Ivanka Trump, former US president Donald Trump’s daughter, recently appeared on the Lex Fridman podcast and revealed that she has started training Jiu-Jitsu alongside the rest of her family. Although there are thousands of celebrities who have started training in BJJ over the last few years, she’s undoubtedly one of the biggest names to get involved. Both her and her husband Jared Kushner acted as advisors to her father Donald during his term as president although politics was one of the main topics of conversation during her interview Fridman, the conversation did turn to Jiu-Jitsu at one point.
Fridman asked what she liked about Jiu-Jitsu and she revealed that one of the biggest parts for her was the fact that her family was involved:
“First of all, I love the way I came to it. It was my daughter… At 11 she told me that she wanted to learn self-defense and she wanted to learn how to protect herself, which as a mom I was so proud about because at 11 I was not thinking about defending myself. I loved that she had that desire and awareness so I called some friends, actually a mutual friend of ours, and asked around for people I could work with in Miami. They recommended the Valente brothers studio.”
The Valente Brothers are well known in the BJJ world and they have tons of students training under them, including other famous faces like Gisele Bundchen. Although Ivanka Trump was initially training Jiu-Jitsu alongside her daughter, it wasn’t long before the men in her family got involved as well:
“I mean first starting with Arabella, I used to take her and then she’d kinda encourage me and she’d sort’ve pull me into it. I started doing it with her and then Joseph and Theo saw us doing it, they wanted to start doing it so now they joined. Then Jared (Kushner) joined and now we’re all doing Jiu-Jitsu.”
It’s not just the fact that she gets to train alongside her family that make Jiu-Jitsu so enjoyable for Ivanka Trump though, she also enjoys the fact that she’s been learning to defend herself:
“For me there’s something really empowering knowing that I have some basic skills to defend myself. I think it’s something as humans we’ve kinda gotten away from. You look at any other animal, even the Giraffe they’ll use their neck. The Lion, the Tiger, every species, and then there’s us who most of us don’t, and i didn’t, know how to protect myself. I think it gives you a sense of confidence and also it gives you kind of a sense of calm, knowing how to de-escalate rather than escalate a situation.”
As many seasoned martial artists will tell you, the ability to defend oneself isn’t the only benefit that comes from learning a martial art. The philosophical side of Jiu-Jitsu is something that’s mentioned often, and Trump has seen that herself firsthand:
“I’ve seen it with all of my kids, and myself, how much they’ve benefitted from it. That self-defense component and the philosophical elements.”
The full interview with Ivanka Trump where she revealed that her whole family has started training Jiu-Jitsu was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Lex Fridman podcast:
