Ivanka Trump has broken her silence on the harrowing moments she watched the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on her father, Donald Trump, revealing she witnessed the event in “almost-real time” while shielding her children from the television screen.
In a comprehensive interview on the The Diary of a CEO podcast released April 9, the former White House advisor detailed the scene at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Ivanka, 44, was with two of her three children when news broke of the gunfire at the campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“There was a lot of commotion. The televisions were on, so I saw it almost immediately,” she told host Steven Bartlett. As the shooting unfolded, her primary focus shifted to her children, Arabella, Joseph, and Theodore.
“It was before he had stood back up that I had seen what was transpiring,” she recalled. “My first reaction was to turn them away. It was incredibly difficult.”
Despite the immediate shock and the graphic nature of the event, Ivanka described an intuitive sense of calm regarding her father’s survival. “Interestingly, I knew in real time in that moment that he was fine. I just knew it wasn’t his time,” she stated, adding that while she was “horrified and scared,” she refused to believe the worst outcome had transpired.
Following the shooting—perpetrated by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was neutralized by a Secret Service counter-sniper team—Donald Trump returned to his Bedminster residence late that night. Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, 45, waited for the former president’s arrival from the hospital.
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Reflecting on the near-miss, Ivanka emphasized a newfound perspective on the brevity of life. “We were so fortunate that day that this was a failed attempt to take his life, not a realized one,” she said. “You sort of recommit to love and connection and to a recognition of how short our time here on earth is.”
When questioned about the shooter, Ivanka pointed to a “sickness” underlying the act. While she acknowledged that “forgiveness is a difficult thing in this regard,” she maintained that she refuses to let the event cause lasting bitterness.
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“I could look at what happened and be rightfully traumatized by the experience… but you have to move through it,” she said. “In life, you only have a choice in how you respond, and I choose to see the positive outcome that transpired and dwell there.”
The interview marks one of Ivanka Trump’s most personal reflections on the 2024 shooting, an event that remains a focal point of ongoing federal and congressional investigations into Secret Service protocols and political violence.
