Speaking in a recent virtual appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Chelsea, the daughter of President Trump's 2016 rival Hillary Clinton, told host Andy Cohen that she has not spoken to first daughter Ivanka, who she used to be friends with, since the election four years ago.
"I have no interest in being friends with someone who is not only complicit, but actively taking part in this administration's everyday collision of cruelty and incompetence. So, that's the answer", Ms Clinton, an author and global health advocate, fumed.
She went on to explain how their one-time friendship evolved, explaining why Ivanka and she, who both helped their respective parents in their campaigns, ultimately parted ways.
"We were in touch at the beginning of the campaign, but it's just really hard when there's someone who's actively embracing their candidate, whether it's their father or not, who is trafficking in racism and sexism and anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and homophobia and transphobia and conspiracy theories and lies, and is so fundamentally corrupt", Chelsea persisted in her rant against the businesswoman-turned presidential aide.
Nevertheless, back in 2016, in an interview for Cosmopolitan, Ms Clinton's rhetoric was way different: at the time, she spoke candidly about her warm relationship with Ms Trump, stressing that "friendship is more important than politics", as "that's how my parents raised me".
She said emotionally: "I am grateful for her friendship", before asserting they never talked politics, because "that's not where our friendship began and it's certainly, thankfully, not where our friendship will end".
A year later, she took aim at Ivanka, when the first daughter took the US president's seat at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, with the move being universally deemed as a breach of protocol, and critics stressing Ms Trump was unelected and lacked foreign policy authority to represent POTUS at such high-profile events.
President Trump then defended his daughter in a Tweet claiming that "if Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!" Yet, Chelsea fired back saying "it would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me".
Ivanka for Vice President?
The other day, media reports emerged claiming POTUS weighed having first daughter Ivanka as his running mate in the 2016 presidential election - something the visibly enraged president has vehemently denied doing. The claims came from a soon-to-be-published book by the former deputy chairman of the 2016 Trump campaign, Rick Gates, charged in 2018 and later convicted of perjury and money laundering.
In the book titled "Wicked Game: An Insider's Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost", Gates reportedly cast a retrospective glance at conversations between Trump and his aides about a prospective vice president. "I think it should be Ivanka. What about Ivanka as my VP?" "She's bright, she's smart, she's beautiful, and the people would love her!", Gates cited Trump as allegedly saying at the time.
After Ivanka Trump reportedly opposed the move telling her father that "it wasn't a good idea", made him "capitulate" and pay attention to another candidate, Mike Pence was picked as his running mate, according to Gates.
