Given that Hollywood has long since run out of new ideas and now just delves into their slop bucket, recycling franchises and remakes like grey water, I propose a new one, only we set it in Washington DC. Today, Donald Trump is back, wreaking havoc through the heart of American democracy while quite the Hitchcock-ian mystery abounds. Where is his daughter Ivanka? And has the former top-level adviser just managed to pull off a huge swiftie? Remember when, back in 2017 during Mr Trump’s first go round, Ms Trump underwent a doozy of a rebrand? The former 90s model turned churner-out of unremarkable department store sunglasses and jeans remade herself into an Economist-reading political go-getter and White House mover and/or shaker. And so, while her daddy dearest was mashing sweet and sour sauce into the Situation Room carpet, off she trotted in her Louboutin pumps to dibble dabble around in government and policymaking, seemingly unperturbed that there was yoghurt in the 10 Downing Street fridge that had been in politics longer than she had. After all, why shouldn’t a gal who once sold $200 handbags at TK Maxx outlets and appeared in the doco about the plights of heirs and heiresses called Born Rich get to take meetings with Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean dictator and diehard rocket-fancier Kim Jong-un in the DMZ? Who better than an unelected person – who imaginatively named their fragrance “Ivanka Trump” and who had once posed oiled up in her swimmers with a jackhammer for a magazine cover – to join former German chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF head Christine Lagarde or the British and Canadian prime ministers and the French president on stage at the G20? Ms Trump’s life was all nepo, no maybe. But with Trump Two now playing, it’s a totally different story. Ms Trump clearly wants about as much to do with her father’s new administration as he does with that thing called salad, or that printout of their wedding vows that a fed-up Melania Trump taped to his second-favourite snack fridge. Today, the 43-year-old is meditating, according to a lengthy New York Times deep dive. There have been surfing lessons and she’s also playing golf, guitar and tennis. There is a hamster named Chester. Her life is all Insta-fab dinners at Miami’s Forte Dei Marmi with Insta-famous people I’ve never heard of before or drinkies with husband Jared Kushner at hotspot Carbone. Meanwhile, she’s sharing important content with her eight million plus followers, like, oh my god you guys! She tried making a cauliflower crust pizza! This might be one of the biggest hornswoggles and bluffs of 2025. How has Ms Trump gotten off scot-free, reputation-wise? Without anyone quite noticing, she has pranced off into the most charmed of sunsets to share Mediterranean-inspired appetisers without being forced to shoulder any shred of responsibility for the unfolding horror show that is America. How is it that she gets to blithely move on from the part she played in the MAGA-fication of the US to enjoy spicy margs with her inevitably squealing squad, never looking back at her time in Washington? Despite having played her part in getting the US to this point, Ms Trump’s life is a 24-karat-plated wonderland of putting practice and strumming G-chords, wholly insulated from the anguish and the pain Mr Trump has unleashed on the world since 2016. Today, Ms Trump gets to enjoy all the flaccid carb-free pizza she wants and to squeeze in all the yogalates she can manage before her breathwork coach arrives. What Ms Trump has made clear in a series of interviews since 2021 is that after the first Trump administration, she wanted out – out of the political maelstrom and the biffo and having to read hundreds of pages of briefing docs about declining steel production in the rust belt. But her sickeningly charmed life circa 2025 makes me want to rage, rage, against the dying of her Washington light. She gets to spend today, tomorrow and forevermore consciously excluding herself from the narrative and cushioned from ever coming within Instagramming distance of the people whose lives Trumpism has devastated. Does Ms Trump, I wonder, ever think about Nancy Davis? In 2022, a pregnancy scan showed Ms Davis’ baby had no skull. Thanks to the conservative Supreme Court takeover Ms Trump’s father orchestrated, Ms Davis was denied an abortion. “They said I had to carry my baby to bury my baby,” she said in an interview at the time. Ultimately, Ms Davis had to raise more than $40,000 via a GoFundMe and fly 2200km to have a termination. But she is just one of the 25 million American women of child-bearing age whose access to abortion is severely restricted because of manoeuvring that took place while Ms Trump worked in the White House. Does she ever wake up in the night and think about the 1360 children who, according to Human Rights Watch, have never been reunited with their parents six years after being separated at the US border by the Trump administration? The 1360 mothers who won’t get to cuddle their kids today because of an indescribably cruel ruling her daddy put in place to score political points – or is she too busy working on her backhand? Or does Ms Trump have anything to say about the 188,000 avoidable Covid deaths that happened under Mr Trump’s watch, according to a Harvard review? Ms Trump has gotten to turn over a fresh page and start anew, to just airily and wholly indifferently sail off into the Floridian sunset to swaddle herself in couture and breathe in the smell of jasmine – a luxury denied to the millions of people around the world who have, and are still, paying the price for the Trump administration she merrily played a bright-eyed part of. And yet her image has been airbrushed and whitewashed and remade into Real Billionaire Housewife stuff – more bocconcini, babe? Of those 1360 parentless kids, taken away from their families at the US border, a Human Rights Watch lawyer who authored a review said, “It’s chilling to see … the calculated cruelty”. Never mind. I’m so glad that Ivanka has learnt to surf, aren’t you? Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles