When Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump were introduced by their husbands a few years ago, they clicked immediately — the two famous daughters swanned around Manhattan together for a time, posing on the red carpet at events like the Glamour Women of the Year Awards where they laughed and embraced for the cameras.

They seemed to genuinely delight in each other’s presence and had much common ground. Last year, Chelsea even compared Ivanka’s natural charm to her own father’s while praising her in the glossy pages of Vogue.


But with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump now on track for a King Kong versus Godzilla political collision in November, that friendship has been put temporarily on hold — both women, sources close to them said, have chosen to no longer be seen together in public during the election. Given the personal nastiness and vitriol of the campaign already, it may be difficult for the relationship to recover.

Donald Trump has dredged up Bill Clinton’s sex scandals from the '90s to attack Hillary Clinton. "She's got one of the great women abusers of all time sitting in her house, waiting for her to come home for dinner," Trump has said on the trail, calling the former president's past fair game for attack.

Trump has also used vulgar language in talking about the former secretary of state, claiming she "got schlonged" by Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and he added in a menacing threat, "I haven’t even started on her yet.”

Meanwhile, the Clinton war machine is gearing up to take on Trump. Hillary Clinton has said that his “his bigotry, his bluster, his bullying have become his campaign.” And the general election is still months away.

Chelsea and Ivanka don’t blame each other, a friend of both women said. “I don’t think Chelsea thinks Ivanka is controlling her dad,” said the friend. “I don’t think she blames Ivanka.”

Associates said the “bipartisan BFF” storyline hyped by the tabloids overstates the relationship between Chelsea and Ivanka — theirs was a budding friendship. They are the kind of friends who see each other for dinner a few times a year, not those who text each other all day. “They genuinely relate to each other and care about each other and ran in the same circles,” said one associate.

Chelsea, 36, is more serious and reserved, Ivanka, 34, is more naturally outgoing and socially more at ease. But they hit it off, associates said, in part because of a shared empathy from growing up with incredible privilege and public pain. Both women lived through their fathers' front page sex scandals at formative ages, and ultimately chose to devote themselves to their family’s work. Most importantly, both have served as stabilizing influences for their famous and sometimes scandal-prone fathers.

Today, Chelsea and Ivanka serve as board members and high-ranking officials at the Clinton Foundation and the Trump Organization, respectively. The two non-Jewish women married Jewish men from prominent families in real estate and politics — both chose Vera Wang gowns for their high-profile nuptials. Both have written advice books for young women, and despite cultivating a large public persona, both have become perhaps equally calculating and guarded about their public images.

Both Chelsea and Ivanka declined through publicists to comment for this story.

Offering insight into the awkwardness of the current situation as a member of the exclusive political daughters of New York club, equestrian Georgina Bloomberg said: “I am good friends with two of Mr. Trump’s kids and no matter what happens in the presidential race, that won’t change.” Georgina’s father, Michael Bloomberg, announced Monday he would not mount a third-party bid for fear of helping to elect Donald Trump, who he said has run a “demagogic” campaign. “Our friendship has nothing to do with who our fathers are, or what their relationship becomes,” she said.

Georgina said she is also sympathetic to Ivanka’s balancing act as she plays the role of supportive daughter without owning Trump’s most obscene comments or divisive proposals, such as a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, or calling Mexican immigrants rapists.

“Donald has always been, and still is, a great father, and I know she is very proud of him and what he has accomplished,” she said. “Just like me, this doesn’t mean she has to agree with everything her father stands for — I certainly didn’t agree with everything my father did or believes, but we are our own people.”

For Chelsea and Ivanka, the friendship wasn’t so awkward when they first became close. Back then, their parents were on friendly terms. The Clintons famously attended Donald Trump’s 2006 wedding to Melania Knavs, and the two fathers shared a passion for golf. Ivanka donated money to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, and the young women traveled through the same green rooms, red carpets and philanthropic and cultural galas.

“They both feel in their own way a massive responsibility to do something with how they were raised,” said an associate. “Both are really ambitious, both feel obligated to do something valuable.”

In their new circumstances, their paths are now more likely to cross on the campaign trail than the red carpet as they have become high-value surrogates for their parents.

For Ivanka, who has traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire to support her father, that means serving as an antidote to her father’s boorish personality and, in particular, his misogynistic comments. “I don’t think he’s gender-targeted at all,” she said in a CNN interview late last year, pointing to herself as the prime example. “I wouldn’t be the person who I am today, I wouldn’t be a high-level executive within his organization if he felt that way. He’s always supported and encouraged women. He’d be amazing for women in this country.”

But she also must distance herself from any specific policy proposals he talks about on the campaign trail. “I’m not part of his campaign and he’s kept me very busy working alongside my brothers and running the organization,” she said. “I’ll leave policy to him, but I can speak from my vantage point as a child and a colleague. He’s been an amazing parent.”

In some ways, Chelsea has an easier task — she is a softener of her mother’s hard edges, but she easily embraces her mother’s entire platform. Chelsea’s events across the country — she has done 58 this year — follow a script: She gives a 15-minute speech about her mother, then takes questions from the audience for 45 minutes, often explaining in detail different policy planks of her mother’s campaign. “Every issue that I care so fundamentally about is at stake,” Chelsea said while campaigning in New Hampshire. The acutely guarded former first daughter has even started to field questions from reporters.

It’s all much more political than Ivanka has been or wants to be. Politics, associates said, is never good for business and for Ivanka, her personal life is her brand. In recent years, she has branded herself as the face of modern female empowerment, with a jewelry line for “self-purchasing women,” and a fashion line built on buying a piece of the Trump lifestyle.

Friends said her interest is commerce, not politics; her goal is to become one of the biggest brands in the world. Last week, Ivanka launched her own Snapchat channel, promising “exclusive content behind the scenes at Ivanka Trump headquarters.”

If Ivanka would never aspire to deliver a policy speech at a Trump rally, sharing behind-the-scenes content about her personal life is something Chelsea shies away from. Ivanka constantly shares pictures of her two children on Instagram. Chelsea, in contrast, has released one picture of her daughter, Charlotte, while announcing her second pregnancy last December.

Trump trusts his daughter’s judgment in business, but has been less open to her feedback when it comes to his campaign. Last year, New York Magazine reported that Ivanka tried to persuade her father to tone down his language about Mexican immigrants. But he refused to walk back his comments. Trump’s chief spokeswoman Hope Hicks, originally hired by Ivanka after working as an outside consultant doing hotel promotion in Las Vegas, remains a channel for Ivanka between the business enterprise and the campaign.

Like Ivanka, Chelsea, insiders said, is trusted by her parents when it comes to running the foundation. But she is not plugged into the day-to-day of the campaign's decision making and offers her advice personally to her mother.

If their friendship is a casualty of the election, it’s a price that both would likely be willing to pay to see their parents in the White House.

“After all,” Ivanka wrote in her self-help book, "The Trump Card," “we Trumps don’t play to perception. We play to win.”

