Ivanka Trump: Politics, Family, Real Estate, Fashion, Music, and Life

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Ivanka Trump, businesswoman, real estate developer,

00:00:06.000 | and former senior advisor to the President of the United States.

00:00:09.840 | I've gotten to know Ivanka well over the past two years. We've become good friends. Hitting it off

00:00:16.720 | right away over our mutual love of reading, especially philosophical writings from Marcus

00:00:22.240 | Aurelius, Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, Viktor Frankl, and so on. She is a truly kind, compassionate,

00:00:29.840 | and thoughtful human being. In the past, people have attacked her, in my view, to get indirectly

00:00:35.760 | at her dad, Donald Trump, as part of a dirty game of politics and clickbait journalism.

00:00:41.200 | These attacks obscured many projects and efforts, often bipartisan, that she helped get done,

00:00:48.800 | and they obscured the truth of who she is as a human being. Through all that, she never returned

00:00:56.480 | the attacks with anything but kindness, and always walked through the fire of it all with grace.

00:01:02.800 | For this, and much more, she is an inspiration, and I'm honored to be able to call her a friend.

00:01:10.800 | Oh, and for those living in the United States, happy upcoming 4th of July. It's both

00:01:19.920 | an anniversary of this country's declaration of independence, and an anniversary of my

00:01:25.200 | immigrating here to the U.S. I am forever grateful for this amazing country,

00:01:31.760 | for this amazing life, for all of you who have given a chance to a silly kid like me.

00:01:39.200 | From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I love you all.

00:01:45.040 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:01:52.880 | And now, dear friends, here's Ivanka Trump. You said that ever since you were young,

00:01:59.600 | you wanted to be a builder, that you loved the idea of designing beautiful city skylines,

00:02:04.880 | especially in New York City. I love the New York City skyline. So describe the origins

00:02:09.680 | of that love of building. You know, I think there's

00:02:13.680 | both an incredible confidence and a total insecurity that comes with youth. So I remember

00:02:21.600 | at 15, I would look out over the city skyline from my bedroom window in New York and

00:02:27.440 | imagine where I could contribute and add value in a way that, you know, I look back on and

00:02:36.160 | completely laugh at, you know, how confident I was. But I've known since some of my earliest

00:02:41.440 | memories, it's something I've wanted to do. And I think fundamentally, I love art. I love

00:02:47.120 | expressions of beauty in so many different forms. With architecture, there's the tangible.

00:02:55.280 | And I think that marriage of function and something that exists beyond yourself is very

00:03:02.640 | compelling. I also grew up in a family where my mother was in the real estate business working

00:03:09.600 | alongside my father. My father was in the business, and I saw the joy that it brought

00:03:13.760 | to them. So I think I had these natural positive associations. They used to send me as a little

00:03:18.560 | girl renderings of projects they were about to embark on with notes asking if I would

00:03:24.640 | hurry up and finish school so I could come join them. So I had these positive associations,

00:03:29.600 | but it came from something within myself. I think that as I got older and as I got involved

00:03:35.040 | in real estate, I realized that it was so multidisciplinary. You have, of course, the

00:03:41.280 | design, but you also have engineering, the brass tacks of construction. There's time

00:03:46.400 | management. There's project planning. Just the duration of time to complete one of these

00:03:52.000 | iconic structures, it's enormous. You can contribute a decade of your life to one project.

00:03:57.600 | So while you have to think big picture, it means you really have to care deeply about the details

00:04:03.760 | because you live with them. So it allowed me to flex a lot of areas of interest.

00:04:10.400 | I love that confidence of youth.

00:04:12.400 | It's funny because we're all so insecure in the most basic interactions, but yet our

00:04:18.800 | ambitions are so unbridled in a way that makes you blush as an adult. I think it's fun. It's

00:04:26.400 | fun to tap into that energy.

00:04:28.720 | Yeah, where everything is possible. I think some of the greatest builders I've ever met

00:04:33.680 | always have that little flame of everything is possible still burning. That is a silly

00:04:39.120 | notion from youth, but it's not so silly. Everybody tells you something is impossible,

00:04:43.840 | but if you continue believing that it's possible and have that naive notion that you could do it,

00:04:49.360 | even if it's exceptionally difficult, that naive notion turns into some of the greatest projects

00:04:53.680 | ever done.

00:04:54.240 | A hundred percent.

00:04:55.360 | Going out to space or building a new company where like everybody said, it's impossible,

00:05:00.320 | taking on a gigantic company and disrupting them and revolutionizing how stuff is done

00:05:06.720 | or doing huge building projects where, like you said, so many people are involved in making

00:05:13.040 | that happen.

00:05:13.840 | We get conditioned out of that feeling.

00:05:15.760 | We start to become insecure and we start to rely on the input or validation of others,

00:05:23.520 | and it takes us away from that sort of core drive and ambition. So it's fun to reflect

00:05:32.480 | on that and also to smile, right? Because whether you can execute or not, time will tell.

00:05:37.440 | But yeah, no, that was very much my childhood.

00:05:42.240 | Yeah, of course, it's important to also have the humility of once you

00:05:45.040 | get humbled and realize that it's actually a lot of work to build. I still am amazed just

00:05:51.680 | looking at big buildings, big bridges, that human beings are able to get together and

00:05:57.680 | build those things. That's one of my favorite things about architecture is just like,

00:06:01.440 | wow, it's a manifestation of the fact that humans can collaborate and do something like

00:06:09.280 | EPIC much bigger than themselves. And it's like a statue that represents that and it

00:06:14.080 | can be there for a long time.

00:06:15.840 | I think in some ways you look out at different city skylines and it's almost like a visual

00:06:23.760 | depiction of ambition realized, right? Like it's a testament to somebody's dream, not

00:06:30.080 | somebody, a whole ensemble of people's dreams and visions and triumphs and in some cases

00:06:39.120 | failures if the projects weren't properly executed. So you look at these skylines and

00:06:45.840 | it's a testament to that. I actually heard once architecture described as frozen music

00:06:51.440 | that really resonated with me.

00:06:54.000 | I love thinking about a city skyline as an ensemble of dreams realized.

00:06:58.640 | Yeah. I remember the first time I went to Dubai and I was watching them dredging out

00:07:06.480 | and creating these man-made islands. And I remember somebody once saying to me there,

00:07:11.760 | an architect actually who collaborated with us on our tower in Chicago, he said that the

00:07:18.800 | only thing that limited what an architect could do in that area was gravity and imagination.

00:07:24.880 | So it's, you know.

00:07:28.320 | Yeah, but gravity is a tricky one to work against. And that's where civil engineering

00:07:32.080 | is one of my favorite things. I used to build bridges in high school for physics classes.

00:07:36.720 | You have to build bridges and you compete on how much weight they can carry relative

00:07:40.480 | to their own weight. You study how good it is by finding its breaking point. And that

00:07:47.360 | was a deep appreciation for me on a miniature scale of, on a large scale, what people are

00:07:52.640 | able to do with civil engineering. Because gravity is a tricky one to fight against.

00:07:57.280 | It definitely is. And bridges, I mean, some of the iconic designs in our country

00:08:02.480 | are incredible bridges.

00:08:04.080 | So if we think of skylines as ensembles of dreams realized, you spent quite a bit of

00:08:10.400 | time in New York. What do you love about and what do you think about the New York City skyline?

00:08:16.880 | What's a good picture? We're looking here at a few. I mean, looking over the water.

00:08:22.400 | Well, I think the water is an unbelievable feature of the New York skyline. As you see

00:08:28.320 | the island on approach and oftentimes you'll see like in these images, you'll see these

00:08:33.520 | towers reflecting off of the water surface. So I think there's something very beautiful and

00:08:40.400 | unique about that. When I look at New York, I see this unbelievable sort of tapestry of

00:08:47.360 | different types of architecture. So you have the Gothic form as represented by buildings like the

00:08:53.840 | Woolworth Building or you'll have Art Deco as represented by buildings like 40 Wall Street or

00:09:00.640 | the Chrysler Building or Rockefeller Center. And then you'll have these unbelievable super

00:09:07.040 | modern examples or modernist examples like Lever House and Seagram's House. So you have all of

00:09:12.960 | these different styles. And I think to build in New York, you're really building the best of the

00:09:18.480 | best. So nobody's giving New York their sort of second-rate work. And especially when a lot of

00:09:25.600 | those buildings were built, there was this incredible competition happening between New

00:09:30.640 | York and Chicago for kind of dominance of the sky and for who could create the greatest skyline,

00:09:38.160 | this sort of race to the sky when skyscrapers were first being built starting in Chicago and

00:09:44.400 | then New York surpassing that in terms of height at least with the Empire State Building. So I love

00:09:50.880 | sort of contextualizing the skylines as well and thinking back to when different components

00:09:58.080 | that are so iconic were added and the context in which they came into being.

00:10:03.360 | I gotta ask you about this. There's a pretty cool page that I've been following on X,

00:10:09.280 | Architecture and Tradition, and they celebrate sort of traditional schools of architecture.

00:10:15.200 | And you mentioned Gothic, the tapestry. This is in Chicago, the Tribune Tower in Chicago.

00:10:20.080 | So what do you think about that, sort of the old and the new mixed together? Do you like Gothic?

00:10:24.720 | I think it's hard to look at something like the Tribune Tower and not be

00:10:27.840 | completely in awe. This is an unbelievable building. Look at those buttresses and you've

00:10:33.520 | got gargoyles hanging off of it. And this style was reminiscent of the cathedrals of Europe,

00:10:41.680 | which was very kind of in vogue in like the 1920s here in America. Actually,

00:10:47.760 | I mentioned the Woolworth Tower before. The Woolworth Tower was actually referred to as

00:10:52.960 | the Cathedral of Commerce, because it also was in that Gothic style.

00:10:59.280 | Amazing.

00:11:00.640 | So this was built maybe a decade before the Tribune Building.

00:11:03.840 | But the Tribune Building to me is almost not replicable. It personally really resonates

00:11:11.280 | with me because one of the first projects I ever worked on was building Trump Chicago,

00:11:16.000 | which was this beautiful, elegant, super modern, all glass skyscraper right across the way. So it

00:11:23.760 | was right across the river. So I would look out the windows as it was under construction or be

00:11:28.560 | standing quite literally on rebar of the building looking out at the Tribune and incredibly inspired.

00:11:35.520 | And now the reflective glass of the building reflects back not only the river, but also

00:11:43.440 | the Tribune Building and other buildings on Michigan Avenue.

00:11:46.080 | Do you like it when the glass, the reflective properties of the glass as part of the

00:11:50.000 | architecture?

00:11:51.040 | I think it depends. Like they have super reflective glass that sometimes doesn't

00:11:55.600 | work. It's distracting. And I think it's one component of sort of a composition that comes

00:12:03.520 | together. I think in this case, the glass on Trump Chicago is very beautiful. It was designed by

00:12:09.200 | Adrian Smith of Skidmore Owings in Maryland, a major architecture firm who actually did the

00:12:16.000 | Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is I think like an awe-inspiring example of modern architecture.

00:12:23.680 | But glass is tricky. You have to get the shade right. You know, some glass has a lot of iron

00:12:29.600 | in it and gets super green. And that's a choice. And sometimes you have more blue properties,

00:12:36.400 | blue-silver, like you see here. But it's part of the character.

00:12:40.560 | How do you know what it's actually going to look like when it's done?

00:12:43.680 | Like, is it possible to imagine that? Because it feels like there's so many variables.

00:12:47.520 | I think so. I think if you have a vivid imagination and if you sit with it, and then if you also go

00:12:54.960 | beyond the rendering, right? You have to live with the materials. So you don't build a 92-story

00:13:02.000 | building, glass curtain wall, and not deeply examine the actual curtain wall before purchasing

00:13:10.400 | it. So you have to spend a lot of time with the actual materials, not just the beautiful sort of

00:13:16.080 | artistic renderings, which can be incredibly misleading. The goal is actually that the end

00:13:23.680 | result is much, much more compelling than what the architect or artist rendered. But oftentimes,

00:13:32.240 | that's very much not the case. You know, sometimes also you mention context. Sometimes I'll see

00:13:37.440 | renderings of buildings. I'm like, "Wait, what about the building right to the left of it that's

00:13:41.440 | blocking 80% of its views?" You know, architects, they'll remove things that are inconvenient.

00:13:49.280 | So you have to be rooted in reality.

00:13:52.320 | In reality, exactly.

00:13:54.240 | And I love the notion of living with the materials in contrast to living in the imagined world of

00:14:00.560 | the drawings. So both are probably important because you have to dream the thing into existence,

00:14:07.600 | but you also have to be rooted in what the thing is actually going to look like in the context of

00:14:11.600 | everything else.

00:14:12.080 | A hundred percent.

00:14:12.960 | One of the underlying principles of the page I just mentioned, and I hear folks mention this a

00:14:17.760 | lot, is that modern architecture is kind of boring, that it lacks soul and beauty. And you just spoke

00:14:24.000 | with admiration for both modern and for Gothic, for older architectures. So do you think there's

00:14:30.560 | truth that modern architecture is boring?

00:14:33.360 | I'm living in Miami currently, so I see a lot of super uninspired glass boxes on the waterfront.

00:14:43.360 | But I think exceptional things shouldn't be the norm. They're typically rare. And I think in

00:14:49.840 | modern architecture, you find an abundance of amazing examples of super compelling and

00:14:57.440 | innovative building designs. I mean, I mentioned the Burj Khalifa. It is awe-inspiring. This is an

00:15:03.200 | unbelievably striking example of modern architecture. You look at some older examples,

00:15:10.080 | the Sydney Opera House. So I think there's unbelievable. There you go.

00:15:14.640 | I mean, it's like a needle in the sky.

00:15:17.440 | Yeah, reaching out to the stars.

00:15:20.640 | It's huge. And in the context of a city where there's a lot of height. So it's unbelievable.

00:15:28.640 | But I think one of the things that's probably exciting me the most about architecture right

00:15:34.320 | now is the innovation that's happening within it. You know, there's example of robotic fabrication,

00:15:40.320 | there's 3D printing. Your friend and who you introduced me to not too long ago,

00:15:46.720 | Neri Oxman, what she's doing at the intersection of biology and technology, and thinking about

00:15:53.200 | how to create more sustainable development practices, quite literally trying to create

00:16:00.240 | materials that will biodegrade back into the earth. I think there's something really cool

00:16:05.200 | happening now with the rediscovery of ancient building techniques. So you have self-healing

00:16:10.000 | concrete that was used by the Romans, an art and a practice of using volcanic ash and lime

00:16:18.240 | that's now being rediscovered and is more critical than ever as we think about how much of our

00:16:24.080 | infrastructure relies on concrete and how much of that is failing on the most basic levels.

00:16:29.840 | So I think actually, it's a really, really exciting time for innovation in architecture.

00:16:36.400 | And I think there are some incredible examples of modern design that are really exciting.

00:16:44.240 | But generally, I think Roosevelt said that comparison is the thief of joy.

00:16:50.240 | So it's hard. You know, you look at the Tribune Building, you look at some of these iconic

00:16:54.400 | structures. One of the buildings I'm most proud to have worked on was the historical post office

00:17:00.080 | building in Washington, D.C. You look at a building like that, and it feels like it has no equal.

00:17:06.480 | Also, there's a psychological element where people tend to want to complain about the new

00:17:11.760 | and celebrate the old.

00:17:13.520 | Always. It's like the history of time.

00:17:16.880 | People are always skeptical and concerned about change. And it's true that there's a lot of stuff

00:17:23.760 | that's new, that's not good, that's not going to last. It's not going to stand the test of time.

00:17:27.680 | But some things will. And just like in modern art and modern music, there's going to be

00:17:34.080 | artists that stand the test of time. And we'll later look back and celebrate them.

00:17:38.960 | Those are the good times.

00:17:40.000 | When you just step back, what do you love about architecture?

00:17:43.920 | Is it the beauty? Is it the function?

00:17:47.920 | I'm most emotionally drawn, obviously, to the beauty. But I think as somebody who's built

00:17:56.320 | things, I really believe that the form has to follow the function. There's nothing uglier

00:18:01.280 | than a space that is ill-conceived. Otherwise, it's decoration. And I think that after that

00:18:13.920 | initial reaction to seeing something that's aesthetically really pleasing to me when I look

00:18:20.480 | at a building or a project, I love sort of thinking about how it's being used.

00:18:28.240 | So having been able to build so many things in my career and worked on so many incredible

00:18:36.960 | projects, I mean, it's really, really rewarding after the fact to have somebody come up to you

00:18:41.920 | and tell you that they got engaged in the lobby of your building or they got married

00:18:48.800 | in the ballroom and share with you some of those experiences. So to me, that's

00:18:54.160 | equally as beautiful, the use cases for these unbelievable projects.

00:19:00.640 | But I think it's all of it. I love that you've got the construction and you've got the

00:19:11.600 | design and you've got then the interior design and you've got the financing elements,

00:19:16.400 | the marketing elements, and it's all wrapped up in this one effort. So to me,

00:19:22.480 | it's exciting to sort of flex in all those different ways.

00:19:25.520 | Yeah. Like you said, it's dreams realized, hard work realized. I mean, probably on the bridge

00:19:33.040 | side is why I love the function in terms of function being primary. You just think of like

00:19:38.400 | the millions of bridges. Oh my gosh, look at that. Go down. You had...

00:19:44.400 | Look at that. Yeah, this is devil's bridge in Germany.

00:19:50.560 | Yeah. I wouldn't say it's like the most practical design, but look how beautiful that is.

00:19:55.760 | Yeah. So this is probably, well, we don't know. We need to interview some people whether the

00:19:59.680 | function holds up, but in terms of beauty and then like what we're talking about,

00:20:03.440 | using the water for the reflection and the shape that creates. I mean,

00:20:07.120 | there's an elegance to the shape of a bridge.

00:20:09.680 | See, it's interesting that they call it devil's bridge because to me, this is

00:20:13.440 | very ethereal. I think about the ring, the circle, life.

00:20:18.720 | There's nothing about this that makes me feel... Maybe they're just being ironic in the name.

00:20:24.720 | Unless that function's really flawed.

00:20:26.560 | Yeah, exactly. Maybe...

00:20:27.840 | Nobody's ever successfully crossed.

00:20:30.080 | Who crossed the bridge, yeah. But I mean, to me, there's just iconic... I love looking at bridges

00:20:34.960 | because of the function. It's the Brooklyn Bridge or the Golden Gate Bridge. I mean,

00:20:38.240 | those are probably my favorites in the United States. Just in a city to be able to look out

00:20:43.920 | and see the skyline combined with the suspension bridge and thinking of all the millions of cars

00:20:51.040 | that pass, like the busyness, like us humans getting together and going to work, building

00:20:57.120 | cool stuff. And just the bridge kind of represents the turmoil and the busyness of a city as it

00:21:04.000 | creates. It's cool.

00:21:05.360 | And the connectivity as well.

00:21:07.120 | Yeah. The network of roads all come together. So there, the bridge is the ultimate combination

00:21:12.800 | of function and beauty.

00:21:15.600 | Yeah. I remember when I was first learning about bridges, studying the cable stay

00:21:20.320 | versus the suspension bridge. And I mean, you actually built many replicas, so I'm sure you'll

00:21:27.200 | have a point of view on this, but they really are so beautiful. And you mentioned the Brooklyn

00:21:33.520 | Bridge, but growing up in New York, that was as much a part of the architectural story

00:21:39.120 | and tapestry of that skyline as any building that's seen in it.

00:21:44.800 | What in general is your philosophy, philosophy of design and building in architecture?

00:21:51.280 | Well, some of the most recent projects I worked on prior to government service were the old

00:21:57.840 | post office building and almost simultaneously Trump Doral in Miami. So these were both two

00:22:04.560 | just massive undertakings, both redevelopments, which in a lot of cases, having worked on

00:22:11.120 | ground-up construction, redevelopment projects are in a lot of ways much more complicated

00:22:17.280 | because you have existing attributes, but also a lot of limitations you have to work

00:22:23.840 | within, especially when you're repurposing a use. So this, the old post office building

00:22:29.520 | on Pennsylvania Avenue was- So beautiful.

