NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump paid respects to his first wife, Ivana Trump, joining their three children Wednesday at a funeral Mass for the 1980s style icon and businesswoman who helped him build an empire that launched him to the presidency.
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“A very sad day, but at the same time a celebration of a wonderful and beautiful life,” the ex-president wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, before heading to the funeral Mass.
“This will not be easy!!!” added Trump, who attended the service with his current wife, former first lady Melania Trump.
Donald and Ivana Trump’s three children — Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric — and their families followed Ivana’s gold-colored coffin into St. Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Tiffany Trump, the daughter of the former president and his second wife, Marla Maples, also attended the service, as did family friends including Jeanine Pirro, co-host of Fox News’ “The Five,” and Charles Kushner, a real estate developer and the father of Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner. Fashion designer Dennis Basso, a longtime friend of Ivana Trump’s, was also among the mourners.
Trump’s family announced Thursday that the 73-year-old had died at her Manhattan home. Authorities said the death was an accident, with blunt impact injuries to her torso as the cause.
“We all want to remember Ivana as the vibrant, sociable person she was,” longtime friend R. Couri Hay said before the service.
Ivana and Donald Trump met in the 1970s and were married from 1977 to 1992. In the 1980s, they were a power couple, and she became well known in her own right, instantly recognizable with her blond hair in an updo and her glamorous look.
Ivana Trump also took part in her husband’s businesses, managing one of his Atlantic City casinos and picking out some of the design elements in New York City’s Trump Tower.
Their very public divorce was ugly, but in recent years they were friendly. Ivana Trump was an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and said they spoke on a regular basis.
Seems like she was a nice decent lady. She raised 3 wonderful respectful children.
Ivanka not only attended the funeral service but also delivered a eulogy. I’m waiting for some pseudo-chochom to say that she had no halachic connection anymore to her biological mother and that she shouldn’t have been there with her husband, kids and father-in-law. If her Rav permitted it, I wouldn’t do any double-guessing.
Great
So Ivanka got converted by a modern rabbi probably somehow affiliated with that YU thing why am I not surprised. Same YU who encourage toeiva and pray for lapid
I’m surprised than Ivana’s Jewish daughter and grandchildren along with the Kushners attended a funeral in a Roman Catholic Church. Also surprising that there was a church funeral for a woman who had 3 or 4 divorces followed my marriages which violate canon law.