Of all of the people in Donald Trump’s inner circle, his daughter Ivanka and his wife Melania are perhaps the most fascinating. Unlike the leading man in both of their lives, Ivanka and Melania both know the power of strategic silence; like him, they are both keen readers of the public temperature; and they both also get away with a level of disloyalty that the Trump family patriarch permits from no one else.

Trump was just convicted on 34 felony counts related to a hush-money payment he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, with whom he is alleged to have had sex, in an effort to interfere with the 2016 election. His wife Melania had recently given birth to the couple’s son Barron at the time of the alleged affair.

According to Daniels, before she and Trump had sex, he likened her to his daughter Ivanka. Both Ivanka and Melania were notably absent from the trial, even while Trump’s older sons Eric and Don Jr. sat in the gallery. And both sons, plus their partners, have been loudly proclaiming their father’s innocence. No such protestations have come from the two most important women in Trump’s life.

(Trump does have a second daughter, Tiffany, who has been generally ignored.)

After the verdict was announced, Ivanka did make a small show of solidarity with her father, sharing on her Instagram stories—not even on main!—a photo of herself as a toddler with her dad, and four words: “I love you dad.” But she wasn’t by his side when the verdict was read, and doesn’t seem to be in any great hurry to jump publicly to his........

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