00:22:32.000 | It's unbelievable. So this was a Romanesque revival building built in the 1890s on America's

00:22:40.320 | Main Street to symbolize American grandeur. And at the time, there were post office being built

00:22:48.320 | in the style across the country, but this being really the defining one. Still to this day,

00:22:53.760 | the tallest habitable structure in Washington, the tallest structure being the monument,

00:22:59.040 | the nation's only vertical park, which is that clock tower. But you've got these thick granite

00:23:05.040 | walls, those carved granite turrets, just an unbelievable building. You've got this massive

00:23:13.680 | atrium that runs through the whole center of it that is topped with glass. So having the opportunity

00:23:20.800 | to spearhead a project like that was so exciting. And actually, it was my first renovation project.

00:23:27.440 | So I came to it with a tremendous amount of energy, vigor, and humility about how to do it

00:23:34.960 | properly, ensuring I had all the right people. We had countless federal and local government

00:23:42.720 | agencies that would oversee every single decision we made. But in advance of even having the

00:23:47.760 | opportunity to do it, there was a close to two-year request for proposal, like a process

00:23:54.880 | that was put out by the General Services Administration. So it was this really arduous

00:24:00.560 | government procurement process that we were competing against so many different people

00:24:07.040 | for the opportunity, which a lot of people said it was a gigantic waste of time. But I looked at

00:24:13.200 | that, and I think so did a lot of the other bidders, and say it's worth trying to put the

00:24:17.600 | best vision forward. So you fell in love with this project? I fell in love, yeah. So is there some

00:24:22.640 | interesting details about what it takes to do renovation? Is there about some of the challenges

00:24:28.800 | or opportunities? Because you want to maintain the beauty of the old and now upgrade the

00:24:37.760 | functionality, I guess, and maybe modernize some aspects of it without destroying what made the

00:24:46.080 | building magical in the first place. So I think the greatest asset was already there,

00:24:52.880 | the exterior of the building, which we meticulously restored. And any addition to

00:24:58.480 | it had to be done sort of very gently in terms of any signage additions. And

00:25:03.680 | the interior spaces were completely dilapidated. It had been in a post office. Then it was used for

00:25:13.600 | a really rundown food court and government office spaces. It was actually losing $6 million a year

00:25:22.720 | when we got the concession to build it and when we won and became one of, I think, a great example

00:25:30.960 | of public-private partnerships working together. But I think the biggest challenge in having such

00:25:36.960 | a radical use conversion is just how you lay it out. So the amount of time I would get on that

00:25:45.200 | Acela twice a week, three times a week to spend day trips down in Washington, and we would walk

00:25:51.600 | every single inch of the building, laying out the floor plans, debating over the configuration of a

00:25:57.520 | room. There were almost 300 rooms, and there were almost 300 layouts. So nothing could be repeated.

00:26:04.960 | Whereas when you're building from scratch, you have a box, and you decide where you want to add

00:26:13.280 | potential elements, and you kind of can stack the floor plan all the way up. But when you're

00:26:21.040 | working within a building like this, every single room was different. You see the setback. So the

00:26:25.440 | setback then required you to move the plumbing. So there was no--it was really a labor of love.

00:26:33.280 | And to do something like this--and that's why I think renovation--we had it with Doral as well.

00:26:37.760 | It was 700 rooms over 650 acres of property. And so every single unit was very different

00:26:48.800 | and complicated. Not as complicated in some ways. The scale of it was so massive, but not as

00:26:55.280 | complicated as the old post office. But it required a level of precision. And I think in real estate,

00:27:01.120 | you have a lot of people who design on plan, and a lot of people who are in the business of sort of

00:27:08.560 | acquiring and flipping. So it's more financial engineering than it is

00:27:14.960 | building. And they don't spend the time sort of sweating these details that make something

00:27:21.120 | great and make something functional. And you feel it in the end result. But I mean, blood, sweat,

00:27:28.880 | tears, years of my life for those projects. And it was worth it. I enjoyed almost every minute of it.

00:27:36.800 | So to you, it's not about the flipping. To you, it's about the art and the function

00:27:42.480 | of the thing that you're creating. A hundred percent.

00:27:45.360 | What's design on plan? I'm learning new things today.

00:27:48.480 | When proposals are put forth by an architect and really just the plan is accepted without--and

00:27:56.160 | in the case of a renovation, like if you're not walking those rooms, the number of times

00:28:00.560 | a beautifully laid out room was on a blueprint. And then I'd go to Washington and I'd walk that

00:28:07.840 | floor and I'd realize that there was a column that ran right up through the middle of the space where

00:28:12.640 | the bed was supposed to be or the toilet was supposed to be or the shower. So there's a lot

00:28:18.560 | of things that are missed when you do something conceptually without sort of rooting it in

00:28:26.960 | the actual structure. And that's why I think even with ground-up construction as well,

00:28:32.320 | people who aren't constantly on their job sites, constantly walking the projects,

00:28:37.200 | there's just a lot that's missed.

00:28:40.800 | I mean, there's a wisdom to the idea that we talked about before, live with the materials and

00:28:47.920 | walking the construction site, walk in the rooms. I mean, that's what you hear from

00:28:52.320 | people like Steve Jobs, like Elon. That's why you live on the factory floor. That's why you

00:28:57.280 | constantly obsess about the details, the actual, not of the plans, but the physical reality of the

00:29:04.560 | product. I mean, the insanity of Steve Jobs and Johnny I working together on making it perfect,

00:29:11.520 | making the iPhone, the early designs, prototypes, making that perfect, what it actually feels like

00:29:17.120 | in the hand. You have to be there as close to the metal as possible to truly understand.

00:29:24.720 | And you have to love it in order to do that.

00:29:26.720 | Right. It shouldn't be about how much it's going to sell for, all that kind of stuff.

00:29:31.600 | You have to love the art.

00:29:32.800 | Because for the most part, you can probably get 90, maybe even 95% of the end result,

00:29:37.440 | unless something has terribly gone awry by not caring with that level of

00:29:43.360 | almost like maniacal precision. But you'll notice that 10% for the rest of your life.

00:29:50.800 | I think that extra effort, that passion, I think that's what separates good from great.

00:30:01.760 | If we go back to that young Ivanka, the confidence of youth, and if we could talk about your mom,

00:30:09.600 | she had a big influence on you. You told me she was an adventurer.

00:30:14.480 | Yeah.

00:30:15.540 | Olympic skier and a businesswoman. What did you learn about life from your mother?

00:30:22.320 | So much. She passed away two years ago now, and she was a remarkable, remarkable woman.

00:30:32.240 | She was a trailblazer in so many different ways. As an athlete and growing up in communist

00:30:38.480 | Czechoslovakia, as a fashion mogul, as a real estate executive and builder,

00:30:44.880 | just this all-around trailblazing businesswoman.

00:30:50.400 | I also learned from her, aside from that element, how to really enjoy life. I look back and some of

00:30:59.360 | my happiest memories of her are in the ocean, just lying on her back, looking up at the sun and just

00:31:08.400 | so in the moment, or dancing. She loved to dance. She really taught me a lot about living life to

00:31:17.520 | its fullest, and she had so much courage, so much conviction, so much energy, and a complete comfort

00:31:26.720 | with who she was.

00:31:27.760 | What do you think about that? I mean, Olympic athlete, the trade-off between

00:31:31.440 | ambition and just wanting to do big things and pursuing that and giving your all to that,

00:31:38.880 | and being able to relax and just throw your arms back and enjoy every moment of life.

00:31:45.520 | But that trade-off, what do you think about that trade-off?

00:31:49.920 | I think because she was this unbelievable, formidable athlete, and because of the discipline

00:31:58.080 | she had as a child, I think it made her value those moments more as an adult. I think she was

00:32:05.680 | a great balance of the two that we all hope to find, and she was able to find both incredibly

00:32:11.120 | serious and formidable. I remember as a little girl, I used to literally traipse behind her

00:32:17.120 | at the Plaza Hotel, which she oversaw, and actually kind of was her old post office. It

00:32:25.600 | was this unbelievable historic hotel in New York City, and I'd follow her around at construction

00:32:31.920 | meetings and on job sites, and there she is dancing. See? That's funny that that's the

00:32:40.000 | picture you pull up. I'm sorry. That's great. The two of you just look great in that picture.

00:32:43.680 | That's great. She had such a joy to her, and she was so unabashed in her perspective

00:32:52.800 | and her opinions. I mean, she made my father look reserved, so whatever she was feeling,

00:33:00.560 | she was just very expressive and a lot of fun to be around.

00:33:05.120 | So she, as you mentioned, grew up during the Prague Spring in 1968, and that had a big impact

00:33:13.680 | on human history. I mean, my family came from the Soviet Union, and then the 20th century,

00:33:18.880 | the story of the 20th century is a lot of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union tried the ideas of

00:33:29.120 | communism, and it turned out that a lot of those ideas resulted into a lot of suffering.

00:33:36.320 | So why do you think the communist ideology failed?

00:33:39.360 | I think fundamentally, as people, we desire freedom. We want agency. And my mom was like

00:33:47.360 | a lot of other people who grew up in similar situations where she didn't like to talk about

00:33:52.960 | it that often. So one of my real regrets is that I didn't push her harder. But I think back to the

00:34:00.720 | conversations we did have, and I try to imagine what it's like. She was at Charles University in

00:34:07.520 | Prague, which was really like a focal point of the reforms that were ushered in during the Prague

00:34:16.800 | Spring and the liberalization agenda that was happening. The dance halls were opening, the

00:34:21.520 | student activists, and she was attending university there right at that same time. So the contrast to

00:34:29.440 | this feeling of freedom and progress and liberalization in the spring, and then it's so

00:34:39.040 | quickly being crushed in the fall of that same year when the Warsaw Pact countries and the Soviet

00:34:48.320 | Union rolled in to put down and ultimately roll back all those reforms. So for her to have lived

00:34:56.080 | through that, you know, she didn't come to North America until she was 23 or 24. So that was her

00:35:04.400 | life. As a young girl, she was on the junior national ski team for Czechoslovakia. My

00:35:12.960 | grandfather used to train her. They used to put the skis on her back and walk up the mountain

00:35:18.400 | in Czechoslovakia because there were no ski lifts. She actually made me do that when I was a child,

00:35:24.000 | just to let me know what her experience had been. If I complained that it was cold out,

00:35:31.360 | she's like, "Well, you didn't have to walk up the mountain. You'd be plenty warm if you

00:35:34.800 | had carried the skis up on your back up the last run." I feel like they made people tougher back

00:35:41.520 | then. Like my grandma, and you mentioned it's funny, they go through some of the darkest things

00:35:46.880 | that a human being can go through and they don't talk about it. And they have a general positive

00:35:51.840 | outlook on life that's deeply rooted in the knowledge of what life could be. Like how bad

00:36:00.320 | it could get. My grandma survived Holodomor in Ukraine, which was a mass starvation brought on

00:36:09.440 | by the collectivist policies of the Stalin regime. And then she survived the Nazi occupation of

00:36:14.560 | Ukraine, never talked about it, probably went through extremely dark, extremely difficult times,

00:36:22.400 | and then just always had a positive outlook on life. And also made me do very difficult physical

00:36:29.520 | activity, like you mentioned, just to humble you. Like kids these days are soft kind of energy,

00:36:34.960 | which I'm deeply, deeply grateful for. On all fronts, including just having hardship,

00:36:40.880 | including just physical hardship flung at me. I think that's really important.

00:36:46.160 | You wonder how much of who they were was a reaction to their experience. Would she have

00:36:52.720 | naturally had that sort of forward-looking, grateful, optimistic orientation? Or was it

00:36:59.760 | a reaction to her childhood? I think about that. I look at this picture of my mom

00:37:04.880 | and she was unabashedly herself. She loved flamboyance and glamour. And in some ways,

00:37:12.720 | I think it probably was a direct reaction to this very austere, controlled childhood. This

00:37:19.600 | was one expression of it. I think how she dressed and how she presented. I think her

00:37:25.360 | entrepreneurial spirit and love of capitalism and all things American was another manifestation of

00:37:33.280 | it and one that I grew up with. I remember the story she used to tell me about when she was

00:37:40.640 | 14 and she was going to neighboring countries. And as an athlete, you were given additional

00:37:49.520 | freedoms that you wouldn't otherwise be afforded in these societies under communist rules. So,

00:37:58.560 | she was able to travel where most of her friends never would be able to leave Czechoslovakia.

00:38:03.120 | And she would come back from all of these trips and the first place where she'd do ski races in

00:38:08.880 | Austria and elsewhere, the first thing she had to do was check in at the local police.

00:38:13.120 | And she'd sit down and she had enough wisdom at 14 to know that she couldn't appear to be lying

00:38:22.400 | by not being impressed by what she saw and the fact that you could get an orange in the winter,

00:38:28.240 | but she couldn't be too excited by it that she'd become a flight risk. So, give enough

00:38:33.040 | details that you're believable, but not so many that you're not trusted. And imagine that as a

00:38:41.600 | 14-year-old, that experience and having to navigate the world that way. And she told me

00:38:50.080 | that eventually all those local police officers, they came to love her because one of the things

00:38:55.840 | she'd do is smuggle that stuff back from these countries and give it to them to give their wives

00:39:00.480 | perfume and stockings. So, she figured out the system pretty quickly. But it's a very different

00:39:09.040 | experience from what I was navigating and the pressures and challenges me as a 14-year-old

00:39:14.800 | was dealing with. So, I have so much respect and admiration for her. Yeah, hardship clarifies what's

00:39:23.520 | important in life. You and I have talked about Man's Search for Meaning, that book, having kind

00:39:29.120 | of an ultimate hardship clarifies that finding joy in life is not about the environment, it's about

00:39:36.800 | your outlook on that environment. And there's beauty to be found in any situation. And also in

00:39:43.840 | that particular situation, when everything is taken from you, the thing you start to think about is

00:39:50.080 | the people you love. So, in the case of Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl,

00:39:53.680 | thinking about his wife and how much he loves her. And that love was the flame, the warmth that kept

00:40:01.360 | him excited. The fun thing to think about when everything else is gone. So, we sometimes forget

00:40:05.760 | that with the busyness of life, you get all this fun stuff we're talking about, like building and

00:40:10.160 | being a creative force in the world. At the end of the day, what matters is just like the other

00:40:14.960 | humans in your life, the people you love. It's the simple stuff. You know, Viktor Frankl is somebody,

00:40:20.640 | I mean, his, that book and just his philosophy in general is so inspiring to me. But I think so many

00:40:28.560 | people, they say they want happiness, but they want conditional happiness. You know, when this

00:40:33.760 | and this, a thing happens, or under these circumstances, then I'll be happy. And I think

00:40:38.960 | what he showed is that we can sort of cultivate these virtues within ourselves, regardless of the

00:40:47.280 | situation we find ourselves in. And in some ways, I think the meaning of life is the search for

00:40:54.160 | meaning in life. It's the relationships we have and we form. It's the experience we have. It's

00:41:00.080 | how we deal with the suffering that life inevitably presents to us. And Viktor Frankl does an amazing

00:41:08.080 | job highlighting that under the most horrific circumstances. And I think it's just super

00:41:15.920 | inspiring to me. He also shows that you can get so much from just like small joys, like getting

00:41:22.800 | a little more soup today than you did yesterday. I mean, it's like, it's the little stuff. If you

00:41:27.840 | allow yourself to love the little stuff of life, it's all around you. It's all there. So you don't

00:41:35.200 | need to like have these ambitious goals and the comparison being a thief of joy, that kind of

00:41:40.080 | stuff. Just like it's all around us, the ability to eat. Like when I was in the jungle and I got

00:41:46.640 | severely dehydrated, because there's no water, you run out of water real quick. And I mean,

00:41:53.520 | the joy I felt when I got to drink, like I didn't care about anything else. Speaking of things that

00:42:00.480 | matter in life, I would start to fantasize about water and that was bringing me joy.

00:42:05.440 | - You can tap into this feeling at any time. - Yeah, exactly. I was just tapping in just

00:42:12.160 | to stay positive. - Just go into your bathroom,

00:42:13.440 | turn on the sink, watch the water. - Oh, for sure. For sure. I mean,

00:42:17.360 | people really, it's good to have stuff taken away for a time. That's why struggle is good,

00:42:24.240 | to make you appreciate, to have a deep gratitude for when you have it. And water and food is a big

00:42:29.600 | one, but water is the biggest one. I wouldn't recommend it necessarily to get severely

00:42:34.880 | dehydrated to appreciate water, but maybe every time you take a sip of water, you can have that

00:42:39.120 | kind of gratitude. - There's a prayer in Judaism

00:42:42.560 | you're supposed to say every morning, which is basically thanking God for your body working.

00:42:49.520 | It's something so basic, but it's when it doesn't that we're grateful. So just reminding ourselves

00:42:58.640 | every day the basic things of a functional body, of our health, of access to water, which

00:43:06.560 | so many millions of people around the world do not have reliably,

00:43:11.840 | is very clarifying and super important. - Yeah, health is a gift. Water is a gift.

00:43:19.600 | Is there a memory with your mom that had a defining effect on your life?

00:43:25.600 | - I have these vignettes in my mind, seeing her in action in different capacities

00:43:33.200 | a lot of times in the context of things that I would later go on to do myself. So I would go

00:43:43.760 | every day, almost every day after school, and I'd go to the Plaza Hotel and I'd follow her around as

00:43:49.360 | she'd walk the hallways and just observe her. And she was so impossibly glamorous.

00:43:54.800 | She was doing everything in four and a half inch heels with this bouffant. And so it's almost like

00:44:03.600 | an inaccessible visual. But I think for me, when I saw her experience, the most joy tended to be

00:44:11.120 | by the sea, almost always, not a pool. And I think I get this from her, "Pools, eh, they're fine."

00:44:19.840 | I love the ocean. I love salt water. I love the way it makes me feel. And I think I got that from

00:44:26.720 | her. So we would just swim together all the time. And it's a lot of what I love about Miami,

00:44:35.520 | actually, being so close to the ocean. I find it to be super cathartic. But a lot of my memories

00:44:42.400 | of my mom, seeing her really just in her bliss, is floating around in a body of salt water.

00:44:52.080 | Is there also some aspect to her being an example of somebody that could be

00:44:56.160 | sort of beautiful and feminine, but at the same time powerful, a successful businesswoman,

00:45:02.640 | that showed that it's possible to do that? Yeah, I think she really was a trailblazer.

00:45:09.040 | It's not uncommon in real estate for there to be multiple generations of people. And so on

00:45:15.360 | job sites, it was not unusual for me to run into somebody whose grandfather had worked with my

00:45:23.280 | grandfather in Brooklyn or Queens, or whose father had worked with my mother. And they'd

00:45:29.760 | always tell me these stories about her rolling in, and they'd hear the heels first. And a lot

00:45:36.000 | of times the story would be like, "Oh, gosh, really? It's two days after Christmas. We thought

00:45:41.840 | we'd get a reprieve." But she was very exacting. So I have this visual in my mind of her walking

00:45:51.120 | on rebar on the balls of her feet in these four-inch heels. I'm assuming she actually

00:45:56.080 | carried flats with her, but I don't know. That's not the visual I have. But I loved the fact that

00:46:06.000 | she so embodied femininity and glamour and was so comfortable being tough and ambitious and

00:46:17.200 | determined and this unbelievable businesswoman and entrepreneur at a time when she was very much

00:46:25.200 | alone. Even for me in the development world and so many of the different businesses that I've

00:46:31.040 | been in, there really aren't women outside of sales and of marketing. You don't see as many

00:46:36.960 | women in the development space, in the construction space, even in the architecture and design space,

00:46:44.880 | maybe outside of interior design. And she was decades ahead of me. So I love hearing these

00:46:53.600 | stories. I love hearing somebody who's my peer tell me about their grandfather and their father

00:47:00.560 | and their experience with one of my parents. It's amazing.

