Ivanka Trump has sparked outrage among her Instagram followers, after uploading photos of herself partying with Kim Kardashian.
The women were among a host of stars who flocked to Las Vegas on Wednesday night for the exclusive grand opening party celebrating the gambling haven’s newest casino, Fontainebleau Las Vegas.
Kardashian’s sister, Kendall Jenner, was among the attendees, along with an exhaustive list that included Tom Brady, Lenny Kravitz, Cher, Sylvester Stallone, Alice Cooper, Dita Von Teese, Breaking Bad stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, and The Vampire Diaries actors Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley.
As the VIP guests mingled and admired the facilities on offer at the 67-story, 3,644-room hotel and casino, they were also treated to a special performance from Justin Timberlake, whose wife, Jessica Biel, was on hand to cheer him on.
Trump shared images from her glamorous night out in Nevada on Instagram on Thursday. They showed her posing on the venue’s grounds, enjoying Timberlake’s performance, and strolling through the casino floor.
“Viva Las Vegas!” Trump captioned the carousel of images. “Bringing some Miami spice to LV! Congrats to my amazing friends @DavidGrutman and @jeffrey.soffer._01 on the epic opening of the @fontainebleaulasvegas.”
However, the two photos that Trump included of herself with Kardashian prompted a host of her followers to wade in with a flood of disapproving comments.
“Ivanka and Kim. Sad to see someone like her with you. She hates your father,” wrote one Instagram user, referring to Trump’s father, former President Donald Trump.
“You’re friends with Kim Kardashian???!” another commented in clear disapproval. “Guess there goes another person I would never trust.”
“Ivanka, hear me, the rhetoric that comes associating with the Kardashians is a move in the wrong direction and narrows the scope of influence instead of expanding it,” another posted.
Another posted that the photos show evidence of Ivanka Trump having “a lot of liberal in her. She does play both sides.”
Ivanka Trump was among the group who celebrated Kardashian’s birthday with her, and the reality star shared several slides of photos with Ivanka Trump in one of them.
While there were several negative comments regarding the new photos, many other Instagram users had more positive words to share in reaction to the post.
“Everyone who was quick to talk s*** about her hanging with [Kardashian] maybe stop and think that this could be a good sign?!” wrote one. “We need our whole country to stand together and take our country back!!! TRUMP 2024!!!!”
Looking beyond Donald Trump’s bid for the White House next year, another dubbed Ivanka Trump “our next Mrs. President of United States of America.”
Countering the comments that accused Kardashian of disliking Donald Trump, another said that the reality star and businesswoman “never spoke negatively about Trump. She worked with him during his presidency.”
Indeed, Kardashian met with Donald Trump at the White House on numerous occasions. In May 2018, she successfully petitioned the then-president to commute the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a nonviolent drug offender.
In January 2019, Kardashian publicly expressed her gratitude to the Republican for signing the First Step Act, which enabled Matthew Charles, who had spent 21 years behind bars, to be freed from prison. The law reduced mandatory minimum sentences in certain cases. It also expanded the ability for prisoners to earn shorter sentences through good behavior.
Kardashian posted a thank-you message to Trump on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, crediting the accomplishment to “true bipartisanship.”
In June 2019, Kardashian visited the White House again, to announce a partnership with Lyft to hand out gift cards to reformed criminals, to help them get to and from job interviews. The following year, in March 2020, Kardashian shared the news that Trump had reduced the prison sentences of three incarcerated women.
However, things now appear to have turned sour between Kardashian and the former president. Donald Trump slammed her in a social-media post last month over claims made in a book that he had asked her to get football players to visit him at the White House in exchange for him commuting the prison sentences.
The allegations were made in ABC News’ Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl’s recently released book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump. Karl, whose book is the third in his Trump trilogy, said Kardashian allegedly attempted to meet the then-president’s request, which proved to be a tough task.
“Kardashian actually tried to do what Trump demanded, seeing it as a small price to pay to get justice for people she believed were serving unjust sentences,” read the excerpt. “But all the players she approached declined. Trump had become too toxic. In the final two weeks of his presidency, nobody wanted to be anywhere near him.”
Karl also said in his book that criminal justice reform advocate and law student Kardashian reached out to Donald Trump via his team at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, once he was out of office to request his endorsement on another clemency plea.
After she “quickly received a call back from Trump,” but Kardashian learned that she would not be getting his help, according to Karl.
“Hell no, the former president told her,” Karl wrote. “He wouldn’t do it. ‘You voted for [Joe] Biden and now you come asking me for a favor?’ Trump told her.
“Kardashian has never publicly said who she voted for in 2020, but after Biden was projected the winner, she posted a tweet of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris along with three blue hearts.”
The excerpt read that after “a few more choice words, the line went dead. Trump had hung up on her.”
Addressing those claims in a Truth Social post, Donald Trump wrote: “Failed ABC Fake News reporter Jonathan Karl just wrote another bad book. He works sooo hard, but has sooo little talent—Some people have it, and some people don’t.
“In the ‘book’ he has the World’s most overrated celebrity, Kim Kardashian, supposedly telling me that she ‘would leverage her celebrity to get football stars to come to the White House,’ if I would commute the sentences of various prisoners. This story is Fake News in that she would be the last person I asked to get football players.”
“I did help with prisoner commutation, but only if deserving, and much more so for [Kardashian’s ex-husband] Kanye West than for Kim, who probably voted for Crooked Joe Biden, and look at the mess our Country is in now. Many other false stories in Karl’s very boring book, but nothing worth mentioning!” Trump added.
