President Donald Trump seriously considered naming his daughter Ivanka Trump as his running mate in 2016, according to a new book by former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates. Before becoming a key witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Gates served as Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, an experience that he documents in his forthcoming book, Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost. In it, Bloomberg reported, Gates recalls a discussion about Trump’s VP selection that took place in the summer of 2016, when the then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee put forth his idea. “During a VP discussion that included Jared [Kushner] and the other kids all assembled in one room, Trump said, ‘I think it should be Ivanka. What about Ivanka as my VP?’ There was silence,” Gates writes. “All heads turned toward her, and she just looked surprised. We all knew Trump well enough to keep our mouths shut and not laugh. He went on: ‘She’s bright, she’s smart, she’s beautiful, and the people would love her!”’
According to Gates, Trump saw his daughter—and now-White House adviser—as a vice presidential candidate who he could trust. She, like the other family members Trump repeatedly positioned in top campaign roles, offered a solution to his distrust of politicians and desire for unwavering loyalty. Trump continued to push for his daughter in subsequent discussions with advisers about the VP pick, Gates writes, indicating “just how serious he was about putting his politically inexperienced daughter just a heartbeat from the presidency.” Paul Manafort, Trump’s then-campaign chairman, twice tested how voters responded to Ivanka Trump by placing her name next to several potential VP candidates in internal campaign polls. “She didn’t poll tremendously high, but higher than we expected, and that only added to the seriousness of her consideration,” Gates writes.
Even as Manafort “subtly pushed once more for someone who could bring balance to the ticket, like [Mike] Pence,” according to Gates, Ivanka Trump was still being considered. As “Trump still seemed cool to Pence” in early July, he wrote, that “the Ivanka idea started to catch some momentum. People on the team argued that Ivanka brought a balance to her father. ‘She’s more moderate.’ ‘She could help with independents!’” It was Ivanka Trump herself who put an end to the idea, Gates wrote. “She went to her father and said, ‘No, Dad. It’s not a good idea.’ And he capitulated,” announcing on July 15 that Pence would be his running mate.
The Ivanka Trump-VP news comes amid a major investigation into the president’s tax returns published by the New York Times on Sunday, in which Trump reportedly wrote off payments to his daughter as a tax deduction for “consulting fees” as a way to avoid paying taxes. “Mr. Trump reduced his taxable income by treating a family member as a consultant, and then deducting the fee as a cost of doing business,” a revelation that Times reporters Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig, and Mike McIntire uncovered “by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.”
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