00:47:04.000 | And she did it all in four-inch heels.

00:47:06.400 | And she did it. She used to say, "There's nothing that I can't do better in heels."

00:47:11.280 | That's a good one.

00:47:13.440 | That would be her exact thing. And when I'd complain about wearing something, it was like

00:47:16.880 | the early '90s. Everything was also uncomfortable, these fabrics and materials. And I would go back

00:47:26.320 | and forth between being super girly and a total tomboy. But she'd dress me up in these things,

00:47:34.080 | and I'd be complaining about it. And she'd say, "Ivanka, pain for beauty," which I happen to

00:47:38.720 | totally disagree with because I think there's nothing worse than being uncomfortable.

00:47:43.200 | So I haven't accepted or internalized all of this wisdom, so to speak, but it was just funny.

00:47:53.520 | She had a very specific point of view.

00:47:54.960 | And full of good lines, "Pain for beauty."

00:47:58.240 | It's funny because, I mean, just even in fashion, if something's uncomfortable,

00:48:04.000 | to me, there's nothing that looks worse than when you see somebody tottering around

00:48:08.160 | and their heels hurt them, so they're kind of walking oddly. And they're not embodying

00:48:15.040 | their confidence in that regard. So I'm kind of the opposite. I start with, "Well,

00:48:18.800 | I want to be comfortable," and that helps me be confident and in command.

00:48:24.400 | A foundation for fashion for you is comfort, and on top of that, you build

00:48:28.160 | things that are beautiful.

00:48:29.280 | It's not comfort like dowdy. There's that level of comfort, but-

00:48:32.480 | Functional comfort.

00:48:34.240 | But I think you have to, for me, I want to feel confident. And you don't feel confident when

00:48:39.760 | you're pulling at a garment or hobbling on heels that don't fit you properly. And she was never

00:48:46.960 | doing those things either. So I don't know how she was wearing stuff like that that's like a 40-pound

00:48:50.720 | feet of dress. And I know this because I have it, and I wore it recently. And I mean, I got

00:48:57.760 | a workout walking to the elevator. Like, this is a heavy dress. And you know what? It was worth it.

00:49:03.200 | It was great.

00:49:03.760 | Yeah. She's making it look easy, though.

00:49:05.600 | But she makes it look very, very easy, so.

00:49:08.400 | Do you miss her?

00:49:12.160 | So much. It's unbelievable how dislocating the loss of a parent is. And

00:49:19.120 | her mother lives with me still, my grandmother, who helped raise us. So that's very special.

00:49:30.400 | And I can ask her some of the questions that I would have,

00:49:34.880 | sorry, I wanted to ask my own mom, but it's hard.

00:49:40.560 | It was beautiful to see. I've gotten a chance to spend time with your family, to see so many

00:49:46.400 | generations together at the table. There's so much history there.

00:49:51.280 | No, she's 97. And until she was around 94, she lived completely on her own. No help,

00:50:00.080 | no anything, no support. And now she requires really sort of 24-hour care. And

00:50:08.720 | I feel super grateful that I'm able to give her that, because that's what she did for me.

00:50:14.320 | It's amazing for me to have my children be able to grow up and know her stories, know her recipes,

00:50:21.200 | Czech dumplings and goulash and kicilice and all the other things she used to make me in

00:50:30.000 | my childhood. But she really, she was a major force in my life. My grandmother, she,

00:50:36.640 | my mom was working. So my grandmother was the person who was always home every day

00:50:41.520 | when I came back from school. And I remember I used to shower, and it would almost be comical.

00:50:48.240 | I feel like in my memory, and there is no washing machine I've seen on the planet that can actually

00:50:54.880 | do this, but in my memory, I'd go to shower, and I'd drop something on the bed, and I'd come back

00:51:01.520 | into the room after my shower, and it was folded, pressed. It was all my grandmother. She's running

00:51:06.720 | after me, taking care of me. And so it's nice to be able to do that for her. Yeah.

00:51:14.240 | I got from her reading. My grandmother, she would, she devoured books, devoured books.

00:51:20.560 | She loved the more sensational ones. So some of these romance novels, I would pick them up,

00:51:28.640 | the covers. But she could tell you, she could look at any royal lineage across Europe and tell you

00:51:35.840 | all the mistresses, all the drama. She loved it. But her face was always buried in a book.

00:51:43.680 | My grandfather, Deddo, he was the athlete. He swam professionally on the national team for

00:51:52.480 | Czechoslovakia, and he helped train my mom, as I was saying before, in skiing. So he was a great

00:51:57.600 | athlete. And she was at home, and she would read and cook. And so that's something I remember a

00:52:05.120 | lot from my childhood, and she would always say, like, "I got reading from her."

00:52:08.480 | I mean, speaking of drama, I had my English teacher in high school

00:52:14.320 | recommend a book for me by D.H. Lawrence. It's supposed to be a classic. She's like,

00:52:18.960 | "This is a classic you should read. It's called Lady Shadowy Day's Lover."

00:52:23.040 | And so I've read a lot of classics, but that one is straight up like a romance novel about a wife

00:52:29.760 | who, like, is cheating with a gardener. And I remember reading this, like, "What?" Like,

00:52:34.320 | in retrospect, I understand why it's a classic, because it was so scandalous to talk about sex

00:52:38.960 | in a book a hundred years ago, whatever. In retrospect, do you know why she recommended it?

00:52:44.160 | I have no... I think maybe she's sending a signal, "Hey, you need to get out more," or something.

00:52:49.920 | I don't know. Maybe she was seeking to inspire you, Lex.

00:52:54.000 | Yeah, exactly. Anyway, I mean, I love that kind of stuff too, but I love all the classics. And

00:53:02.480 | there's a lot of drama. Human nature, drama is part of it. So what about your dad growing up?

00:53:09.440 | What did you learn about life from your father? I think my father's sense of humor is sometimes

00:53:15.040 | underappreciated. So he had an amazing and has an amazing sense of humor. He loved music. I think

00:53:22.880 | my mom loved music as well, but my father always used to say that in another life he would have

00:53:30.320 | been a Broadway musical producer, which is hilarious to think about, but he loves music.

00:53:37.040 | That is funny to think about.

00:53:40.000 | Right? Now he DJs at Mar-a-Lago. So people get a sense of, he loves Andrew Lloyd Webber and all of

00:53:47.840 | it, Pavarotti, Elton John. I mean, these were the same songs on repeat my whole childhood. So

00:53:54.560 | I know the playlist.

00:53:57.040 | Probably Sinatra and all that.

00:53:59.280 | Loves Sinatra, loves Elvis, a lot of the greats. So I think I got a little bit of my love for

00:54:06.480 | music from him, but my mom shared that as well. I think one of the things in looking back that I

00:54:16.960 | think I inherited from my father as well is this sort of interest or understanding of the importance

00:54:25.600 | of asking questions and specifically questions of the right people. And I saw this a lot on job

00:54:32.240 | sites. So I remember with the old post office building, there was this massive glass-topped

00:54:38.720 | atrium. So heating and cooling the structure was like a Herculean lift. We had the mechanical

00:54:46.640 | engineers provide their thoughts on how we could do it efficiently and so that the temperature

00:54:54.160 | never varied. And it was enormously expensive as an undertaking. And I remember one of his

00:55:02.960 | first times on the site because he had really empowered me with this project and he trusted

00:55:08.720 | me to execute and to also rope him in when I needed it. But the first time he visits,

00:55:14.720 | we're walking the hallway and we're talking about how expensive this cooling system would be

00:55:20.000 | and heating system would be. And he starts stopping and he's asking duct workers as we walk

00:55:26.400 | what they think of the system that the mechanical engineers designed. First few, fine, you know,

00:55:33.120 | not great answers. The third guy goes, "Sir, if you want me to be honest with you,

00:55:37.760 | it's obscenely over-designed. In the circumstance of a 1,000-year storm,

00:55:45.680 | you will have the exact perfect temperature if there's a massive blizzard or if it's unbearably

00:55:51.680 | hot. But 99.9% of the time, you'll never need it. And so I think it's just an enormous waste of

00:55:58.960 | money." And so he kept asking that guy questions and we ended up overhauling the design pretty

00:56:06.000 | well into the process of the whole system, saving a lot of money, creating a great system that's

00:56:11.040 | super functional. And so I learned a lot and that's just one example of countless. That one

00:56:17.120 | really sticks out in my head because I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we're redesigning the whole system."

00:56:21.280 | You know, we were actively under construction. But I would see him do that on a lot of different

00:56:28.160 | issues. He would ask people on the work level what their thoughts were, ideas, concepts, designs.

00:56:36.560 | And there was almost like a Socratic sort of first principles type of way he questioned people,

00:56:46.640 | trying to get down to sort of trying to reduce complex things to something really fundamental

00:56:52.800 | and simple. So I try to do that myself to the best I can. And I think it's something I very

00:57:00.160 | much learned from him. Yeah, I've seen great engineers, great leaders do just that. You see,

00:57:05.520 | you want to do that a lot, which is basically ask questions to push simplification. Can we do

00:57:13.440 | this simpler? The basic question is like, why are we doing it this way? Can this be done simpler?

00:57:19.440 | Yeah.

00:57:20.000 | And not taking as an answer that this is how we've always done it. Sort of not allowing yourself,

00:57:27.760 | like, it doesn't matter that's how it was done. What is the right way to do it? And what is,

00:57:33.120 | and usually the simpler it is, the more correct the way.

00:57:36.880 | Yeah.

00:57:37.120 | Has to do with cost, has to do with simplicity of production, manufacture, but usually simple

00:57:43.200 | is best.

00:57:43.680 | And it's oftentimes not the architecture, the engineers. It's, you know, in Elon's case,

00:57:48.560 | probably the line worker who sees things more clearly. So I think making sure it's not just

00:57:54.400 | that you're asking good questions, you're asking the right people those same good questions.

00:57:59.200 | That's why like a lot of the Elon companies are really flat in terms of organizational design,

00:58:04.880 | where anybody in the factory floor can talk directly to Elon. There's not this managerial

00:58:14.160 | class, this hierarchy where it's travel up and down the hierarchy, which large companies often

00:58:19.920 | construct this hierarchy of managers where no one manager, if you ask them the question of like,

00:58:26.480 | what have you done this week? The answer is like, it's really hard to come up with.

00:58:30.960 | Usually it's going to be a bunch of paperwork.

00:58:32.800 | Yeah.

00:58:33.040 | So you like, nobody knows what they actually do. So when it's flat, you can actually get as

00:58:39.280 | quickly as possible. When problems arise, you can solve those problems as quickly as possible.

00:58:45.200 | And also you have a direct, rapid iterative process where you're making things simpler,

00:58:52.080 | making them more efficient and constantly improving. So yeah, it's interesting when large,

00:58:58.400 | I mean, you see this in government, a lot of people get together, a hierarchy is developed

00:59:03.760 | and that somehow, sometimes it's good, but very often just slows things down and you see great

00:59:10.000 | companies, great, great companies, Apple, Google, Meta, they have to fight against that bureaucracy

00:59:18.480 | that builds, the slowness that large organizations have. And to still be a big organization,

00:59:24.400 | act like a startup is the big challenge.

00:59:27.920 | It's super difficult to deconstruct that as well, once it's in place, right? It's circumventing

00:59:34.160 | layers and asking questions, probing questions of people on the ground level is a huge challenge to

00:59:42.320 | the authority of the hierarchy. And there's tremendous amount of resistance to it. So it's

00:59:48.960 | how do you grow something in the case of a company, in terms of a culture that can scale,

00:59:56.080 | but doesn't lose its connection to sort of real and meaningful feedback. It's not easy.

01:00:05.040 | I've had a lot of conversations with Jim Keller, who's this legendary engineer and leader.

01:00:10.960 | And he has talked about, you often have to kind of be a little bit of an asshole in the room,

01:00:17.840 | not in a mean way, but it's uncomfortable. Like a lot of these questions, they're uncomfortable.

01:00:24.640 | They break the kind of general politeness and civility that people have in communication.

01:00:29.760 | When you get a meeting, nobody wants to be like, can we do it way different? Everyone wants just

01:00:37.440 | like this lunch is coming up. I have this trip planned on the weekend with the family. Everyone

01:00:44.480 | just wants comfort. When humans get together, they kind of gravitate towards comfort. Nobody

01:00:50.240 | wants that one person that comes in and says, "Hey, can we do this way better and way different?"

01:00:56.320 | And everything we've gotten comfortable with, throw it out.

01:01:00.000 | Not only do they not want that, but the one person who comes in and does that puts a massive target

01:01:04.880 | on their back and is ultimately seen as a threat. I mean, nobody really gets fired for maintaining

01:01:12.160 | the status quo, even if things go poorly. It's the way it was always done.

01:01:16.720 | Yeah, humans are fascinating. But in order to actually do great big projects,

01:01:23.440 | to reach for the stars, you have to have those people. You have to constantly disrupt

01:01:29.680 | and have those uncomfortable conversations.

01:01:32.480 | And really have that first principles type of orientation,

01:01:36.240 | especially in those large bureaucratic contexts.

01:01:38.720 | So amongst many other things, you created a fashion brand.

01:01:43.360 | What was that about? What was the origin of that?

01:01:47.920 | I always loved fashion as a form of self-expression, as a means to communicate either a truth or an

01:01:58.560 | illusion, depending on what kind of mood you were in. But this sort of second body, if you will.

01:02:04.080 | So I loved fashion. And look, I mean, my mother was a big part of the reason I did. But

01:02:09.440 | I never thought I would go into fashion. In fact, I was graduating from Wharton.

01:02:14.080 | It was the day of my graduation. And Anna Wintour calls me up and offered me a job at Vogue, which

01:02:23.840 | is a dream in so many ways. But I was so focused. I wanted to go into real estate and I wanted to

01:02:29.360 | build buildings. And I told her that. So I really thought that that was going to be the path I was

01:02:37.120 | taking. And then very organically, fashion was part of my life. But it came into my life in a

01:02:45.760 | more professional capacity by talking with my first of many different partners that I had in

01:02:53.920 | the fashion space about--he actually had shown me a building to buy. His family had some real

01:03:00.640 | estate holdings. And I passed on the real estate deal, but we forged a friendship. And we started

01:03:06.240 | talking about how in the space that he was in, fine jewelry, there was this lack of product

01:03:15.440 | and brands that were positioned for self-purchasing females. So everything was about the man buying

01:03:21.680 | the Christmas gift, the man buying the engagement ring. The stores felt like that. They were all

01:03:25.760 | tailored towards the male aesthetic. The marketing felt like that. And what about the woman who had

01:03:32.720 | a salary and was really excited to buy herself a great pair of earrings or had just received a

01:03:38.640 | great bonus and was going to use it to treat herself? So we thought there was a void in the

01:03:43.360 | marketplace. And that was the first category. I launched Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry. And we just

01:03:51.040 | caught lightning in a bottle. It was really quickly after that. I met my partner who had

01:03:55.840 | founded Nine West Shoes, a really capable partner. And we launched a shoe collection, which took off

01:04:04.240 | and did enormously well. And then a clothing collection and handbags and sunglasses and

01:04:09.280 | fragrance. So we caught a moment and we found a positioning for this self-purchasing, multidimensional

01:04:21.280 | woman. And we made dressing for work aspirational. At the time we launched, if you wanted to buy

01:04:28.800 | something for an office context, the brands that existed were the opposite of exciting. Nobody was

01:04:36.880 | taking pictures of what they were wearing to work and posting it online with some of these

01:04:42.720 | classic legacy brands. Really, it felt very much like it was designed by a team of men for what a

01:04:48.480 | woman would want to wear to the office. So we started creating this clothing that was feminine,

01:04:52.480 | that was beautiful, that was versatile, that would take a woman from the boardroom to an afterschool

01:05:00.560 | soccer game, to a date night with a boyfriend, to a walk in the park with her husband. All the

01:05:09.200 | different ways women live their lives and creating a wardrobe for that woman who works at every

01:05:15.840 | aspect of their life, not just sort of the siloed professional part. And it was really compelling.

01:05:24.000 | We started creating great brand content and we had incredible contributors like Adam Grant,

01:05:30.000 | who was blogging for us at the time and creating aspirational content for working women.

01:05:37.440 | It was actually kind of a funny story, but I now had probably close to 11 different product

01:05:43.360 | categories and we were growing like wildfire. And I started to think about what would be a

01:05:48.720 | compelling way to sort of create interesting content for the people who are buying these

01:05:53.360 | different categories. And we came up with a website called Women Who Work. And I went to

01:05:59.360 | a marketing agency, one of the fancy firms in New York, and I said, "We want to create a brand

01:06:04.160 | campaign around this multidimensional woman who works. And what do you think? Can you help us?"

01:06:12.000 | And they come back and they say, "You know, we don't like the word work. We think it should be

01:06:16.480 | women who do." And I just start laughing because I'm like, "Women who do?" And the fact that they

01:06:23.760 | couldn't conceive of it being sort of exciting and aspirational and interesting to sort of lean

01:06:30.080 | into working at all aspects of our lives was just fascinating to me, but showed that that was part

01:06:36.800 | of the problem. And I think that's why ultimately, I mean, when the business grew to be hundreds of

01:06:43.280 | millions of dollars in sales, we were distributed at all the best retailers across the country,

01:06:48.960 | from Neiman Marcus to Sachs to Bloomingdale's and beyond. And I think it really resonated with

01:06:56.240 | people in an amazing way. And probably not dissimilar to how I have this incredible experience

01:07:05.280 | every time somebody comes up to me and tells me that they were married in a space that

01:07:12.480 | I had painstakingly designed. I have that experience now with my fashion company.

01:07:19.600 | The number of women who will come up tell me that they loved my shoes or they loved the handbags.

01:07:25.040 | And I've had women show me their engagement rings. They got engaged with us. And it's really

01:07:30.560 | rewarding. It's really beautiful. Yeah. When I was hanging out with you in Miami,

01:07:34.560 | the number of women that came up to you saying that you love the clothing, they love the shoes,

01:07:40.960 | is awesome. All these years later. All these years later. Yeah. What does it take to make a

01:07:44.960 | shoe where somebody would come up to you years later and just be just full of love for this

01:07:51.520 | thing you've created? What's that mean? What does it take to do that? Well, I still wear the shoes.

01:07:58.000 | I mean, that's a good starting point, right? Is to create a thing that you want to wear.

01:08:02.720 | I feel like the product, I think first and foremost, you have to have the right partner.

01:08:08.320 | So building a shoe, if you talk to a great shoe designer, it's like it's architecture.

01:08:13.680 | Like making a heel that's four inches that feels good to walk in for eight hours a day,

01:08:18.400 | that is an engineering feat. And so I found great partners in everything that I did. My

01:08:24.720 | shoe partner had founded Nine West, so he really knew what went into making a shoe wearable and

01:08:30.000 | comfortable. And then you overlay that with great design. And we also created this really

01:08:37.520 | comfortable, beautifully designed, super feminine product offering that was also affordably priced.

01:08:45.200 | So I think it was like the trifecta of those three things that I think it made it stand out

01:08:51.680 | for so many people. Can you speak to, I don't know if it's possible to articulate, but can

01:08:56.720 | you speak to the process you go through from idea to the final thing? Like what you go through to

01:09:04.480 | bring an idea to life? So not being a designer, and this was true in real estate as well, I was

01:09:09.760 | never the architect. So I didn't necessarily have the pen and in fashion the same. I was kind of

01:09:14.800 | like a conductor. I knew what I liked and didn't like, and I think that's really important. And

01:09:21.120 | that became honed for me over time. So I would have to sit a lot longer with something earlier on

01:09:28.720 | than later when I had more refined my aesthetic point of view. And so I think, first of all,

01:09:36.720 | you have to have a pretty strong sense of what resonates with you. And then as in the case of

01:09:43.920 | my fashion business, as it grew and became quite a large business, and I had so many different

01:09:50.320 | categories, everything had to work together. So I had individual partners for each category.

