to die away with this president: why shouldn’t his children take it forward? And how much more potent would Trumpism be with its rough brashness replaced by the polish of Javanka?

In a recent interview for The Telegraph, former White House insider Michael Wolff set forth his analysis suggesting Kushner, the son of a wealthy developer and former owner of The New York Observer, had been the only figure in the Trump administration to emerge unscathed. “He’s the true survivor,” Wolff said.

The role of First Lady may well appeal to Ivanka. But while attention has focused on her brother Don Jr in recent weeks as the sibling most likely to carry forward their father’s vision, might Ivanka herself not fancy a shot at the top job?

She clearly has ambition, if, perhaps, not yet the subtlety that might be required to segue from her father’s orbit towards a more diluted version of his appeal. The cringeworthy 2019 clip of a highly primped Ivanka awkwardly attempting to assert herself into a conversation at a G20 summit with then-Prime Minister Theresa May and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde shows she may have a way to go.

In recent days, Ivanka appears to have been attempting to finesse her image as a figure of global stature, issuing tweets about climate change and the soaring Dow.

The forthcoming move to New Jersey, if, indeed, that is where the family chose to relocate, would allow them the proximity to the big money Republican donors and most brilliant strategists based in New York and Washington, as well as the security they will need and proximity to the best East Coast schools for their three young children.

Perhaps they might ultimately end up emulating Bill and Hillary Clinton, the presidential candidate with whom her father conducted perhaps his most bitter feud.

When Bill became president in 1992, he claimed voters were getting “two for the price of one” and put his wife at the heart of his administration; 14 years later, she ran, unsuccessfully for the presidency herself.

Javanka will surely aspire to go one better.