Why is Donald Trump’s daughter Tiffany known as the ‘forgotten’ Trump? Mystery surrounds the one child we barely saw during his campaign
DONALD Trump’s youngest daughter remains a bit of a mystery.
While the President-elect’s other grown children have been front and centre throughout his campaign, Tiffany Trump has been relatively quiet.
Throughout her father’s campaign, she gave one notable speech at the GOP convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in which she sang his praises and drew on experiences from her childhood.
But apart from that — and the fact that she once released a pop song few people have heard of — the 23-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate remains kind of unknown.
For this reason, she’s often referred to as the “forgotten” Trump — the fourth child whose mind you never automatically jump to, overshadowed by her high-profile half-siblings Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric. Trump's youngest son is called Barron.
Where does Tiffany fit into the Trump family?
Tiffany is the sole offspring of Donald Trump’s relationship with American actress Marla Maples.
When Marla told him he was pregnant, he replied: “What are we going to do about this?”
Some commentators took this to mean that Trump was implying she should get an abortion, but the celebrity billionaire strongly denies that he meant this. Trump cut the umbilical cord himself.
Two months after Tiffany’s birth, Trump and Marla got married. Their marriage lasted six years, although three were consumed by divorce complications.
She moved to California with her actor mother Marla in 1999, which is around the time the divorce was finalised.
It’s often speculated Tiffany had a strained relationship with her father. In 2011, she said during a segment on Oprah Winfrey’s Where Are They Now that she was “very close” with her mother, who had raised her “like a single mum.”
But while she largely spent her life isolated from her siblings, Tiffany has managed to maintain a close relationship with Ivanka, Vanity Fair reports.
In Ivanka’s first book, The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life, she explained that Tiffany was always isolated from the family compared to the other children, in that she grew up on the other side of the country in California.
She said that, while she and her brothers, who lived in New York with Trump, didn’t treat the man “as an ATM”, they were lucky enough to have financial backing and as such benefited from his financial generosity from time to time.
For Tiffany, Ivanka says this was not the case.
On the west coast, Trump’s youngest daughter was surrounded by rich kids but didn’t have access to wealth or a personal credit card like the rest of them did, nor did she live with siblings she could play or fight with.
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“All she wanted, really, was a way to enjoy some of the privileges her friends got to enjoy, in the same way she would have enjoyed them if she’d lived under our father’s roof,” writes Ivanka.
When Tiffany went to university, Ivanka persuaded her father to give her some pocket money.
“I didn’t tell her, of course,” Ivanka wrote. “But I went to our father and suggested he think about surprising Tiffany with a credit card for Christmas, with a small monthly allowance on it. Sure enough, he did just that. Tiffany was thrilled and relieved. And so appreciative.”
Trump set her a strict budget of $500 a month and not a penny more, a friend of hers told Vanity Fair. When splitting restaurant bills, she would calculate the cost down to the cent.
But judging by her online presence, at least, life is now pretty sweet.
What's Tiffany up to now?
Today, Tiffany’s social media accounts tell a different story. A high-profile Instagram user with more than 514,000 followers, she regularly shares pictures portraying herself leading a glamorous lifestyle with a well-known circle of friends.
Among them are Kyra Kennedy (Robert F Kennedy Junior’s daughter), Princess Olympia of Greece, Barron Hilton of the famous hotel-owning family, model Stephanie Seymour’s son Peter Brant Junior and Gaïa Matisse, whose great-great grandfather is artist Henri Matisse.
Amid the occasional post about her father, Tiffany is modelling expensive dresses at glamorous events with her boyfriend, or posing in front of a beach at the Bahamas.
It seems one minute, Tiffany is lounging on a poolside at Bora Bora, and the next she’s all dolled up for New York Fashion Week.
But at the heart of it, her photos really aren’t that different from other 20-somethings — after all, doesn’t everyone post photos of beaches, skylines and nights out?
She’ll even throw out the occasional shot of her scoffing pizza while studying, or a shot of her legal textbook notes.
The New York Times has noted the Trump campaign’s seeming reluctance to expose Tiffany to the spotlight leading up to the election.
Times correspondent Alessandra Stanley said she was permitted to speak to Ivanka, Marla and “many friends”. But for whatever reason, Tiffany was off-limits.
Donald Trump rather clumsily praised Tiffany in a Fox And Friends interview given shortly after the election.
“I’m very proud of my children,” he said.
“I’m very proud, because Don and Eric and Ivanka and — you know, to a lesser extent because she just got out of school, out of college — but, uh, Tiffany, who has also been so terrific.”
The awkward comment did not go unnoticed, making headlines on Mashable, the Daily Mail and the New York Daily News.
It’s difficult to see Tiffany following her siblings into taking control of her father’s business endeavours. She’s the only adult child of Trump not to be named to the transition team, but it’s doubtful she even wanted it.
She was a non-presence in his campaign until the past few weeks, and never campaigned on behalf of her father or routinely put out his fires of controversy the same way Ivanka did.
Currently Tiffany is living in New York near Trump Tower, where is aspiring towards a career in law.
“Ivanka has such a brand and a personality and consistency in her Instagram,” her friend told Vanity Fair. But the 23-year-old “is jumping into this whole process with both feet. She hasn’t polished it yet.
“She’s trying to establish her own identity outside the family.”