01:09:54.640 | But if we were selling at Neiman Marcus, we couldn't have a pair of shoes that didn't relate

01:09:59.600 | to a dress that didn't relate to a pair of sunglasses and handbags all on the same floor.

01:10:04.640 | So in the beginning, it was much more collaborative. As time passed, I really

01:10:12.000 | sort of took the point on deciding, and this is the aesthetic for the season. These are the colors

01:10:17.040 | we're going to use. These are fabrics. And then working with our partners on the execution of

01:10:22.080 | that, I needed to create an overlay that allowed for cohesion as the collection grew. And that was

01:10:30.080 | actually really fun for me because that was a little different. I was typically initially

01:10:34.880 | responding to things that were put in front of me. And towards the end, it was my partners who

01:10:42.000 | were responding to the things that myself and my team. But I always wanted to bring the best talent

01:10:49.920 | in. So I was hiring great designers and printmakers and copywriters. And so I had this

01:10:58.880 | almost like that conductor analogy. I had this incredible group of, in this case, women

01:11:06.720 | assembled who had very strong points of view themselves and created a great team.

01:11:15.040 | So yeah, I mean, great team is really sort of essential. It's the essential thing behind

01:11:20.000 | any successful story. But there's this thing of taste, which is really interesting because it's

01:11:25.920 | hard to kind of articulate what it takes. But basically knowing A versus B, what looks good,

01:11:32.160 | or without A/B comparison to say like, if we changed this part, that would make it better.

01:11:42.560 | That sort of designer taste, it's hard to make explicit what that is. But the great designers

01:11:49.920 | have that taste, like this is going to look good. And it's not actually, again, the Steve Jobs thing,

01:11:56.080 | it's not the opinion poll. You can't poll people and ask them what looks better. You have to have

01:12:02.560 | the vision of that. And as you said, you also have to develop eventually the confidence that your

01:12:09.280 | taste is good, such that you can curate, you can direct teams, you can argue that, no, no, no,

01:12:16.480 | this is right. Even when there's several people that say, this doesn't make any sense. If you

01:12:20.880 | have that vision, have the confidence, this will look good. That's how you come up with great

01:12:25.760 | designs. It's a mixture of great taste as you develop over time and the confidence.

01:12:30.800 | And that's a really hard thing, especially, I think one of the things that I love most about

01:12:37.760 | all of these creative pursuits is that ability to work with the best people. Right now, I'm

01:12:43.680 | working with my husband. We have this 1,400-acre island in the Mediterranean,

01:12:49.520 | and we're bringing in the best architects and the best brands. But to have a point of view

01:12:54.880 | and to challenge people who are such artists respectfully, but not to be afraid to ask

01:13:02.480 | questions, it takes a lot of confidence to do that. And it's hard. So, these are actually just

01:13:08.080 | internal early renderings. So, we're in the process of doing the master planning now.

01:13:13.600 | But this is beautiful. I mean, it's a side of Amman.

01:13:15.520 | Yeah, this is an early vision. Yeah. It's going to be extraordinary. Amman's going to

01:13:20.560 | operate the hotel for us, and there are going to be villas, and we have Carbone,

01:13:26.400 | who's going to be doing the food and beverage. But it's amazing to bring together all of this

01:13:32.320 | talent. And for me to be able to play around and flex the real estate muscles again and have

01:13:37.040 | some fun with it is... The real estate, the design, the art. How hard is it to bring something like

01:13:41.520 | that to life? Because that looks surreal out of this world. Well, especially on an island.

01:13:48.640 | It's challenging, meaning the logistics of even getting the building materials to an island are

01:13:54.720 | no joke, but we will execute on it. And it may not be this. This is sort of, as I said,

01:14:02.320 | early conceptual drawings, but it gives a sense of sort of wanting to honor the topography that

01:14:07.680 | exists. And this is obviously very modern, but making it feel right in terms of the context of

01:14:16.080 | the vegetation and the terrain that exists and not just have a beautiful glass box. Obviously,

01:14:25.040 | you want glass. You want to look out and see that gorgeous blue ocean, but how do you do that in a

01:14:32.240 | way that doesn't feel generic and isn't a squandered opportunity to create something new?

01:14:38.400 | Yeah, and it's integrated with the natural landscape. It's a celebration of the natural

01:14:42.560 | landscape around it. So, I guess you start from this dream-like, because this feels like a dream,

01:14:47.280 | and then when you're faced with the reality of the building materials and all the actual

01:14:50.800 | constraints of the building, then it evolves from there, right? Yeah, and so much of architecture

01:14:56.720 | you don't see, but it's decisions made. So, how do you create independent structures where you

01:15:05.200 | look out of one and don't see the other? You know, how do you ensure the sort of the stacking

01:15:11.040 | and the master plan works in a way that's harmonious and view corridors and all of

01:15:17.440 | those elements, all of those components of decision-making are super appreciated,

01:15:23.680 | but not often thought about. What's a view corridor?

01:15:26.400 | Like to make sure that the top unit, you're not looking out and seeing a whole bunch of

01:15:31.760 | units. You're looking out and seeing the ocean. So, that's where you take this and then you start

01:15:35.840 | angling everything, and you start thinking about, well, in this context, do we have green roofs? So,

01:15:40.800 | if there's any hint of a roof, it's camouflaged by vegetation that matches what already exists

01:15:46.560 | on the island. That's where the engineers become very important. How do you build into a mountainside

01:15:51.840 | while being sensitive to the beauty of the island? It's almost like a mathematical problem. I took a

01:15:59.120 | class, computational geometry, in grad school, where you have to think about these view corridors.

01:16:05.040 | It's like a math problem. Well, but it's also an art problem because it's not just about making

01:16:10.000 | sure that there's no occlusions to the view. You have to figure out when there is occlusions,

01:16:15.920 | like what, is it vegetation? You have to figure all that out. So, every single room,

01:16:22.160 | every single building is a thing that adds extra complexity.

01:16:25.920 | And then the choices, like how does the Sun rise and set?

01:16:30.240 | Yeah.

01:16:31.760 | So, how do you want to angle the hotel in relation-

01:16:34.880 | That's awesome.

01:16:35.440 | -to the Sun rise and the Sun set? You obviously want people to experience those.

01:16:39.680 | So, which do you favor? The directionality of the wind. And on an island, and in this case,

01:16:48.960 | the wind is coming from the north, and the vegetation is less lush on the northern end.

01:16:54.160 | So, do you focus more on the southern end and have the horseback riding trails and amenities

01:16:59.760 | up towards the north? So, there are these really interesting decisions and choices

01:17:05.760 | you get to reflect on.

01:17:07.280 | That's a fascinating sort of discussion to be having. And probably there's actual constraints

01:17:11.520 | on infrastructure issues. So, all of those constraints-

01:17:14.400 | Yeah, well, the grade of the land, right? If it's super steep.

01:17:18.000 | So, also finding the areas of topography that are flatter, but still have the great views.

01:17:22.720 | So, it's fun. I think real estate and building, it's like a giant puzzle. And I love puzzles.

01:17:28.240 | Every piece relates to another, and it's all sort of interconnected.

01:17:32.480 | Yeah, like you said, in the whole post office, every single room is different,

01:17:36.400 | so every single room is a puzzle when you're doing the renovation.

01:17:38.800 | That's fascinating.

01:17:42.480 | And if you're not thoughtful, it's like, at best, really quirky. At worst, completely ridiculous.

01:17:50.400 | Quirky is such a funny word.

01:17:51.680 | I'm sure you've walked into your fair share of quirky rooms. And sometimes that's charming,

01:17:59.040 | but most often it's charming when it's intentional through smart design.

01:18:05.600 | Yeah, you can tell if it's by accident or if it's intentional. You can tell.

01:18:10.400 | So much, I mean, the whole hospitality thing, it's not just like how it's designed, it's how,

01:18:14.800 | once the thing is operating, if it's a hotel, how everything comes together.

01:18:20.080 | Yeah.

01:18:20.640 | The culture of the place.

01:18:22.160 | And the warmth.

01:18:23.120 | Yeah.

01:18:23.440 | Like, I think with spaces, you can feel the soul of a structure. And I think on the hotel side,

01:18:32.560 | you have to think about flow of traffic, use, all these things. When you're building condominiums

01:18:37.920 | or your own home, you want to think about the warmth of a space as well. And especially with

01:18:43.280 | super modern designs, sometimes warmth is sacrificed. And I think there is a way to

01:18:48.320 | sort of marry both. And that's where you get into sort of the interior design elements and disciplines

01:18:55.520 | and how fabrics can create tremendous warmth in a space which is otherwise sort of colder,

01:19:03.440 | raw building materials. And that's a really interesting, like how texture matters, how color

01:19:09.760 | matters. And I think oftentimes interior design is not, it doesn't take the same priority.

01:19:20.800 | And I think that underestimates the impact it can have on how you experience a room or a space.

01:19:29.920 | Yeah. Especially when it's working together with the architecture.

01:19:33.680 | Yeah.

01:19:34.240 | Yeah. Fabrics and color. That's so interesting.

01:19:36.400 | Finishes. You know, the choice of wood.

01:19:38.640 | That's making me feel horrible about the space we're sitting in.

01:19:41.520 | It's like black curtains, the warmth. I need to work on this.

01:19:46.080 | No comment.

01:19:47.200 | This is a big to-do item. You're making me feel, I'll listen back to this over and over.

01:19:54.400 | There may be like a woman's touch needed.

01:19:56.560 | A lot. A lot.

01:19:57.360 | But I actually, I appreciate the vegetation.

01:20:00.000 | Yeah. It's fake plants.

01:20:02.080 | You know what I love about this space though is it's, is like you come through. Like every single

01:20:08.080 | element, there's a story behind it. So it's not just some, you didn't have some interior

01:20:13.440 | designer curate your bookshelf. You know, there's like nobody came in here with books by the yard.

01:20:18.400 | This is basically an Ikea. Like this is not, this is not deeply thought through,

01:20:23.760 | but it does bring me joy.

01:20:26.640 | Yeah.

01:20:27.140 | Which is one way to do design. As long as you're happy, that usually means if your taste is decent

01:20:34.240 | enough, that means others will be happy or we'll see the joy radiate through it. But I appreciate

01:20:41.360 | you were grasping for compliments and you eventually got that.

01:20:43.600 | No, I actually, I love it. I love it. You have like a little, I love this guy.

01:20:48.960 | Yeah. You're holding on to a monkey looking at a human skull, which is particularly irrelevant.

01:20:55.760 | And this, I mean, I feel like you've really thought about all of these.

01:21:00.080 | Yeah. There's robot, I don't know if, I mean, I don't know how much you looked into robots,

01:21:05.360 | but there's, there's a way to communicate love and affection from a robot that I'm

01:21:09.760 | really fascinated by. And a lot of cartoonists do this too. You have to, when you create cartoons

01:21:15.120 | and non-human-like entities, you have to bring out the joy. So with WALL-E or robots in Star Wars,

01:21:23.440 | to be able to communicate emotion to anger and excitement through a robot is really

01:21:29.920 | interesting to me. And people that do it successfully are awesome, are awesome.

01:21:36.320 | To make you smile.

01:21:37.200 | Yeah. That makes you smile for sure. There's a longing there.

01:21:40.400 | How do you do that successfully as you, as you bring them, your projects to life?

01:21:45.680 | I think there's, there's so many detailed elements that I think artists know well.

01:21:50.080 | But one basic one is something that people know, and you now know, because you have a dog,

01:21:58.720 | is the excitement that a dog has when it, when you first show up, just the recognizing you and like

01:22:07.600 | catching your eye and just showing his excitement by wiggling his butt and tail and all this kind of,

01:22:13.920 | this, this intense joy that overtakes his body, that, that moment of recognizing something.

01:22:20.800 | Yeah.

01:22:21.280 | It's the double take that you're, that moment of like, where this joy of recognition takes

01:22:28.480 | over your whole cognition and you're just like, there, and there's a connection. And then the

01:22:34.400 | other person gets excited and you both get excited together. It's kind of like that feeling,

01:22:38.960 | what would I put it? You know, like when you go to airports and you get to see people

01:22:43.520 | who haven't seen each other for a long time, all of a sudden recognize each other in their meeting,

01:22:49.040 | and they're all like, run towards each other and hug, that moment. But that's awesome to watch.

01:22:55.040 | There's so much joy.

01:22:56.000 | And, and dogs that will have that every time. You could walk into the other room to get a glass of

01:23:01.920 | milk and you come back and your dog sees you like it's the first time.

01:23:06.080 | Yeah.

01:23:06.400 | So I love replicating that in robots. They actually say children, like one of the reasons

01:23:11.280 | why peekaboo is so successful is that they actually don't remember not having seen you

01:23:18.560 | a few seconds prior. There's a, there's a term for it, but I remember as a, when,

01:23:24.080 | when my kids were younger, you leave the room and you walk back in 30 seconds later and they

01:23:28.400 | experienced the same joy as if you had been, you know, gone for four hours. And we grew out of that.

01:23:37.040 | We become very used to one another.

01:23:38.800 | I kind of want to forever be excited by the peekaboo phenomena. The simple joys. We were

01:23:44.400 | talking about on fashion, having the confidence of taste to be able to sort of push through on

01:23:49.440 | this idea of design. But you've also mentioned somebody who admires Rick Rubin in his book,

01:23:55.120 | The Creative Act. It has some really interesting ideas. And one of them is to accept

01:24:02.000 | self-doubt and imperfection. So is there some battle within yourself that you have on sort of

01:24:09.680 | striving for perfection and for the confidence and always kind of having it together versus

01:24:17.040 | like accepting that things are always going to be imperfect?

01:24:20.400 | I think every day. I think I wake up in the morning and, you know, I want to be better.

01:24:26.240 | I want to be a better mom. I want to be a better wife. I want to be more creative. I want to be

01:24:32.160 | physically stronger. And, and so that very much lives within me all the time. You know, I think I,

01:24:40.800 | I also grew up in the context of being the child of two extraordinarily successful parents. And

01:24:50.160 | that could have been debilitating for me. And I saw that in a lot of my friends who grew up in

01:24:55.280 | circumstances similar to that. They were afraid to try for fear of not measuring up. And I think

01:25:04.160 | somehow early on, I learned to kind of harness the fear of not being good enough, not being

01:25:13.440 | competent enough. And I harnessed it to make me better and to push me outside of my comfort zone.

01:25:23.040 | So I think that's always lived with me. And I think it probably always will. I think

01:25:28.320 | you have to have humility in anything you do that you could be better and strive for that.

01:25:35.280 | I think as you get older, it softens a little bit as you have more reps, you know, as you have more

01:25:42.960 | examples of, of having been thrown in the deep end and figured out how to swim, you, you get a

01:25:51.440 | little bit more comfortable in your sort of abstract competency. But if that fear is not in you,

01:26:01.920 | I think you're not challenging yourself enough. Harness the fear. The other thing he writes about

01:26:09.360 | is intuition. That you need to trust your instincts and intuition. That's a very recruitment

01:26:17.760 | thing to say. But so what percent of your decision making is intuition and what percent is through

01:26:25.840 | rigorous, careful analysis? Would you say? I think it's both. It's like trust but verify,

01:26:32.080 | you know. I think you, I think that's also where age and experience comes into play because

01:26:39.680 | I think you always have sort of a gut instinct. But I think intuition, like well-honed intuition,

01:26:46.240 | comes from a place of, of accumulated knowledge, right? So oftentimes when you feel really

01:26:53.200 | strongly about something, it's because you've sort of, you've been there. Like you know what's right.

01:26:58.720 | Or on a personal level, if you're acting in accordance with your core values, you know,

01:27:06.560 | it just feels good. And even if it would be the right decision for others, if you're acting outside

01:27:12.800 | of, of, of your sort of integrity or core values, it doesn't feel good. And, and it, you know,

01:27:19.200 | your intuition will signal that to you. You'll never be, you'll never be comfortable. So I think

01:27:25.280 | because, because of that, I, I start oftentimes with my intuition and then I, and then I put it

01:27:32.800 | through like a rigorous test of, of whether that is in fact true. But very seldom do I go against

01:27:41.040 | what my initial instinct was, not, at least at this point in my life. Yeah, I had actually a

01:27:46.080 | discussion yesterday with a big-time business owner investor who, who's talking about being

01:27:53.360 | impulsive and following that, like on a phone call, shifting like the entire, everything,

01:27:59.200 | like giving away a very large amounts of money and moving it in another direction on an impulse,

01:28:04.960 | making a promise that he can't at that time deliver, but knows if he works hard,

01:28:10.480 | he'll deliver and all doing just to be following that impulsive feeling. And he said, now that,

01:28:16.720 | you know, he has, he has a family that probably some of that impulse has quieted down a little

01:28:21.440 | bit. He's more rational and thoughtful and so on, but wonders whether it's sometimes good

01:28:27.520 | to just be impulsive and to just trust your gut and just go with it. Don't deliberate too long

01:28:34.880 | because then you won't, you won't do it. It's interesting. It's the confidence, the stupidity

01:28:40.160 | maybe of youth that leads to some of the greatest breakthroughs. And it's like, there's a cost to

01:28:47.120 | wisdom and deliberation. There, there is, but I actually think in this case, as you get older,

01:28:53.440 | you may act less impulsively, but I think you're more like attuned with, you have more experience.

01:29:01.440 | So your, your gut is like more well honed, you know, so your instincts are more well honed. I

01:29:07.120 | think I, I found that to be true for me. You know, it doesn't feel as like reckless as when I was

01:29:15.920 | younger. Amongst many other things, you were on The Apprentice. People love you on there. People

01:29:24.400 | love the show. So what did you learn about business, about life from the various contestants

01:29:31.120 | on there? Well, I think you can learn everything about life from Joe Rivers. So I'm just, I'm

01:29:36.320 | got it. Amazing. But you know, I, it was, it was such a wild experience for me because I was,

01:29:45.680 | I was quite young when I was on it, just getting started in business. And it was the number one

01:29:50.720 | television show in the country. And it went on to be syndicated all over the world. And it was just

01:29:56.400 | this wild, like phenomenal success. You know, a business show had never, had never crossed over

01:30:04.320 | in this sort of way. So it was really a moment in time. And you had regular Apprentice and then

01:30:11.040 | the Celebrity Apprentice, but, but the tasks, I mean, they, they went on to be studied at business

01:30:16.080 | schools across the country. So every other week I'd be reading case studies of how The Apprentice

01:30:21.200 | was being examined and taught to classes and this university in Boston or, you know, so it was

01:30:27.440 | extraordinary. And this was like a real life classroom I was in. So I think because of the

01:30:33.120 | nature of the show, you learn a lot about, you know, teamwork and you're watching it and analyzing

01:30:38.640 | it real time. You learned a lot about, a lot of the tasks were very marketing oriented because of,

01:30:45.120 | you know, the short duration of time they had to, to execute. A lot of, you learned a lot about time

01:30:53.120 | management because of that short duration. So, you know, almost every episode would devolve into

01:30:59.600 | people hysterical over the fact that they had 10 minutes left to, with this Herculean lift ahead

01:31:05.840 | of them. So, so it was, it was a fascinating, it was a fascinating experience for me. And,

01:31:11.760 | and we would be filming, I mean, we would film first thing in the morning at like 5 or 6 a.m.

