Earlier this year, New York Times reporter Katie Rogers revealed in her book on first ladies that Melania Trump, per the New York Post, “spent her four years in the White House waging a war against Ivanka Trump,” a.k.a. her stepdaughter.

According to the author, the two were in a perpetual “internal power struggle” over the job of first lady, which the first daughter had attempted to fill when her stepmom delayed her move to the White House in 2017. Ivanka, Rogers reported, wanted to reorient the East Wing so that it served “the entire first family, not just the first lady,” a desire that royally chapped Melania’s hide—and was not helped by the fact that Donald Trump told reporters that Ivanka would be “helping [Melania] and working with her.” (“She was aware that her husband had suggested that his eldest daughter would be helping to share the responsibilities of being first lady, and this was not a development that pleased her,” Rogers wrote.) When the first lady inexplicably wore a jacket that read “I Really Don’t Care. Do U?” ahead of visiting detained migrant children, it was apparently supposed to be a f--k-you to Ivanka.

In other words, the relationship between stepmom and stepdaughter could be described as toxic at best. But apparently the recent criminal conviction of the ex-president has…changed things for the better?

Page Six reports that, according to a person familiar with the matter, Trump’s guilty verdict has “brought the entire family closer together than they have ever been.” That closeness, the source told the outlet, involves “a thaw in the sometimes chilly and tense relationship between Melania and Ivanka.” The person added: “Words of support have overridden any past tension as the family comes together. The family has closed ranks and is behind the campaign. Friends say they haven’t seen the family on the same page like this since his inauguration years ago.”

While Ivanka did not attend the Manhattan trial, she and other members of the family have apparently been making discreet visits to the ex-president by “using Trump Tower’s secret garage entrance and elevator that takes them with no stops directly to his penthouse.” (The former first lady has reportedly been “holed up” in the Midtown triplex since May 23.)

Speaking to Fox News earlier this month, Trump said that the trial and conviction had taken a toll on his wife. “She’s fine, but I think it’s very hard for her,” he said, adding that, “in many ways, it’s tougher on [the family] than it is me.” Around the same time, Stormy Daniels told Melania (via an interview with the Daily Mirror) that she should divorce her husband. “I don’t know what their agreement may or may not be, but Melania needs to leave him,” Daniels said. “Not because of what he did with me or other women, but because he is a convicted felon. It’s been proven he is abusive; he was found liable for sexual assault and tax fraud and is now a criminal. He’s neither Teflon Don nor Teflon Con anymore.”

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, at which point he could conceivably get actual prison time—an outcome that, apparently, could take Melania and Ivanka from on speaking terms to BFFs.

This is your brain on Trump

This is your brain on…whatever this guy is on

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