A “brutal” video of Donald Trump appearing to snub his 10-year-old grandson at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) match over the weekend has gone viral, especially after the former president’s beloved oldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, is seen bending down to console her dejected-looking son.
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, brought their oldest son, Joseph, to the UFC match in Miami Saturday night, where 77-year-old Trump made a star appearance, Newsweek reported. On the clip shared to X, the Republican presidential candidate was seen entering the Kaseya Center. He was flanked by UFC president Dana White as he greeted excited fans and Kid Rock’s “American Badass” roared over the speakers, Newsweek also said.
Spotting Ivanka in the crowd, Trump pulled her into a hug, the clip shows. He also shook hands with and and kissed his son-in-law Kushner, who helped him get elected in 2016 and who, like Ivanka, served in his White House as a senior adviser.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JULY 20: (L-R) Ivanka Trump, Theo Kushner, Jared Kushner and Joseph Kushner attend the funeral of Ivana Trump at St. Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church on July 20, 2022 in New York City. Ivana Trump, the first wife of former president Donald Trump, died at the age of 73 after a fall down the stairs of her Manhattan home. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
However, as young Joseph began to move towards his grandfather, Trump walked away, leaving the child looking sad and confused, the clip shows. Ivanka’s big smile for the cameras quickly fell into a scowl, as she turned to console her son, who is looking down, with a hurt expression on his face.
The clip was posted by Ron Filipkowski, a leading Trump critic and the editor in chief at MeidasTouch.com, a liberal political action committee. Filipkowski argued that the clip shows how fake a narcissistic Trump can be when it comes to his claims about being a loving and devoted father and grandfather.
“Now I see what Ivanka was so pissed,” Filipkowski captioned the video. “Trump blew off his own grandson while he was mugging with B-list celebrities, and the kid was pretty bummed out. This is who he really is behind the fake show.”
However, Trump’s campaign communications director, Steven Cheung, hit back at the clip and at Filipkowski in a statement to Page Six: “Imagine being some sad, basement dwelling internet troll who is suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has to make up some fantasy story to bring meaning to his miserable life. Sad!”
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 29: U.S. President Donald Trump, followed by his grandchildren, Arabella Kushner, Theodore Kushner, and Joseph Kushner walk on the south lawn of the White House on November 29, 2020 in Washington, DC. President Trump spent the weekend at Camp David and at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
TMZ reported that it’s unclear what was going in with Trump in that moment. Maybe he was just in a hurry and distracted by all the attention, but in any case, TMZ called the clip “brutal” and said it shows that, “he didn’t give his 10-year-old grandkid the time of day … and it seemed to hurt the boy,”
In the past, Trump has made a show of appearing to be friendly and engaged with his grandchildren, especially Ivanka’s children, Joseph, Arabella, 12, and Theodore, 7. When he was president, Trump was photographed several times holding Joseph and Arabella’s hands while walking across the lawn, TMZ and Insider reported.
Joseph Kushner’s relationship with Trump also was the subject of intense headlines in the summer of 2020 over a disputed story Ivanka Trump told about him making a replica of the White House to give to his grandfather.
In her speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention in August 2020, Ivanka Trump described how her kids easily adjusted to life in Washington, D.C., after their grandfather was elected president.
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“When Jared and I moved with our three children to Washington, we didn’t exactly know what we were in for,” said Ivanka Trump, then a presidential adviser. “But our kids loved it from the start. My son Joseph promptly built grandpa a Lego replica of the White House. The president still displays it on the mantel in the Oval Office and shows it to world leaders, just so they know he has the greatest grandchildren on Earth.”
Ivanka Trump came under fire for the story when a Trump family biographer noted that the first daughter told a similar story about herself making a Lego gift for her father when she was a child, Insider reported. In a 2007 interview with Conan O’Brien, Ivanka Trump said she once built a Lego replica of the Trump Tower in New York City to give to her real estate developer father.
Andrea Bernstein, the author of “American Oligarchs,” a book about the Trump and Kushner families and their New York-based real estate empires, also said that the Lego Trump Tower story appears to have been plagiarized from Trump’s own ghost-written book, “The Art of the Deal,” Insider reported. In her own 2009 book “The Trump Card,” Ivanka Trump acknowledged that the Trump Tower story was fake, Insider added.
But after Ivanka Trump faced scrutiny for the Lego White House story, she jumped on social media to show that Joseph had indeed built such a replica to give to his grandfather. She shared a photo of the boy posing with it and her father in the Oval Office.
However, Insider also reported that the whereabouts of the Lego White House were unknown by the summer of 2020. While a photo showed that it once stood on a table behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, it subsequently disappeared. Insider reported that the replica could not be seen in subsequent photos of the fireplace mantel in the Oval Office, which means that Ivanka Trump may have fudged the story about her father still proudly showing it to world leaders.