01:31:17.520 | in Trump Tower oftentimes, like in the lobby of Trump Tower, that's where the war rooms and board

01:31:25.120 | rooms of the candidates were, the contestants were. And then we would go up in the elevator

01:31:31.840 | to our office. We would work all day and then we'd come down and we'd evaluate the tasks. It

01:31:36.960 | was this weird, like real life television thing experience in the middle of our, sort of on the

01:31:44.240 | bookends of our work day. So it was, it was intense. So you're, you're like curating the

01:31:50.640 | television version of it and also living it. Living the, and oftentimes there was like an

01:31:55.440 | overlay. Like there were episodes that they came up with brand campaigns for my shoe collection

01:32:02.880 | or my clothing line or, or design challenges related to, you know, a hotel I was responsible

01:32:10.080 | for, for building. So there was this unbelievable crossover that was obviously great for us from a

01:32:16.320 | business perspective, but it's sometimes surreal to, to experience. What was it like? Was it,

01:32:22.800 | was it scary to be in front of a camera when you know so many people

01:32:26.000 | watch? I mean, that, that's a new experience for you at that time. Just the number of people

01:32:32.400 | watching. Yeah. Was that weird? It was really weird. I, I really struggled

01:32:40.480 | watching myself on the episodes. Like I really, I still to this day, like television as a medium,

01:32:49.200 | like the fact that we're taping this, I'm more self-conscious than if we weren't. I, I just,

01:32:53.920 | it's... Hey, I have to watch myself as after, after we record this, before I publish it,

01:33:02.880 | I have to listen to my stupid self talk. So, and... So you're saying it doesn't get better.

01:33:09.360 | It doesn't get better. I, I still, I hear myself, I'm like, does my voice really sound like that?

01:33:15.600 | You know, why do I do this thing or that thing? And I, I find it, some people are super at ease

01:33:21.760 | and, and who knows, maybe they're not either, but some people feel like there's, you know,

01:33:26.960 | my father was, I think like who you, who you saw is who you get. And I think that made him so

01:33:34.720 | effective, um, in that medium, uh, because he was just himself and he was totally unselfconscious.

01:33:41.360 | I was not, I was totally self-conscious. So it was, uh, it was extraordinary, but, um,

01:33:49.920 | but also a little challenging for me. I think certain people are just like

01:33:53.200 | born to be entertainers, like Elvis, like on stage, they come to life. Yeah. This is where they,

01:33:59.120 | this is where they're truly happy. I've met, I've met guys like that, like great rock stars. Like,

01:34:03.920 | this is where they, they feel like they belong on stages. It's not just the thing they do and

01:34:09.840 | they, there's certain aspects they love, certain aspects they don't know. This is where, this is

01:34:13.600 | where they're alive. This is where they, they've always dreamed of being. This is where they want

01:34:18.000 | to be forever. Michael Jackson was like that. Michael Jackson. I saw pictures of you hanging

01:34:22.800 | out with Michael Jackson. That was cool. He came once to a performance. I wanted to be,

01:34:27.760 | one moment in time, I wanted to be a professional ballerina. Okay. Yes. Um, and I was, you know,

01:34:35.680 | working really hard. I was going to the school of American ballet. I was dancing at the Lincoln

01:34:39.520 | Center in the Nutcracker. I was super serious, you know, nine, 10 year old. And, um, and my

01:34:45.440 | parents came to a Christmas performance of the Nutcracker and my father brought Michael Jackson

01:34:51.520 | with him. And everyone was so excited that all the dancers, they wore one glove, but I remember

01:34:58.400 | he was so shy. He was so quiet. Um, and when you'd see him, uh, like in, in smaller group settings,

01:35:09.600 | and then you'd watch him walk onto stage and it was like a completely different person,

01:35:15.600 | like the vitality that came into him. And you say, that's like someone who was born to do what he

01:35:22.240 | did. And, and I think there are a lot of performers like that. And I just, in general, love to see

01:35:28.720 | people that have found the thing that, uh, makes them come alive. Like I, um, as I mentioned,

01:35:36.800 | went to the jungle recently with, uh, Paul Roselye and he's a guy who just belongs in the jungle.

01:35:42.800 | Yeah. Like that's the guy where, like when I, I got a chance to go with him from the city to

01:35:48.560 | the jungle and you just see this person change of the happiness, the, the, the joy he has when he

01:35:55.680 | first is able to jump in the water, the Amazon river, and to feel like he's home with the

01:36:02.560 | crocodiles and all that with what he's calling friends and probably dances around in the trees

01:36:07.680 | with the monkeys. So he, like he, this is, this is where he belongs. And I love seeing that.

01:36:13.120 | You felt that. I mean, I, I watched the interview you did with him and,

01:36:17.120 | and he felt that like you, uh, his passion and enthusiasm, like it

01:36:23.600 | radiated and captive. I mean, I'm, I love animals. Like I love all animals, never loved snakes so

01:36:30.240 | much. And he almost made me, now I appreciate the beauty of them much more than I did, um, prior to

01:36:36.560 | listening to him speak about them. But it, it's an infectious thing. He actually, we were talking

01:36:42.160 | about skyscrapers before I loved, he called trees skyscrapers of life. And I thought that was so

01:36:47.600 | great. Yeah. And they are, they're so big. I mean, just like skyscrapers or large buildings,

01:36:55.440 | they also represent a history, especially in Europe. I like to think, look at all these

01:37:01.280 | ancient buildings. You like to think of all the people throughout history that have looked at

01:37:05.840 | them, have admired them, have been inspired by them. You know, the great leaders of history

01:37:12.240 | in France, it's like Napoleon, just the history that's contained within a building. You almost

01:37:17.360 | feel the energy of that history. You could feel the stories emanate from the buildings. And that

01:37:22.800 | same way, when you look at giant trees that have been there, uh, for, for decades, for centuries,

01:37:29.920 | in some cases, you, you feel the history, the stories emanate. I got a chance to climb some

01:37:35.920 | of them. So you feel like there's a visceral feeling of the power of the trees. It's cool.

01:37:41.520 | Yeah. That's an experience I'd love to have, be that disconnected.

01:37:46.400 | Yeah. Being in the jungle, uh, among the trees, among the animals,

01:37:51.760 | you remember that you're forever a part of nature. You're, you're fundamentally our nature,

01:37:56.080 | that this is a, uh, earth is a living organism and you're a part of that organism. And that's

01:38:03.600 | humbling. That's beautiful. And you get to experience that in a real, real way. It sounds

01:38:08.800 | simple to say, but when you actually like experience it, it stays with you for a long time.

01:38:13.200 | Especially if you're out there alone, like I got a chance to spend time in the jungle solo,

01:38:18.640 | just by myself. And you sit in the fear of that, in the simplicity of that, all of it. And just

01:38:28.000 | no sounds of humans anywhere. You're just sitting there and listening to, uh, all the monkeys and

01:38:36.960 | the birds trying to have sex with each other all around you, just screaming. And there's like

01:38:42.320 | romantic, I mean, I romanticize everything. There's like birds that are monogamous for life,

01:38:46.880 | like macaws. You can see like two of them flying. They're also, by the way,

01:38:51.120 | screaming at each other. I always wonder, like, are they arguing or is this their love language?

01:38:55.760 | That's very funny.

01:38:56.560 | You just have these like two birds that you know have been together for a long time and they're

01:39:00.480 | just screaming at each other in the morning. That's really funny because there aren't that

01:39:03.680 | many animal species that are monogamous. And you highlighted one example where they literally sound

01:39:09.440 | like they're bickering.

01:39:10.240 | But maybe to them it's beautiful. You know, I don't want to judge, but they do sound very loud

01:39:15.360 | and very obnoxious. But amidst all of that, it's just, I don't know.

01:39:21.520 | I think it's so humbling to like feel so small too. Like I feel like when we get busy and when

01:39:28.720 | we're running around, it's easy to feel we're so in our head and we feel sort of so consequential,

01:39:35.840 | like in the context of even our own lives. And then you find yourself in a situation like that.

01:39:40.160 | I think you feel so much more connected knowing how minuscule you are in the broader sense. And

01:39:49.520 | I feel that way when I'm on the ocean on a surfboard. You know, it's really humbling to be

01:39:58.080 | so small amidst that vast sea. And it feels really beautiful with no noise, no chatter,

01:40:08.640 | no distractions, just being in the moment. And it sounds like you experience that in a

01:40:15.200 | very, very real way in the Amazon.

01:40:18.400 | Yeah, the power of the waves is cool. I love swimming out into the ocean and feeling the

01:40:22.160 | power of the ocean beneath you. You're just like this speck.

01:40:25.680 | And you can't fight it, right? You just have to sort of be in it. And I think in surfing,

01:40:30.480 | one of the things I love about it is I feel like a lot of water sports are like manipulating

01:40:34.960 | the environment, you know. And there's something that can be a little like violent about it. Like

01:40:40.720 | you look at windsurfing and whereas with surfing, you're like in harmony with it. So,

01:40:46.480 | you're not fighting it, you're flowing with it. And you still have like the agency of choosing

01:40:53.760 | which waves you're going to surf. And you sit there and you read the ocean and you learn to

01:41:00.320 | understand it, but you can't control it. What's it like to like fall on your face

01:41:08.800 | when you're trying to surf? I haven't surfed before. It just feels like I always see videos

01:41:16.160 | of when everything goes great. I just wonder like when it doesn't.

01:41:19.520 | Those are the ones people post. Well, I actually had the unique experience of one of my first

01:41:25.040 | time surfing. I only learned a couple of years ago, so I'm not good. I just love it. I love

01:41:29.680 | everything about it. I love the physicality. I love being in the ocean. I love everything

01:41:34.560 | about it. The hardest thing with surfing is paddling out because when you're like committing,

01:41:40.080 | you catch a wave. Obviously, sometimes like you flip over your board and that doesn't feel great.

01:41:44.880 | But when you're in sort of the line of impact and you've maybe surfed a good wave in and now

01:41:50.240 | you're going out for another set and you get sort of stuck in that impact line,

01:41:54.160 | there's like nothing you can do. You just sort of sit there and you try to dive underneath it

01:41:59.920 | and it will pound you and pound you. So I've been stuck there while four, five, six waves just like

01:42:07.040 | crash on top of your head. And the worst thing you can do is get reactive and scared and try

01:42:15.280 | and fight against it. You kind of just have to flow with it until inevitably there's a break

01:42:20.480 | and then paddle like hell back out to the line or to the beach, whatever you're feeling. But to me,

01:42:27.280 | that's the hardest part, the paddling out. How did life change when your father decided

01:42:35.200 | to run for president? Wow, everything changed. Almost overnight, we learned that he was planning

01:42:46.320 | to announce his candidacy two weeks before he actually did. And nothing about our lives had

01:42:55.600 | been constructed with politics in mind. Most often when people are exposed to politics at that level,

01:43:04.080 | that sort of national level, there's first like city council run and then maybe a state-level run

01:43:14.080 | and maybe, maybe, you know, Congress, Senator, ultimately the presidency. So it was unheard of

01:43:22.160 | for him never to have run a campaign and then run for president and win. So it was

01:43:32.800 | an extraordinary experience. There was so much intensity and so much scrutiny

01:43:37.520 | and so much noise. So that took, for sure, like a moment to acclimate to. Not sure I ever fully

01:43:46.560 | acclimated, but it definitely was a super unusual experience. But I think then the process that

01:44:00.160 | unfolded over the next couple of years was also like the most extraordinary growth experience of

01:44:07.040 | my life. You know, suddenly I was going into communities that I probably never would have been

01:44:12.320 | to. And I was talking with people who in 30 seconds would reveal to me their deepest insecurity,

01:44:22.160 | their gravest fear, their wildest ambitions, all of it, with the hope that in telling me that story,

01:44:29.600 | it would get back to a potential future president of the United States and have impacts for their

01:44:35.920 | family, for their community. So the level of candor and vulnerability people have with you

01:44:41.360 | is unlike anything I've ever experienced. And I had done The Apprentice before. People may know

01:44:49.200 | who I was in some of these situations that I was going into, but they wouldn't have shared with me

01:44:56.000 | these things that you got the impression that oftentimes their own spouses wouldn't know,

01:45:00.080 | and they wouldn't do so within 30 seconds. So you learn so much about what motivates people,

01:45:09.200 | what drives people, what their concerns are, and you grow so much as a result of it.

01:45:16.640 | So when you're in the White House, people, unlike in any other position, people have a sense that

01:45:24.400 | all the troubles they're going through, maybe you can help.

01:45:27.840 | Yeah.

01:45:28.400 | So they put it all out there.

01:45:29.760 | And they do so in such a raw, vulnerable, and real way. It's shocking and eye-opening and

01:45:41.200 | super motivating. I remember once I was in New Hampshire, and early on, right after my father

01:45:50.320 | had announced his candidacy, and a man walks up to me in the greeting line, and within

01:45:57.680 | around five seconds, he had started to tell me a story about how his daughter had died of an

01:46:02.800 | overdose and how he was worried his son was also addicted to opioids. His daughter's friends,

01:46:11.040 | his son's friends, and it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking, and it's something that I would

01:46:19.200 | experience every day in talking with people.

01:46:22.240 | And those stories just stay with you.

01:46:23.840 | Always.

01:46:24.340 | You know, I took a long road trip around the United States in my 20s, and I'm kind of thinking

01:46:34.560 | of doing it again, just for like a couple of months, for that exact purpose. And you can get

01:46:41.440 | these stories when you go to like a bar in the middle of nowhere and just sit and talk to people,

01:46:47.600 | and they start sharing. And it reminds you of like how beautiful the country is. It reminds

01:46:52.880 | you of several things. One, that people, well, it shows you that there's a lot of different accents,

01:46:58.480 | that's one. But aside from that, that people are struggling with all the same stuff.

01:47:03.760 | And at least at that time, I wonder what it is now, but at that time, I don't remember,

01:47:10.160 | on the surface there's like political divisions, there's Republicans and Democrats and so on,

01:47:16.400 | but like underneath it, there are people who are all the same, the concerns are all the same,

01:47:22.400 | there's not that much of a division. Right now, the surface division has been amplified even more,

01:47:28.560 | maybe because of social media, I don't know why. So I would love to see what the country is like

01:47:33.760 | now, but I suspect probably it's still not as divided as it appears to be on the surface,

01:47:41.440 | what the media shows, what the social media shows. But what did you experience in terms of the

01:47:46.880 | division? I think a couple reactions to what you just said. I think the first is,

01:47:52.240 | when you connect with people like that, you are so inspired by their courage in the face of

01:48:03.120 | adversity and their resilience. And it's like a truly remarkable experience for me. The campaign

01:48:10.800 | lifted me out of a bubble I didn't even know I was in. I grew up on the Upper East Side of New

01:48:16.880 | York and I felt like I was well-traveled and well-educated, and I believed at the time that

01:48:23.760 | I'd been exposed to divergent viewpoints. And I realized during the campaign how limited my

01:48:32.080 | exposure had been relative to what it was becoming. So there was a lot of growth in that as

01:48:38.240 | well. But I do think, you think about the vitriol in politics and whether it's worse than it's been

01:48:45.920 | in the past or not. I think that's up for debate. I think there have been duels and there's been

01:48:52.880 | screaming. And politics has always been a bloodsport, and it's always been incredibly

01:49:00.480 | vicious. I think in the toxic swirl of social media, it's more amplified and

01:49:07.360 | there's more sort of democratization around participating in it perhaps.

01:49:12.000 | And it seems like the voices are louder, but it feels like it's always been that.

01:49:18.640 | But I don't believe most people are like that. And you meet people along the way,

01:49:28.080 | and they're not leading with what their politics are. They're telling you about their hopes for

01:49:34.720 | themselves and their communities. And it makes you feel that we are a whole lot less divided than

01:49:42.560 | the media and others would have us believe. Although I have to say, having duels sounds

01:49:50.480 | pretty cool. Maybe I just romanticize Westerns, but anyway. All right. I miss Clint Eastwood movies.

01:49:55.360 | Okay. But it's true. You read some of the stuff in terms of what politics used to be in the history

01:50:02.240 | of the United States. Those folks went pretty rough, like way rougher actually, but they didn't

01:50:07.680 | have social media, so they had to go real hard. And the media was rough too. So all the fake news,

01:50:14.080 | all of that, that's not recent. It's been nonstop. I look at the surface division, the surface

01:50:21.520 | bickering, and that might be just a feature of democracy. It's not a bug of democracy. It's a

01:50:26.560 | feature. We're in a constant conflict, and it's the way we try to figure out the right way forward.

01:50:35.200 | So in the moment, it feels like people are just tearing each other apart, but really,

01:50:39.440 | we're trying to find the way where in the long arc of history, it will look like progress.

01:50:44.240 | But in the short term, it just sounds like people making stories up about each other and calling

01:50:50.160 | each other names and all this kind of stuff. But there's a purpose to it. I mean, that's what

01:50:56.240 | freedom looks like, I guess is what I'm trying to say, and it's better than the alternative.

01:51:00.240 | Well, I think that the vast majority of people aren't participating in it.

01:51:04.000 | Sure. Yes, that's true also.

01:51:05.680 | I think there's a minority of people that are doing most of the yelling and screaming,

01:51:10.400 | and the majority of Americans just want to send their kid to a great school

01:51:15.040 | and want their communities to thrive and want to be able to realize their dreams and aspirations.

01:51:24.720 | So I saw a lot more of that than it would feel obvious if you looked at a Twitter feed.

01:51:33.360 | What went into your decision to join the White House as an advisor?

01:51:39.760 | You know, the campaign, I never thought about joining. It was kind of like get to the end of

01:51:49.760 | it. And when it started, everything in my life was almost firing on all cylinders. I had two young

01:51:55.520 | kids at home. During the course of the campaign, I was pregnant with my third. So this young family,

01:52:04.000 | my businesses, real estate and fashion, and working alongside my brothers, running the Trump

01:52:10.880 | hotel collection. My life was full and busy. And so there was a big part of me that just wanted to

01:52:21.040 | get through it without really thinking forward to what the implications were for me. But when my

01:52:29.600 | father won, he asked Jared and I to join him. And in asking that question, keep in mind, he was a

01:52:38.560 | total outsider. So there was no bench of people as he would have today. He had never spent the

01:52:44.880 | night in Washington, D.C. before staying in the White House. And so when he asked us to join him,

01:52:51.520 | he trusted us. He trusted in our ability to execute. And there wasn't a part of me that

01:52:59.360 | could imagine the 70- or 80-year-old version of myself looking back and having been okay

01:53:07.760 | with having said no and going back to my life as I knew it before. I mean, in retrospect,

01:53:14.240 | I realize there is no life as you know it before, but just the idea of not saying yes

01:53:22.480 | wherever that would lead me. And so I dove in. During the course of the campaign,

01:53:34.560 | I was just much more sensitive to the problems and experiences of Americans. I gave you an example

01:53:42.240 | before of the father in New Hampshire. But even just in my consumption of information, I had a

01:53:50.080 | business that was predominantly young women, many of which were thinking about having a kid, had

01:53:57.120 | just had a child, were planning on that life event. And I knew what they needed to be able to

01:54:04.400 | show up every day and realize this dream for themselves and the support structures they would

01:54:10.000 | need to have in place. And I remember reading this article at the time in one of the major newspapers

01:54:18.960 | of a woman. She had had a very solid job working at one of the blue-chip accounting firms,

01:54:27.120 | and the recession came. She lost her job around the same time as her partner left her, and over

01:54:33.600 | a matter of months, she lost her home. So she wound up with her two young kids after bouncing around

01:54:41.760 | between neighbors living in their car. She gets a call back from one of the many interviews she

01:54:52.320 | had done for a second interview, where she was all but guaranteed the job, should that go well.

01:54:57.680 | And she had arranged child care for her two young children with a neighbor in her old apartment

01:55:04.480 | block. And the morning of the interview, she shows up, and the neighbor doesn't answer the doorbell.

