‘Where is Ivanka?’ First daughter seeks control in dual role as White House aide

Ivanka Trump tried to travel to South Korea as the president’s envoy — but she could not escape also being his celebrity daughter.

She peppered National Security Council experts in advance with questions, not just about the nuclear threat, but also about South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his wife’s hobbies. Flying over the Pacific bound for the Winter Olympic Games last month, she pored over a research dossier for hours. And she and her team choreographed many of the possible encounters she might have, including acting out what she would do if a North Korean official tried to shake her hand.

“I don’t like to leave a lot up to fate,” President Trump’s 36-year-old daughter, also a senior White House adviser, said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Ivanka Trump likes to be in complete control — over-prepared and deliberate — in contrast to her freewheeling and impulsive father. 

But at the moment, Ivanka — whose first name has become a brand identity — controls increasingly little of the world she inhabits. The White House is careening from crisis to crisis. Her colleagues are leaking damaging anecdotes about her and husband Jared Kushner. Tensions between the couple and Chief of Staff John F. Kelly are intensifying. And all the while, the dark legal cloud hanging over her family is threatening to unleash a downpour.