The past few days I’ve been startled to see the revival of something that was seemingly lost during the years of the Trump presidency: the PR savviness of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

But it’s there in the headlines and images flooding the digital news. Saturday night, Ivanka showed up to Kim Kardashians’ 43rd Birthday dinner in Los Angeles, smiling and keeping stumm when paparazzi asked her about her lawyer’s efforts to keep her out of her father’s civil court case in New York.

Looking sensational in a sparkling white crop top and skirt-with-a-long-slit at an the women-only affair, it was a fascinatingly-timed reminder of not only how these past three years, she has separated herself from her father, his legal troubles and his political ambitions – but also of how mainstream social rejection is not something she or her husband want in the long term.

What was most striking to me about her presence at the Kardashian birthday – was that she clearly wanted to be there. And vice versa. Kardashian and co happily posed for the cameras, arms around each other. It was a VERY different sort of interaction from the very awkward efforts at small talk Ivanka conducted when she was at the 2019 G20 Osaka Summit with French President Emmanuel Macron, then British Prime Minister Theresa May, ECB head Christine Lagarde and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.

It was such moments that backfired so spectacularly on the couple when they were in government. Such exchanges were brazen reminders that not only was the couple not qualified to be in the Trump White House, but of the diplomatic havoc kleptocracy can wreak.

Read on at Vicky Ward Investigates