01:55:09.840 | And she stands there five, ten minutes, doesn't answer. So she has a choice. Does she go to the

01:55:18.560 | interview with her children, or does she try to cancel? She gets in her car, drives to the

01:55:24.640 | interview, leaves her two children in the back seat of the car with the window cracked, goes

01:55:30.480 | into the interview, and gets pulled out of the interview by police because somebody had called

01:55:34.720 | the cops after seeing her children in the back seat of the car. She gets thrown in jail. Her

01:55:39.600 | kids get taken from her. And she spends years fighting to regain custody. And I think about--

01:55:46.480 | that's an extreme example. But I think about something like that, and I say, "If I was the

01:55:51.520 | mother and we were homeless, would I have gone to that interview?" And I probably would have.

01:56:03.360 | And that is not an acceptable situation. So you hear stories like that, and

01:56:10.000 | then you get asked, "Will you come with me?" And it's really hard to say no. I spent four

01:56:17.600 | years in Washington. I feel like I left it all in the field. I feel really good about it, and

01:56:26.240 | I feel really privileged to have been able to do what I did.

01:56:29.200 | A chance to help many people. Saying no means you're kind of turning away from those people.

01:56:39.440 | It felt like that to me.

01:56:40.480 | Yeah. Yeah, but then it's the turmoil of politics that you're getting into, and

01:56:47.920 | it really is a leap into the abyss. What was it like trying to get stuff done?

01:56:56.240 | In Washington, in this place where politics is a game, it feels that way, maybe from an outsider

01:57:06.720 | perspective. And you go in there trying, giving some of those stories, trying to help people.

01:57:11.200 | What's it like to get anything done?

01:57:12.560 | It's an incredible cognitive lift.

01:57:15.920 | That's a nice way to put it, yeah.

01:57:20.800 | To get things done. There are a lot of people who would prefer to

01:57:27.280 | cling to the problem, and they're talking points about how they're going to solve it,

01:57:33.840 | rather than sort of roll up their sleeves and do the work it takes to build coalitions of support

01:57:40.320 | and find people who are willing to compromise and move the ball. And so, it's extremely difficult.

01:57:47.360 | Jared and I talk about it all the time. It probably should be, because these are highly

01:57:51.920 | consequential policies that impact people's lives at scale. It shouldn't be so easy to do them,

01:57:58.000 | and they are doable, but it's challenging. One of the first experiences I had where it really was

01:58:05.760 | just a full grind effort was with tax cuts and the work I did to get the child tax credit doubled as

01:58:14.720 | part of it. And it just meant meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting with a lawmaker,

01:58:21.120 | convincing them of why this is good policy, going into their districts, campaigning in their

01:58:26.320 | districts, helping them convince their constituents of why it's important, of why child care support

01:58:33.680 | is important, of why paid family leave is important, of different policies that impact

01:58:40.800 | working American families. So, it's hard, but it's really rewarding. And then to get it done,

01:58:50.080 | I mean, just the child tax credit alone, 40 million American families got an average of $2,200

01:58:57.440 | each year as a result of the doubling of the child tax credit. So, it's one component of tax cuts.

01:59:05.360 | - When I was researching this stuff, you just get to think the scale of things,

01:59:10.880 | the scale of impact is 40 million families. Each one of those is a story, is a story of struggle,

01:59:17.440 | of trying to give a large part of your life to a job while still being able to give love and

01:59:24.400 | support and care to a family, to kids, and to manage all of that. Each one of those is a little

01:59:29.360 | puzzle that they have to solve. And it's a life and death puzzle. You can lose your home,

01:59:36.080 | your security, you can lose your job, you can screw stuff up with parenting. So, you can mess

01:59:43.040 | all that up and you're trying to hold it together. And government policies can help make that easier,

01:59:51.120 | or can, in some cases, make that possible. And you get to do that at a scale, not of like five

01:59:56.640 | or 10 families, but like 40 million families. And that's just one thing.

02:00:01.200 | - Yeah. The people who shared with me their experience and, you know, during the campaign,

02:00:06.000 | it was what they hoped to see happen. Once you were in there, it was what they were seeing,

02:00:12.800 | what they were experiencing, the result of the policies. And that was the fuel. You know,

02:00:20.480 | on the hardest days, like that was the fuel. Child tax credit. I remember visiting with a woman,

02:00:26.880 | Brittany Houseman. She came to the White House. She had two small children. She was pregnant with

02:00:31.120 | her third. Her husband was killed in a car accident. She was in school at the time. Her

02:00:36.000 | dream was to become a criminal justice advocate. That was no longer on the table for her after he

02:00:43.360 | passed away. And she became the sole earner and provider for her family. And she couldn't afford

02:00:49.120 | childcare. She couldn't afford to stay in school. So she ended up creating a childcare center in

02:00:56.240 | her home. And her center was so successful because in part of different policies we worked on,

02:01:03.280 | including the childcare block grants that went to the state, she ended up opening additional centers.

02:01:08.560 | I visited her at one of them in Colorado. Now she has like a huge focus on helping

02:01:14.720 | teenage moms who don't have the resources to afford quality childcare for their kids

02:01:21.600 | come into her centers and programs. And, you know, it's stories like that

02:01:25.920 | of the hardships people face, but also what they do with opportunity when they're given it

02:01:31.840 | that really like powers you through tough moments when you're in Washington.

02:01:38.720 | - What can you say about the process of like bringing that to life? So the child tax credits,

02:01:44.320 | so doubling them from a thousand, 2000 per child. Well, like what are the challenges of that

02:01:52.880 | getting people to compromise? I'm sure there's a lot of politicians playing games with that

02:01:56.960 | because maybe it's a Republican that came up with an idea or a Democrat that came up with an idea.

02:02:01.280 | And so they don't want to give credit to the idea. And there's probably all kinds of games happening

02:02:05.920 | where they, when the game is happening, you probably forget about the families. Each politician

02:02:12.720 | thinks about how they can benefit themselves. You forget like the serving part of the role

02:02:18.000 | you're supposed to be in. - There were definitely people

02:02:20.320 | I met with in Washington who I felt that was true of, but, you know, they all go back to

02:02:25.760 | their districts and I assume that they all have similar experiences to what I had where people

02:02:30.720 | share their stories. So there'd be something really cynical about thinking they forget,

02:02:35.120 | but, you know, some do. - You help get people together.

02:02:38.480 | What's that take? Trying to get people to compromise, trying to get people to see

02:02:42.880 | the common humanity. - I think first and foremost,

02:02:45.360 | you have to be willing to talk with them. So, you know, one of the policies I advocate for was paid

02:02:51.280 | family leave. We left and 9 million more Americans had it through a combination of securing it for

02:02:57.600 | our federal workforce. I had people in the White House who were pregnant who didn't have access to

02:03:03.920 | paid leave. So we want to keep people attached to the workforce, yet when they have an important

02:03:09.520 | life event like a child, we create an impossibility for that. You know, some people don't even have

02:03:16.560 | access to unpaid leave if they're part-time workers. And so that, and then we also put in

02:03:26.080 | place the first ever national tax credit for workers making under $72,000 a year where employers

02:03:32.560 | could then offer it to their workers. That was also part of tax cuts. So, you know, part of it

02:03:37.520 | is really taking the arguments as to why this is good, smart, well-designed policy to people.

02:03:45.360 | And, you know, it was one of my big surprises that on certain policy issues that I thought

02:03:52.000 | would have been well-socialized, the policies that existed were never shared across the aisle.

02:04:00.720 | So people just lived with them, maybe in hopes that one day they would have the votes to get

02:04:05.840 | exactly what they want. But I was surprised by how little discussion there was. So I think part

02:04:11.680 | of it is be willing to have those tough discussions with people who may not share your viewpoint and

02:04:17.840 | be an active listener when they point out flaws and they have suggestions for changes. Not believing

02:04:27.440 | that you have a monopoly on good ideas. And I think there has to be a lot of humility in

02:04:34.080 | architecting these things and a policy should benefit from that type of well-rounded input.

02:04:42.000 | Yeah, be able to see, like you said, well-designed policies. There's probably like the details are

02:04:47.200 | important too. Like there's just like with architecture and you walk the rooms, there's

02:04:53.920 | probably really good designs of policies, like economic policy that helps families, that delivers

02:05:00.240 | the maximum amount of money or resources to families that need it, and is not a waste of

02:05:06.720 | money. So like that, there's probably really nice designs there, nice ideas that are bipartisan,

02:05:13.120 | that has nothing to do with politics, has to do with just great economic policy, just great policies.

02:05:18.240 | And that requires listening.

02:05:20.560 | Requires trust too. Like I learned tax cuts was really interesting for me because I met with so

02:05:26.960 | many people across the political spectrum on advancing that policy. I really figured out

02:05:35.040 | who was willing to deviate from their talking points when the door was closed and who wasn't.

02:05:40.000 | You know, and it takes some courage to do that, especially without surety that it would actually

02:05:49.280 | get done, you know, especially if they've campaigned on something that was slightly different.

02:05:54.160 | And, you know, not everyone has that courage. So through tax cuts, I learned the people who

02:05:59.840 | did have that courage, and I went back to that well time and time again on policies that I

02:06:05.520 | thought were important. You know, some were bipartisan. The Great American Outdoors Act

02:06:10.560 | is something, it's incredible policy.

02:06:15.040 | I love that one.

02:06:16.160 | Yeah, it's amazing. It's one of the largest pieces of conservation legislation since

02:06:21.440 | the national park system was created. And, you know, over 300 million people visit our national

02:06:29.760 | parks, the vast majority of them being Americans every year. So this is something that is real

02:06:34.880 | and beneficial for people's lives, getting rid of the deferred maintenance, permanently funding them.

02:06:40.000 | But there are other issues like that that just weren't being prioritized. Modernizing,

02:06:45.920 | Perkins CTE, you know, and vocational education. And it's something I became super passionate about

02:06:51.840 | and helped lead the charge on. I think in America for a really long period of time,

02:07:00.480 | we've really believed that education stops when you leave high school or college.

02:07:05.200 | And that is not true, and that's a dangerous way to think. So how can we both galvanize the private

02:07:11.920 | sector to ensure that they continue to train workers for the jobs they know are coming,

02:07:16.720 | and how they train their existing workforce into the new jobs with robotics or machinery or new

02:07:24.880 | technologies that are coming down the pike. So galvanizing the private sector to join us

02:07:30.640 | in that effort. So whether it's the legislative side, like the actual legislation of Perkins CTE,

02:07:37.760 | which was focused on vocational education, or whether it's the ability to use the White House

02:07:43.840 | to galvanize the private sector. We got over 16 million commitments from the private sector

02:07:50.480 | to retrain or reskill workers into the jobs of tomorrow. Yeah, there's so many aspects of

02:07:57.200 | education that you helped on. Access to STEM and computer science education. So the CT thing you're

02:08:03.280 | mentioning, modernizing career and technical education, that's millions and millions of people.

02:08:07.200 | The Act provided nearly $1.3 billion annually to more than 13 million students to better align

02:08:14.320 | the employer needs and all that kind of stuff. Very large scale policies that help a lot of

02:08:21.120 | people. It's fascinating. Education often isn't like the bright, shiny object everyone's running

02:08:26.320 | towards. So one of the hard things in politics, when there's something that is good policy,

02:08:33.280 | sometimes it has no momentum because it doesn't have a cheerleader. So where are areas of good

02:08:38.800 | policy that you can like literally just carry across the finish line? Because people tend to

02:08:46.400 | run towards what's the news of the day, sort of to try to address whatever issue is being

02:08:53.120 | talked about on the front pages of papers. And there's so many issues that need to be addressed.

02:08:58.800 | And education is one of them that's just underprioritized. Human trafficking,

02:09:04.800 | that's an issue that I didn't go to the White House thinking I would work on. But you hear

02:09:08.960 | a story of a survivor, and you can't not want to eradicate one of the greatest evils

02:09:17.760 | that the mind can even imagine, the trafficking of people, the exploitation of children.

02:09:24.560 | And I think for so many, they assume that this is a problem that doesn't happen

02:09:29.120 | on our shores. It's something that you may experience at far-flung destinations across

02:09:35.840 | the world, but it's happening there and it's happening here as well. And so through a

02:09:41.200 | coalition of people that on both sides of the aisle that I came to trust and to work well with,

02:09:49.280 | we were able to get legislation which the president signed, passed nine pieces of legislation,

02:09:56.160 | combating trafficking at home and abroad, and digital exploitation of children.

02:10:02.400 | How much of a toll does that take, seeing all the problems in the world at such a large scale,

02:10:10.000 | the immensity of it all? Was that hard to walk around with that, just knowing how much suffering

02:10:15.040 | there is in the world? As you're trying to help all of it, as you're trying to design government

02:10:19.680 | policies to help all of that, it's also a very visceral recognition that there is suffering in

02:10:26.160 | the world. How difficult is that to walk around with? You feel it intensely. You know, we were

02:10:34.560 | just talking about human trafficking. I mean, you don't design these policies in the absence

02:10:40.320 | of the input of survivors themselves, so you hear their stories. I remember a woman who was really

02:10:47.040 | influential in my thinking, Andrea Hipwell, who she was in college where she was lured out by

02:10:54.640 | a guy she thought was a good guy, started dating him. He gets her hooked on drugs, convinces her

02:11:01.760 | to drop out of college, and spends the next five years selling her. She only got out when she was

02:11:07.520 | arrested, and all too often that's happening, too, that the victim's being targeted,

02:11:12.320 | not the perpetrator. So we did a lot with DOJ around changing that,

02:11:19.760 | but now she's helping other survivors get skills and job training and

02:11:29.280 | the therapeutic interventions they need. But you speak with people like Andrea and so many others,

02:11:34.960 | and I mean, you can't not, your heart gets seized by it, and it's both,

02:11:42.640 | it's motivating and it's hard. It's really hard.

02:11:46.880 | I was just talking to a brain surgeon. Many of the surgery he has to do,

02:11:51.680 | he knows the chances are very low of success, and he says that that wears at his armor,

02:12:00.800 | it chips away. It's like, only so many times can you do that.

02:12:05.120 | And thank God he's doing it, because I bet you there are a lot of others that don't

02:12:08.400 | choose that particular field because of those low success rates.

02:12:11.520 | But you can see the pain in his eyes. Maintaining your humanity while doing all of it,

02:12:18.400 | you could see the story, you could see the family that loves that person,

02:12:22.400 | just you feel the immensity of that. And you feel the heartbreak involved with mortality in that

02:12:29.680 | case, and with suffering also in that case. And in general, in all these, in human trafficking,

02:12:35.440 | but even in helping families try to stay afloat, trying to break out or escape poverty, all that,

02:12:44.400 | you get to see those stories of struggle. It's not easy.

02:12:46.960 | But the people that really feel the humanity of that, feel the pain of that, are probably the

02:12:55.360 | right people to be politicians. But it's probably also why you can't stay in there too long.

02:13:00.720 | It's the only time in my life where you actually feel, like there's always a conflict, right,

02:13:08.080 | between work and life and making sure. As a woman, I'd often get asked about, "How do you

02:13:15.600 | balance work and family?" And I never liked that question because balance, it's elusive, right?

02:13:24.480 | You're one fever away from like, "No balance." You're child sick one day, "What do you do?"

02:13:34.640 | There goes balance. Or you have a huge project with a deadline, there goes balance. I think

02:13:40.640 | a better way to frame it is, "Am I living in accordance with my priorities?"

02:13:44.880 | Maybe not every day, but every week, every month, and reflecting on have you

02:13:51.200 | architected a life that aligns with your priorities so that more often than not,

02:13:57.840 | you're where you need to be in that moment. And service at that level was the one time where you

02:14:05.920 | feel incredibly conflicted about having any priorities other than serving. It's finite.

02:14:13.840 | In every business I've built, you're building for duration. And then you go into the White House,

02:14:19.520 | and it is sand through an hourglass. Whether it's four years or eight years,

02:14:23.280 | it's a finite period of time you have. And most people don't last four years. I think the average

02:14:28.960 | in the White House is 18 months. It's exhausting. But it's the only time when you're at home with

02:14:36.960 | your own children that you think about all the people you've met, and you feel guilty about any

02:14:43.360 | time that's spent not advancing those interests to the best of your capacity. And that's a hard

02:14:53.200 | thing. That's a really hard feeling as a parent. And it's really challenging then to be present,

02:14:59.760 | to always need to answer your phone, to always need to be available. It's very difficult.

02:15:07.280 | It's taxing. But it's also the greatest privilege in the world.

02:15:12.160 | So through that, the turmoil of that, the hardship of that, what was the role of family

02:15:16.400 | through all of that, Jared and the kids? What was that like?

02:15:20.960 | That was everything, to have that, to have the support systems I had in place with my husband.

02:15:28.320 | We had left New York and wound up in Washington. In New York, I lived

02:15:33.360 | 10 blocks away from my mother-in-law, who if I wasn't taking my kids to school, she was. So

02:15:38.160 | we lost some of that, which was very hard, but we had what mattered, which was each other.

02:15:46.240 | My kids were young. When I got to Washington, Theo, my youngest, was 8 months old. And Arabella,

02:15:53.680 | my oldest, my daughter, was 5 years old. So they were still quite young. We have a son,

02:16:02.880 | Joseph, who's 3. And I think for me, the dose of levity, coming home at night

02:16:13.440 | and having them there and just joyful, it was super grounding and important for me.

02:16:23.840 | I still remember, Theo, when he was around 3, 3 1/2 years old, Jared used to make me coffee

02:16:30.960 | every morning, and it was my great luxury that I would sit there. He still makes it for me every

02:16:36.560 | morning. I told him I'm never--even though I secretly know how to actually work the coffee

02:16:40.240 | machine--but I've convinced him that I have no idea how to work the coffee machine. Now I'm going

02:16:44.480 | to be busted. But it's a skill I don't want to learn because it's one of his acts of love. He

02:16:50.880 | brings me coffee every morning in bed while I read the newspapers, and Theo would watch this.

02:16:58.320 | And so he got Jared to teach him how to make coffee, and Theo learned how to make a full-blown

02:17:04.480 | cappuccino. And he had so much joy in every morning bringing me this cappuccino. And I

02:17:12.640 | remember the sound of his little steps, the slide. It was so cute coming down the hallway

02:17:21.520 | with my perfectly foamed cappuccino. Now I try to get him to make me coffee, and he's like,

02:17:26.400 | "Come on, Mom." That was a moment in time, but we had a lot of little

02:17:33.040 | moments like that that were just amazing.

02:17:35.600 | Yeah, I got a chance to chat with him, and he has a--his silliness and sense of humor, it's

02:17:42.880 | really joyful. I could see how that could be an escape from the madness of Washington,

02:17:51.360 | of the adult life, the quote-unquote adult life.

02:17:52.720 | And they were young enough. We really kept our home life pretty sheltered from

02:17:56.480 | everything else, and we were able to do so because they were so young and because they

02:18:01.120 | weren't connected to the internet. They were too young for smartphones, all of these things.

02:18:05.760 | We were able to shelter and protect them and allow them to have as normal an upbringing

02:18:12.880 | as was possible in the context we were living. And they brought me, and continue to bring me,

02:18:21.840 | so much joy. But they were--I mean, without Jared and without the kids, it would have been

02:18:27.360 | much more lonely.

02:18:29.280 | Yeah. So three kids, you've now upgraded, two dogs and a hamster.

02:18:34.560 | Well, our second dog, so we rescued him thinking he--we thought he was probably like part German

02:18:42.640 | shepherd, part lab is what we were told. He's now--I don't even know if he qualifies as a dog,

02:18:48.800 | he's like the size of a horse, a small horse, Simba. So I don't think he has much lab in him,

02:18:55.120 | I think--we--Joseph has not wanted to do a DNA test because he really wanted a German shepherd,

02:19:03.760 | so he's a German shepherd.

02:19:04.800 | He's gigantic, yeah.

02:19:06.240 | He is gigantic. And we also have a hamster who's the newest addition because my son, Theo,

02:19:12.320 | he tried to get a dog as well. Our first dog, Winter, became my daughter's dog as she wouldn't

02:19:20.240 | let her brothers play with him or sleep with him and was old enough to bully them into submission.

