Donald Trump's Children Say Quality Time Was Learning the Company Business
— -- Donald Trump has said managing a multibillion-dollar real estate company meant he was often away from his children as they were growing up, but his kids told Barbara Walters they all have fond memories of spending time with their father on the job.
“We grew up walking construction sites,” Ivanka Trump, 34, told Walters in an interview for ABC News “20/20.” “He found a way that was true to him to connect with us that maybe is a little less traditional because he was working so hard...and we are so comfortable in our relationship with our father.”
“He would always sneak me down to get a candy bar in the lobby,” added Tiffany Trump, 22. “Our times together were learning, playing in his office.”
Donald Trump’s four eldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka, Eric and Tiffany, spoke with Walters about what it was like growing up with their dad and what they think about his presidential run. Trump’s youngest, his 9-year-old son Barron, did not attend the interview because he was at school.
Trump’s three adult children, Donald Jr, Ivanka, and Eric, all work in their father’s company, The Trump Organization, as Executive Vice Presidents. His eldest son said he remembers their father stopping whatever he was doing to take phone calls from them.
“Regardless of what he was doing, regardless of who he was meeting with, if we called, he took the phone,” said Donald Trump, Jr., 37. “When we were 6 years old, I would call. He would be negotiating with a CEO of a major bank or whatever it may be, and he would make them wait. He’d take the call from us.”
When asked which of the kids is most like their father, Donald, Jr., said: “It’s actually very scary. We can go to Thanksgiving, right, and we can all-- we’ll sit there and pick at--“
“Answer the same questions, using the exact same words in the same sequence,” finished Eric Trump, 31.
That constant banter between them, the similar turn-of-phrase among siblings, are what Ivanka called “Trumpisms.”
“But in fairness,” she added. “I think we’re all like him in very different ways.”