02:19:25.760 | So then Joseph wanted a dog and got Simba. Theo now wants a dog

02:19:29.120 | and has Buster the hamster in the interim, so we'll see.

02:19:33.120 | What advice would you give to other mothers just having--planning on having kids and maybe advice

02:19:40.160 | to yourself on figuring out this puzzle?

02:19:44.400 | I think being a parent, you have to cultivate within yourself, like, heightened levels of

02:19:53.040 | empathy. You have to really look at each child and see them for who they are, what they enjoy,

02:19:59.200 | what they love, and meet them where they're at. And I think that can be enormously challenging

02:20:11.360 | when your kids are so different in temperament. As they get older, that difference in temperament

02:20:16.160 | may be within the same child depending on the moment of the day. But I think it's actually

02:20:23.280 | made me a much softer person, a much better listener. I think I see people more truly for

02:20:31.280 | who they are as opposed to how I want them to be sometimes. And I think being a parent to three

02:20:38.800 | children who are all exceptional and all incredibly different has enabled that in me.

02:20:45.120 | I think for me, though, they've also been like some of my greatest teachers

02:20:48.880 | in that we were talking about the presence you felt when you were in the jungle

02:20:55.600 | and the connectivity you felt and sort of the simple joy. And I think for us as we grow older,

02:21:05.200 | we kind of disconnect from that. My kids have taught me how to play again. And that's beautiful.

02:21:10.800 | I remember just a couple of weeks ago, we had one of these crazy Miami torrential downpours,

02:21:16.560 | and Arabella comes down. It's around 8 o'clock at night. It's really raining.

02:21:20.320 | And she's got rain boots and pajama pants on, and she's going to take the dogs for a walk in the

02:21:28.400 | rain. Which, you know, she had all day to walk, but she wasn't doing it because they needed to

02:21:32.960 | go for a walk. She was like, "This would be fun." And I'm standing at the doorstep watching her,

02:21:37.600 | and she goes out with Simba and Winter, this massive dog and this little tiny dog.

02:21:42.720 | And I'm watching her walk to the end of the driveway, and she's just dancing,

02:21:47.920 | and it's pouring. And I took off my shoes, and I went out, and I joined her, and we danced in

02:21:52.960 | the rain. And even as like a preteen who normally, you know, she like allowed me to experience the

02:21:58.960 | joy with her. And it was amazing. We can be so much more fun if we allow ourselves to be more

02:22:05.760 | playful. We can be so much more present. I look at--Theo loves games, so we play a whole lot of

02:22:12.000 | board games, any kind of game. So it started with board games. We do a lot of puzzles.

02:22:17.840 | Then it became card games. I just taught him how to play poker.

02:22:21.280 | He loves backgammon, like any kind of game. And he's so fully in them. You know, when he

02:22:28.480 | plays, he plays. My son Joseph, he loves nature. And he'll say to me sometimes when like I'm taking

02:22:36.240 | a picture of something he's observing, like a beautiful sunset, he's like, "Mom, just experience

02:22:41.440 | it." I'm like, "Yes, you're right, Joseph. Just experience it." You know, so those kids have taught

02:22:50.160 | me so much about sort of reconnecting with what's real and what's true and being present in the

02:22:55.920 | moment and experiencing joy. - They always give you permission to sort of reignite the inner child,

02:23:02.400 | just be a kid again. Yeah. And it's interesting what you said, that the puzzle of noticing

02:23:08.240 | each human being, like what makes them beautiful, the unique characteristics,

02:23:12.960 | like what they're good at, the way they want to be mentored. I often see that,

02:23:25.360 | especially with coaches and athletes, young athletes aspiring to be great,

02:23:29.520 | each athlete needs to be trained in a different way. Like I, for example, with some you need a

02:23:36.880 | softer approach. Like with me, I always like a dictatorial approach. I like the coach to be this

02:23:42.800 | menacing figure. That brought out the best in me. I didn't want to be friends with the coach.

02:23:49.840 | I want to almost, I think it's weird to say, but yell that like to be pushed, but that doesn't

02:23:56.320 | work for everybody. And that's a risk you have to take in the coach context of like,

02:24:01.840 | 'cause you can't just yell at everybody. You have to figure out like, what does each person need?

02:24:07.920 | And when you have kids, I imagine the puzzle is even harder. - And when they all need different

02:24:14.240 | things, but yet coexist and are sometimes competitive with one another. So you'll be

02:24:19.280 | at a dinner table, the amount of times I get, well, that's not fair. Why did you let, and I'm

02:24:23.600 | like, life isn't fair. And by the way, like, I'm not here to be fair. I'm like, I'm trying to give

02:24:28.000 | you each what you need. Especially when I've been working really hard and, you know, in the White

02:24:33.200 | House, I'd say, okay, well now we have a Sunday and we have these hours and I'll have like a grand

02:24:38.080 | plan, you know, and we're going to make it count. And it's going to involve, you know,

02:24:44.320 | hot chocolate and sleds, you know, whatever, whatever it is that like my great adventure,

02:24:50.080 | that we're going to go play mini golf. And then I come down all psyched up, all ready to go.

02:24:55.200 | And the kids have zero interest. And there have been a lot of times where I've been like,

02:25:01.440 | we're doing this thing. And then I realized, wait a second, you know, like sometimes you just like

02:25:06.160 | plop down on the floor and start playing magnet tiles, you know, and like, that's where they need

02:25:11.680 | you. And so, so those of us who have sort of like alpha personalities who sometimes it's just,

02:25:19.440 | just witness, like witness what they need. Don't like play with them and allow them to lead the

02:25:25.600 | play. Don't force them down a road you may think is more interesting or productive or educational

02:25:33.280 | or edifying, you know, just, just be with them, observe them and, and then show them that you are

02:25:40.720 | genuinely curious about the things that they are genuinely curious about.

02:25:45.040 | I think there's a lot of love when you do that. - Also, there's just fascinating puzzles. I was

02:25:50.320 | talking to a friend yesterday and she has four kids and they fight a lot and she, she generally

02:25:59.200 | wants to break up the fights, but she's like, I'm not sure if I'm just supposed to let them fight.

02:26:05.600 | Can they figure it out? But you always break, break them up because I'm told that it's okay

02:26:10.080 | for them to fight. Kids do that. They kind of figure out their own situation. That's part

02:26:14.800 | of like the growing up process, but you want to always, especially if it's physical, they're like

02:26:19.280 | pushing each other. You want to kind of stop it, but at the same time, it's also part of the play,

02:26:24.320 | part of the dynamics. And that's a puzzle you also have to figure out. And plus you're probably

02:26:29.520 | worried that they're going to get hurt. - I think there's like, when it gets physical,

02:26:35.120 | that's like, okay, we have to intervene. I know you're into martial arts, but

02:26:40.080 | that's normally like the red line, you know, once it, once it tips into that, but there is always

02:26:45.600 | that, you know, like you have to allow them to problem solve for themselves. Like a little

02:26:50.160 | interpersonal conflict is, is good. It's really hard when you try to navigate something because

02:26:55.280 | everyone thinks you're taking their side. You have oftentimes incomplete information. It's,

02:27:00.160 | I think for parents, what tends to happen too is we see our kids fighting with each other in a way

02:27:07.840 | that all kids do. And we start to project into the future and like catastrophize, you know,

02:27:15.200 | if like my two sons are going through a moment where they're like oil and water, anything one

02:27:21.840 | wants to do, the other doesn't want to do. It's like a very interesting moment. So my instinct is

02:27:27.360 | they're not going to like each other when they're 25. You know, you sort of project into the future

02:27:32.240 | as opposed to recognizing this is a stage that I too went through and it's normal and it's not

02:27:38.400 | building it in your mind into, into something that's unnecessarily consequential.

02:27:46.800 | It's short-term formative conflict.

02:27:49.120 | Yeah.

02:27:49.620 | So, uh, ever since 2016, the, the number and the level of attacks you've been under has been

02:27:58.960 | steadily increasing, has been super intense. How do you walk through the fire of that? You've been

02:28:06.000 | very stoic about the whole thing. I don't think I've ever seen you respond to an attack. You

02:28:14.320 | just let it pass over you. You stay positive and you focus on solving problems. And you didn't

02:28:21.440 | engage while being in DC, you didn't engage into the back and forth fire of the politics.

02:28:27.520 | So what's your philosophy behind that?

02:28:29.840 | I appreciate your saying that I was very stoic about it. I think,

02:28:34.000 | you know, I feel things pretty deeply. So initially, some of that

02:28:39.040 | really took me off guard, like some of the derivative love and hatred, um, some of the

02:28:47.520 | intensity of, of, of the attacks. Um, and there were times when it was, it was so easy to counter

02:28:55.360 | it. I'd even write something out and, and say, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna press send and never

02:29:02.800 | did. I, I felt that sort of getting into the mud, fighting back, it didn't run true to who I am as

02:29:10.720 | a human being. Like it didn't, it felt at odds with, with who I am and how I want to spend my

02:29:17.680 | time. So I think as a result, I was oftentimes on the receiving end of a lot of, a lot of cheap

02:29:24.240 | shots. And I'm okay with that because it's sort of the way I know how to be in the world. I was

02:29:28.720 | focused on things I thought mattered more. And, you know, I, I think part of me also

02:29:35.520 | internalized, there's a concept in Judaism called Lashon Hara, which is translated into,

02:29:43.200 | I think, quite literally evil speech. And the idea that, you know, speaking poorly of another

02:29:53.120 | is almost the moral equivalent to murder because you can't really repair it. You can apologize,

02:30:00.480 | but you can't repair it. Another component of that is that it does as much damage to the person

02:30:06.000 | saying the words, then it does to the person receiving them. And I think about that a lot.

02:30:13.920 | I talk about this concept with, with my kids a lot. And I'm not willing to pay the price

02:30:20.560 | of that fleeting and momentary satisfaction of, of sort of swinging back because I think it would

02:30:28.800 | be, it would be too expensive for my soul. And, and that's how I kind of made peace with it because

02:30:36.560 | I think that's just, that feels more true for me. But it is a little bit contrary in politics.

02:30:45.200 | It's, it's definitely, it's definitely a contrarian viewpoint to, to not get into the fray.

02:30:54.640 | Actually, somebody I love, Dolly Parton, says that she doesn't condemn or criticize,

02:31:00.080 | she loves and accepts. And I like that. It feels, it feels right for me.

02:31:04.880 | I also like that you said that words have power. It's not, sometimes people say, well, words,

02:31:12.640 | when you speak negatively of others, ah, that's just words. But I think there's a cost to that.

02:31:18.480 | There's a cost, like you said, to your soul. And there's a cost in terms of the damage you can do

02:31:23.360 | to the other person, whether it's to their reputation publicly or to them privately,

02:31:28.240 | just as a human being psychologically. And in the place that it puts them, because they think,

02:31:35.120 | they start thinking negatively in general, and then maybe they respond and there's this vicious

02:31:38.960 | downward spiral that happens, that almost like we don't intend to, but it destroys everybody

02:31:43.600 | in the process. You quoted Alan Watts, I love him, in saying, quote, "You're under no obligation to

02:31:52.800 | be the same person you were five minutes ago." So how have the years in DC and the years after

02:31:59.520 | changed you? I love Alan Watts too.

02:32:05.200 | I listen to his lecture sometimes falling asleep. He's got like an on planes, he's got like the most

02:32:10.880 | soothing voice. But I love what he said about, "You have no obligation to be who you were five

02:32:16.240 | minutes ago," because we should always feel that we have the ability to evolve and grow and better

02:32:23.200 | ourselves. I think further than that, if we don't look back on who we were a few years ago, with

02:32:30.560 | some level of embarrassment, we're not growing enough. When I look back, I'm like, "Oh." I feel

02:32:39.360 | like that feeling is because you're growing into hopefully sort of a better version of yourself.

02:32:49.520 | And I hope and feel that that's been true for me as well. I think the person I am today,

02:32:56.880 | we spoke in the beginning of our discussion about some of my earliest ambitions in real

02:33:05.280 | estate and in fashion, and those were amazing adventures and incredible experiences in

02:33:11.840 | government. And I feel today that all of those ambitions are more fully integrated into me as a

02:33:19.440 | human being. I'm much more comfortable with the various pieces of my personality and that any

02:33:26.560 | professional drive is more integrated into more simple pleasures. Everything for me has gotten

02:33:32.480 | much simpler and easier in terms of what I want to do and what I want to be. And I think that's

02:33:39.840 | where my kids have been my teachers, just being fully present and enjoying the little moments.

02:33:48.080 | And it doesn't mean I'm any less driven than I was before. It's just more a part of me than

02:33:54.480 | being sort of the all-consuming energy one has in their 20s.

02:34:01.360 | Yeah, just like you said with your mom, be able to let go and enjoy the water, the sun,

02:34:06.800 | the beach, and enjoy the moment, the simplicity of the moment.

02:34:12.320 | I think a lot about the fact that for a lot of young people, they really know what they want to

02:34:18.880 | do, but they don't actually know who they are. And then I think as you get older, hopefully you

02:34:25.520 | know who you are and you're much more comfortable with ambiguity around what you want to do and

02:34:30.480 | accomplish. You're more flexible in your thinking around those things.

02:34:35.360 | And give yourself permission to be who you are.

02:34:37.600 | Yeah.

02:34:38.100 | You made the decision not to engage in the politics of the 2024 campaign.

02:34:44.800 | If it's okay, let me read what you wrote on the topic.

02:34:47.440 | Quote, "I love my father very much. This time around, I'm choosing to prioritize my young

02:34:54.160 | children and the private life we're creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics.

02:35:00.560 | While I will always love and support my father going forward, I will do so outside the political

02:35:05.360 | arena. I'm grateful to have had the honor of serving the American people, and I will always

02:35:10.720 | be proud of many of our administration's accomplishments." So can you explain your

02:35:16.400 | thinking, your philosophy behind that decision?

02:35:18.880 | I think first and foremost, it was a decision rooted in me being a parent, really thinking

02:35:27.680 | about what they need from me now. You know, politics is a rough, rough business, and I think

02:35:35.840 | it's one that you also can't dabble in. I think you have to either be all in or all out. And I

02:35:43.280 | know today the cost they would pay for me being all in emotionally in terms of my absence at such

02:35:54.880 | a formative point in their life, and I'm not willing to make them bear that cost. I served

02:36:02.960 | for four years and feel so privileged to have done it, but as their mom, I think it's really

02:36:10.880 | important that I do what's right for them. And I think there are a lot of ways you can serve.

02:36:16.400 | I think there's, obviously, we talked about the enormity, the scale of what can be accomplished

02:36:22.080 | in government service, but I think there's something equally valuable about helping

02:36:31.200 | within your own community. I volunteer with the kids a lot, and we feel really good about that

02:36:36.960 | service. It's different, but it's no less meaningful. So I think there are other ways

02:36:42.880 | to serve. I also think, you know, politics is a pretty dark world. There's a lot of darkness,

02:36:52.400 | a lot of negativity, and it's just really at odds with what feels good for me as a human being.

02:37:00.640 | And it's a really rough business. So for me and my family, it feels right to not participate.

02:37:12.640 | So it wears on your soul. And yeah, there is a bit, at least from an outsider's perspective,

02:37:19.040 | a bit of darkness in that part of our world. I wish it didn't have to be this way.

02:37:24.080 | Me too.

02:37:24.960 | I think part of that darkness is just watching all the legal turmoil that's going on.

02:37:30.480 | What's it like for you to see that, your father involved in that, going through that?

02:37:37.360 | On a human level, it's my father. And I love him very much, so it's painful to experience.

02:37:47.120 | But ultimately, I wish it didn't have to be this way.

02:37:50.800 | I like it that underneath all of this, "I love my father" is the thing that you lead with.

02:37:55.760 | That's so true. It is family. And I hope amidst all this turmoil, love is the thing that wins.

02:38:05.120 | It usually does.

02:38:06.960 | In the end, yes. But in the short term, there is, like we were talking about,

02:38:11.920 | there's a bit of bickering. But at least no more duels.

02:38:14.240 | No more duels.

02:38:17.920 | You mentioned Dolly Parton.

02:38:19.040 | That's a segue.

02:38:22.960 | Listen, I'm not very good at this thing. I'm trying to figure out.

02:38:27.200 | Okay, we both love Dolly Parton.

02:38:29.040 | So you're big into live music. So maybe you can mention why you love Dolly Parton.

02:38:37.280 | I definitely would love to talk to her. I would love to interview her. She's such an icon.

02:38:40.640 | Oh, I hope you do.

02:38:42.400 | What I love about her, and I've really come to love her in recent years,

02:38:46.640 | is she's so authentically herself. And she's obviously so talented and so accomplished,

02:38:54.480 | and this extraordinary woman. But I just feel like she has no conflict within herself as to who she

02:39:00.160 | is. She reminds me a lot of my mom in that way. And it's super refreshing and really beautiful

02:39:07.200 | to observe somebody who's so in the public eye being so fully secure in who they are,

02:39:15.440 | what their talent is, and what drives them. So I think she's amazing. And she leads with a lot of

02:39:21.840 | love and positivity. So I think she's very cool. I hope you have a long conversation with her.

02:39:26.560 | Yeah, she's like, okay. So there's many things to say about her. First, incredibly great musician,

02:39:31.840 | songwriter, performer. Also can create an image and have fun with it.

02:39:37.040 | Have fun being herself over the top.

02:39:41.040 | It feels that way, right? After all these years, it feels like she enjoys what she does. And you

02:39:48.800 | also have the sense that if she didn't, she wouldn't do it.

02:39:51.200 | That's right. And just an iconic country musician, country music singer.

02:39:56.400 | There's a lot. We've talked about a lot of musicians. Who do you enjoy? You mentioned

02:40:01.920 | Adele, seeing her perform, hanging out with her.

02:40:05.360 | Yeah, I mean, she's extraordinary. Her voice is unreal. I find her to be so talented. And she's

02:40:13.360 | so unique in that three-year-olds love her music. She was actually the first concert Arabella ever

02:40:19.040 | went to at Madison Square Garden when she was around four. And 90-year-olds love her music.

02:40:24.560 | And that's pretty rare to have that kind of bandwidth of resonance. So I think she's so

02:40:31.600 | talented. We actually just saw her. I took all three kids in Las Vegas around a month ago.

02:40:36.320 | Alice Johnson, whose case I had worked with in the White House, my father commuted her sentence.

02:40:44.560 | Her case was brought to me by a friend, Kim Kardashian. And she came to the show. We all

02:40:51.920 | went together with some mutual friends. And it was amazing to see Adele, but it was a very profound

02:40:59.600 | experience for me to have with my kids because she rode with us in a car on the way to the show.

02:41:04.240 | And she talked to my kids about her experience and her story and how her case found its way to me.

02:41:11.120 | And I think for young children, it's very abstract, you know, policy. And so for her to be

02:41:17.600 | able to share with them this was a very beautiful moment and led to a lot of really incredible

02:41:24.800 | conversations with each of my kids about our time in service because, you know, they gave up a lot

02:41:31.360 | for me to do it. Actually, Alice told them the most beautiful story about the plays she used

02:41:37.600 | to put on in prison, how these shows were like the hottest ticket in town. Like, you could not

02:41:41.760 | get into them. They always extended their run. But for the people who were in them, a lot of those

02:41:48.960 | men and women had never experienced applause. Nobody had ever shown up at their games or at

02:41:57.520 | their plays and clapped for them. And the emotional experience of just being able to

02:42:03.840 | give someone that, you know, being able to stand and applaud for someone and how meaningful that

02:42:10.800 | was. And she was showing us pictures from these different productions. And it was a really,

02:42:15.760 | it was a beautiful moment. Alice actually, after her sentence was commuted and she came out of

02:42:22.480 | prison, together we worked on 23 different pardons or commutations. So the impact of

02:42:29.600 | her experience and how she was able to take her opportunity and create that same opportunity for

02:42:39.440 | others who were deserving and who she believed in was very beautiful. So anyway, that was an

02:42:46.720 | extraordinary concert experience for my kids to be able to have that moment.

02:42:50.320 | What a story. So just, that's the sort of, the—

02:42:52.960 | And then here we are dancing at Adele.

02:42:56.720 | Exactly. Exactly. It was like that turning point—

02:42:58.400 | Six years later. It was almost to the day, six years later.

02:43:00.640 | So that policy, that meeting of the minds resulted in a major turning point in her

02:43:05.600 | life and Alice's life and now you're dancing with Adele.

02:43:08.080 | And now we're at Adele.

02:43:09.760 | Yeah. I mean, you mentioned also there, I've seen commutations where

02:43:13.680 | it's an opportunity to step in and consider the ways that the justice system does not always work

02:43:23.920 | well. Like in cases when it's nonviolent crime and drug offenses, there's a case of a person

02:43:32.880 | you mentioned that received a life sentence for selling weed.

02:43:37.680 | You know, and it's just the number, it's like hundreds of thousands of people are in the

02:43:45.120 | federal prison and jail and the system for drug, for selling drugs. That's the only thing with

02:43:51.280 | no violence on their record whatsoever. And obviously there's a lot of complexity,

02:43:57.680 | the details matter, but oftentimes the justice system does not do right in the way we think

02:44:04.320 | right is. And it's nice to be able to step in and help people like, and direct them.

02:44:08.400 | They're overlooked and they have no advocate. Jared and I helped in a small way on his effort,

02:44:16.400 | but he really spearheaded the effort on criminal justice reform through the First Step Act, which

02:44:22.000 | was an enormously consequential piece of legislation that gave so many people another

02:44:28.720 | opportunity. And that was amazing. So working with him closely on that was a beautiful thing

02:44:34.480 | for us to also experience together. But in the final days of the administration, you know,

02:44:38.720 | you're not getting legislation passed. And anything you do administratively is going to be

02:44:44.560 | probably overturned by an incoming administration. So, you know, how do you use that time for

02:44:50.240 | maximum results? And I really dug in on pardons and commutations that I thought were

02:44:56.000 | overdue and were worthy. And my last night in Washington, D.C., the gentleman you mentioned,

02:45:06.560 | Corvin, I was on the phone with his mother at 1230 in the morning, telling her that her son

02:45:13.760 | would be getting out the next day. And it felt really, it's one person, but you see with Alice,

02:45:19.280 | like the ripple effect of, you know, the commutation granted to her and her ability and

02:45:24.880 | the impact she'll have within her family with her grandkids. And now she's an advocate for so many

02:45:30.800 | others who are voiceless. You know, it felt like, it felt like the perfect way to end four years to

02:45:36.160 | be able to, to be able to call those parents and call those kids in some cases and give them the

02:45:42.400 | news that a loved one was coming home. And I just love the cool image of you,

02:45:46.480 | Kim Kardashian, and Alice just dancing on Adele show with the kids. I love it.

02:45:50.080 | Well, Kim wasn't at the Adele show, but she had connected us. It was beautiful.

02:45:55.600 | Yeah. The way Adele can hold just like the badassness she has on stage. She does like

02:46:05.360 | heartbreak songs like better than anyone, or no, it's not even heartbreak. Like what's,

02:46:09.600 | what's that genre of song? Like rolling in the deep, like a little anger, a little love,

02:46:14.800 | a little like something, a little attitude, and just like one of the greatest voices ever.

02:46:20.080 | All of that together, just by herself.

02:46:22.240 | Yeah. You can strip it down and the power of her voice. You know, I think about that.

02:46:26.880 | One of the things we were talking about live music, one of the amazing things now is you,

02:46:32.400 | there's so much incredible concert material that's been uploaded to YouTube. So sometimes I just sit

02:46:39.040 | there and watch these like old shows. We both love Stevie Ray Vaughan, like watching him perform.

02:46:45.040 | You can even find old videos of like Django Reinhardt.

02:46:47.680 | You got me.

02:46:48.240 | I got you.

02:46:48.720 | You got me, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

02:46:49.600 | Texas Flood.

02:46:50.640 | We had this moment, which is hilarious that you said like one of the songs you really like

02:46:55.200 | of Stevie's is Texas Flood.

02:46:57.520 | Well, my bucket list is to learn how to play it.

02:46:59.440 | It's a bucket list. It's just a bucket list item. You made me feel so good because for me,

02:47:05.440 | Texas Flood was the first solo on guitar I've ever learned because for me, it was like the

02:47:09.920 | impossible solo. And then that was, so I worked really hard to learn it. It's like one of the

02:47:16.480 | most iconic sort of blues songs, Texas blues songs. And now you made me fall in love with

02:47:24.000 | the song again, want to play it out live, at the very least put it up on YouTube.

02:47:28.400 | Because it is, it's so fun to improvise. And when you lose yourself in the song,

02:47:33.120 | it truly is a blues song. You can have fun with it.

02:47:35.760 | I hope you do do that.

02:47:37.120 | Throw on a Stevie Ray Vaughan.

02:47:38.080 | Regardless, I want you to play it for me.

02:47:39.680 | A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

02:47:42.000 | But he's amazing. And there's so many great performers that are playing live now.

02:47:47.040 | I just saw Chris Stapleton show. He's an amazing country artist.

02:47:52.400 | He's too good.

02:47:53.120 | That guy is so good.

02:47:54.640 | Lucas Nelson's one of my favorite to see live. And there's so many incredible songwriters and

02:48:01.520 | musicians that are out there touring today. But I think you also, you can go online and watch some

02:48:06.720 | of these old performances like Django Reinhardt was the first, because I torture myself,

02:48:11.680 | was the first song I learned to play on the guitar. And it took me like nine months to a year.

02:48:18.320 | It was, I mean, I should have chosen a different song, but Uetu Monomore,

02:48:22.160 | one of his songs was, and it was like finger style and I was just going through and grinding it out.

02:48:29.440 | And that's kind of how I started to learn to play by playing that song.

02:48:34.640 | But to see these old videos of him playing, without all his fingers and the skill and the

02:48:40.720 | dexterity. One of my favorite live performances is actually who really influenced Adele as Aretha

02:48:46.960 | Franklin. And she did this, she did a version of Amazing Grace. Have you ever seen this video?

02:48:54.240 | No.

02:48:54.800 | I cry. Look up. It was in LA. It was like the temple missionary Baptist church.

02:49:00.560 | Talk about stripped down. She's literally, I mean, just listen to this.

02:49:05.200 | Well, you could do one note and you could just kill it.

02:49:16.160 | The pain, the soulfulness.

02:49:22.000 | The spirit you feel in her when you watch this.

02:49:25.680 | That's true. Adele carries some of that spirit also, right?

02:49:30.240 | Yeah. And you can take away all the instruments with Adele and just have that voice.

02:49:36.160 | And it's so commanding and it's so amazing. Anyway, you watch this and you see the arc of

02:49:44.800 | also the experience of the people in the choir and them starting to join in. Anyway, it's amazing.

02:49:52.000 | I love watching Queen, like Freddie Mercury, Queen performances.

02:49:55.440 | Yeah.

02:49:55.920 | In terms of vocalists and just great stage presence.

02:49:59.280 | That Live Aid performance is considered one of the best of all, I think.

02:50:02.240 | I've watched that so many times. He's so cool.

02:50:05.040 | Here, wait. Pull up that for a second.

02:50:06.320 | Go to that part where he's saying "Radio Gaga" and they're all mimicking his arm moves. It's so cool.

02:50:20.160 | Look at that.

02:50:20.720 | Oh, man. I miss that guy.

02:50:24.080 | So good.

02:50:25.120 | So that's an example of a person that was born to be on stage.

02:50:28.400 | So good. Well, we were talking surfing, we were talking jiu-jitsu. I think live music

02:50:34.160 | is one of those kind of rare moments where you can really be present.

02:50:38.800 | Where something about the anticipation of choosing what show you're going to go to

02:50:45.280 | and then waiting for the date to come. And normally it happens in the context of community.

02:50:49.520 | You go with friends and then allowing yourself to sort of fall into it is incredible.

02:50:54.960 | So you've been training jiu-jitsu.

02:50:57.920 | Yes. Trying.

02:51:01.280 | I mean, I've seen you do jiu-jitsu. You're very athletic. You know how to use your body

02:51:10.160 | to commit violence. Maybe there's better ways of phrasing that, but anyway.

02:51:14.960 | It's been a skill that's been honed over time.

02:51:17.680 | Yeah. I mean, what do you like about jiu-jitsu?

02:51:21.440 | Well, first of all, I love the way I came to it. It was my daughter.

02:51:26.320 | I think I told you this story. At 11, she told me that she wanted to learn self-defense

02:51:34.720 | and she wanted to learn how to protect herself, which as a mom, I was so proud about because

02:51:39.760 | at 11, I was not thinking about defending myself. I loved that she had sort of that

02:51:44.880 | desire and awareness. So I called some friends, actually a mutual friend of ours, and asked

02:51:52.720 | around for people who I could work with in Miami. And they recommended the Valente Brothers

02:51:58.560 | studio. And you've met all three of them now. They're these remarkable human beings.

02:52:04.080 | And they've been so wonderful for our family. I mean, first starting with Arabella, I used

02:52:08.560 | to take her and then she'd kind of encourage me and she'd sort of pull me into it. And

02:52:13.440 | I started doing it with her. And then Joseph and Theo saw us doing it. They wanted to start

02:52:20.080 | doing it. So now they joined and then Jared joined. So now we're all doing jiu-jitsu.

02:52:25.280 | And for me, there's something really empowering knowing that I have some basic skills

02:52:30.240 | to defend myself. I think it's something as humans we've kind of gotten away from.

02:52:35.280 | You look at any other animal and even the giraffe, they'll use their neck. The lion,

02:52:43.200 | the tiger, every species. And then there's us, who most of us don't. And I didn't know

02:52:50.560 | how to protect myself. And I think that it gives you a sense of confidence and also gives you kind

02:52:56.080 | of a sense of calm, knowing how to deescalate rather than escalate a situation. I also think

02:53:03.600 | as part of the training, you develop more natural awareness when you're out and about.

02:53:15.440 | And I feel like especially, you know, everyone's you get on an elevator and like the first thing

02:53:19.440 | people do is pick up their phone. You're walking down the street. People are getting hit by cars

02:53:23.200 | because they're walking into traffic. I think as you start to get this training, you become

02:53:28.080 | much more aware of the broader context of what's happening around you, which is really healthy

02:53:35.520 | and good as well. It's been beautiful. Actually, the Valente brothers, they have this 753 code that

02:53:41.840 | was developed with some of the sort of samurai principles in mind. And all of my kids have

02:53:50.480 | memorized it, and they'll talk to me about it. Theo, he's eight years old. He'll be able to

02:53:56.480 | recite all 15. So, you know, benevolence and fitness and nutrition and flow and awareness

02:54:05.120 | and balance. And it's an unbelievable thing. And they'll actually integrate it into conversations

02:54:12.960 | where they'll talk about something that happened. Yeah, rectitude, courage.

02:54:16.640 | Benevolence, respect, honesty, honor, loyalty. So, this is not about jujitsu techniques or

02:54:22.240 | fighting techniques. This is about a way of life, about the way you interact with the world,

02:54:26.400 | with other people. Exercise, nutrition, rest, hygiene, positivity, that's more on the physical

02:54:31.760 | side of things. Awareness, balance, and flow. It's the mind, the body, the soul, effectively,

02:54:36.960 | is how they break it out. And the kids can only advance and get their stripes if

02:54:40.800 | they really internalize this. They give examples of each of them. And my own kids will come home

02:54:46.640 | from school, and they'll tell me examples of how things happen that weren't aligned with the 753

02:54:52.160 | code. So, it's a framework, much like religion is in our house and can be for others. It's a

02:54:59.440 | framework to discuss things that happen in their life, large and small, and has been beautiful. So,

02:55:06.880 | I do think that body-mind connection is super strong in jujitsu.

02:55:12.560 | So, there's many things I love about the Valenti brothers, but one of them is how rooted it is in

02:55:18.560 | philosophy and history of martial arts in general. You know, a lot of places, you'll practice the

02:55:23.200 | sport of it, maybe the art of it, but to recognize the history and what it means to be a martial

02:55:29.760 | artist broadly, on and off the mat, that's really great. And the other thing that's great is they

02:55:34.400 | also don't forget the self-defense route, the actual fighting routes. So, it's not just a sport,

02:55:39.040 | it's a way to defend yourself on the street in all situations. And that gives you a confidence

02:55:45.280 | in, just like you said, an awareness about your own body and awareness about others.

02:55:49.200 | It is, you know, sadly, we forget, but it's a world full of violence or the capacity for

02:55:56.720 | violence. So, it's good to have an awareness of that and a confidence how to essentially avoid it.

02:56:02.560 | 100%. I've seen it with all of my kids and myself, how much they've benefited from it. But

02:56:10.960 | that self-defense component and the philosophical elements of either they,

02:56:16.080 | Pedro will often tell them about like wu-wei and sort of soft resistance and some of these

02:56:25.920 | sort of more Eastern philosophies that they get exposed to through their practice there that are

02:56:35.600 | sort of non-resistance that are beautiful and hard concepts to internalize as an adult, but especially

02:56:42.880 | when you're 12, 10, and 8, respectively. So, it's been an amazing experience for us all.

02:56:50.720 | I love people like Pedro because he's like finding books that are in Japanese and translating them

02:56:56.560 | to try to figure out the details of a particular history. He's like an ultra scholar of martial

02:57:04.880 | arts and I love that. I love when people give everything, every part of themselves to the thing

02:57:09.280 | they're practicing. You know, people have been fighting each other for a very long time. And I

02:57:14.800 | love from the Colosseum on, you can't fake anything, you can't lie about anything. It's

02:57:21.360 | truly honest. You're there and you either win or lose. It's simple. And that's like, it's also

02:57:27.840 | humbling that the reality of that is humbling. And oftentimes in life, things are not that simple,

02:57:34.480 | not that black and white. So, it's nice to have that sometimes. That's the biggest thing I gained

02:57:39.520 | from jiu-jitsu is getting my ass kicked, which is the humbling. And it's nice to just get humbled in

02:57:45.680 | a very clear way. Sports in general are great for that. I think surfing probably, because I can

02:57:50.000 | imagine just, you know, yeah, face planting. Not being able to stay on the board, it's humbling.

02:57:58.480 | And the power of the wave is humbling. So, just like your mom, you're an adventurer.

02:58:03.360 | Are there, your bucket list is probably like 120 pages.

02:58:08.480 | There are things that just pop to mind that you're like thinking about, especially in the near

02:58:15.440 | future, just anything. Well, I hope it always is long. You know, I hope I've never like exhausted

02:58:21.200 | exploring all the things I'm curious about. I always tell my kids whenever they say, you know,

02:58:25.360 | "Mom, I'm bored," only boring people get bored. Like, there's too much to learn. There's too much

02:58:31.760 | to learn. So, I've got a long one. You know, I think obviously there are some like immediate,

02:58:36.480 | tactical, you know, interesting things that I'm doing. I'm incubating a bunch of businesses. I'm

02:58:41.840 | investing in a bunch of companies that hopefully I'll always can continue to do that. Some of the

02:58:47.440 | fun things I'm doing in real estate now. So, those are all on the list of things I'm passionate and

02:58:52.320 | excited about, you know, continuing to explore and learn. But in terms of the like the ones that are

02:58:57.920 | more pure sort of adventure or hobby, I think I'd like to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Actually,

02:59:03.200 | I know I would. And the only thing keeping me from doing it in the short term is I feel like it'd be

02:59:09.280 | such a great experience to do with my kids. And I'd love to have that experience with them. I also

02:59:14.640 | told Arabella we were talking about this archery competition that happens in Mongolia and she loves

02:59:19.840 | horseback riding. So, I'm like I feel like that would be an amazing thing to experience together.

02:59:24.400 | I want to get barreled by a wave and learn how to play Texas Flood. I want to see the Northern

02:59:32.240 | Lights. Like I want to go and experience that. I feel like that would be really beautiful.

02:59:40.560 | I want to get my black belt like you have. I asked you, how long did it take? But so,

02:59:48.560 | I want to get my black belt in jiu-jitsu. That's going to be a longer-term goal but

02:59:53.200 | within the next decade. Yeah, a lot of things. You know, I'd love to go to space.

03:00:00.640 | Not just space. I think I'd love to go to the Moon.

03:00:03.680 | Like step on the Moon.

03:00:05.760 | Yeah. Or float, you know, in close proximity like that famous photo.

03:00:11.120 | Yeah. Just you and--

03:00:13.680 | The space suit. I feel like Mars is at this point in my life--

03:00:18.880 | A little too far away.

03:00:19.600 | Well, the Moon's like four days feels more manageable.

03:00:22.960 | I don't know. But the sunset on Mars is blue. It's the opposite color. I hear it's beautiful.

03:00:27.440 | Might be worth it. I don't know.

03:00:28.640 | You negotiate with Theo.

03:00:30.880 | Yeah.

03:00:31.380 | Let me know how it goes. Let me know how it goes.

03:00:35.280 | I think actually just even going to space where you can look back on Earth.

03:00:38.640 | Yeah.

03:00:39.120 | I think that just to see this little--

03:00:42.400 | Pale blue dot.

03:00:44.080 | Pale blue dot. Just all the stuff that ever happened in human civilization is on that.

03:00:50.880 | And to be able to look at it and just be in awe. I don't think that's a thing that will go away.

03:00:56.640 | I think being interplanetary, my hope is that that heightens for us how

03:01:04.720 | rare it is what we have. Like how precious the Earth is. I hope that it has that effect.

03:01:13.360 | Because I think there's a big component to interplanetary travel that kind of taps into

03:01:22.400 | this kind of manifest destiny inclination. Like the human desire to conquer territory and expand

03:01:33.440 | the footprint of civilization that sometimes feels much more rooted in like dominance and conquest

03:01:40.160 | than curiosity, wonder. And obviously, I think there's maybe an existential imperative for it

03:01:50.960 | at some point or a strategic and security one. But I hope that what feels inevitable

03:02:01.040 | at this moment. I mean, you know Elon Musk and what he's doing with SpaceX and

03:02:05.280 | Jeff Bezos and others. It feels like it's not an if, it's a when at this point. I hope it also

03:02:12.560 | underscores the need to protect what we have here.

03:02:14.960 | Yeah. And I hope it's the curiosity that drives that exploration. And I hope the exploration

03:02:23.440 | will give us a deeper appreciation of the thing we have back home. And that Earth will always be

03:02:28.240 | home. And it's a home that we protect and celebrate. What gives you hope about the future

03:02:34.720 | of this thing we have going on, human civilization, the whole thing?

03:02:38.560 | I think I feel a lot of hope when I'm in nature. I feel a lot of hope when

03:02:43.680 | I am experiencing people who are good and honest and pure and true and passionate. And

03:02:54.560 | that's not an uncommon experience. So those experiences give me hope.

03:02:59.600 | Yeah. Other humans, we're pretty cool.

03:03:01.280 | I love humanity. We're awesome. You know, not always, but we're a pretty good species.

03:03:09.920 | Yeah. For the most part, on the whole, we do all right. We do all right. We create some

03:03:14.240 | beautiful stuff. And I hope we keep creating. And I hope you keep creating. You've already

03:03:19.840 | done a lot of amazing things, build a lot of amazing things. And I hope you keep building

03:03:24.960 | and creating and doing a lot of beautiful things in this world. Ivanka, thank you so much for

03:03:32.080 | talking today. Thank you, Lex.

03:03:33.520 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ivanka Trump. To support this podcast,

03:03:39.600 | please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from

03:03:44.960 | Marcus Aurelius. "Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars and see yourself running with them."

03:03:53.760 | Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.

03:03:59.840 | you

03:03:59.920 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Ivanka Trump: Politics, Family, Real Estate, Fashion, Music, and Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #436

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