Ivanka Trump’s former best friend reveals why she chose to speak out
Ivanka Trump’s high school best friend claims she was ‘ignored’ by the president because she wasn’t as pretty and says first daughter isn’t ‘conservative’ but rather an elitist snob who refused to socialize with people outside her wealthy circle
- Lysandra Ohrstrom, 38, revealed why she decided to speak out against her former best friend after years of silence
- She told the Daily Beast’s podcast Tuesday she had remained ‘loyal’ until Ivanka’s father decided to run for re-election
- Ohrstrom wrote in Vanity Fair last week about her friendship with Ivanka when they attended Chapin, an Upper East Side girls’ school
- She says they became ‘inseparable’ there and were good friends until 2009
- She was one of Ivanka’s bridesmaids for her wedding to Jared Kushner
- Ohrstrom says Ivanka charmed in public but in private, was bratty and a snob
- She blamed bad behavior on other schoolgirls to get herself out of trouble, she claims
- Ohrstrom told one story of President Trump remarking on how she’d lost weight as a teenager
Ivanka Trump‘s high school best friend has revealed why she had chosen to remain ‘loyal’ to her former classmate up until now – years after their friendship ended over their opposing views on ‘life’.
Lysandra Ohrstrom, a 38-year-old journalist for The Observer and Huffington Post, published an article in Vanity Fair last week detailing Ivanka’s bratty behavior when they were both students at elite private schools.
Ohrstrom attended Chapin, an all-girls private school on the Upper East Side, with Ivanka and also stood in her 2009 wedding to Jared Kushner as one of two ‘maids of honor’.
In her essay, she alleged, among other things, that Ivanka was charming and precocious as a teenager which won over adults and made them think she’d shaken off her father’s crassness but was, in private, just as obsessed with money and struggled to hide it.
Ohrstrom spoke out again in an episode of The Daily Beast’s The New Abnormal podcast on Tuesday, in which she revealed what drove her to turn against her friend after years of silence.
Lysandra Ohrstrom, a 38-year-old journalist who writes for Vanity Fair and The Observer, attended Chapin, an all-girls private school on the Upper East Side. They are pictured together in 2007
Ivanka, Lysandra (left) and Chistina Floyd (right) in 2002. Lysandra says they stopped being friends in 2009
Ohrstrom said the two had drifted apart over their different views on ‘life’ which she first began noticing when they were college students.
She revealed however, the issue wasn’t Ivanka’s ‘conservatism’, rather it was – among other things – her elitist snob attitude and refusal to socialize with others outside her wealthy circle.
Ohrstrom referred to her essay where she claimed Ivanka had criticized her for suggesting she read ‘a book about f*****g poor people’, after she recommended 2001 novel, Empire Falls by Richard Russo.
‘I don’t remember other instances of her using such derisive words, like “f**king poor people”, [but] the general desire to not really socialize with people outside of your own socio-economic segment was consistent throughout her life,’ Ohrstrom told hosts Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast.
Ohrstrom said the conversation about the book was one of ‘many’ that led her to question their friendship.
She also questioned why Ivanka never challenged her father’s similar, problematic behavior.
‘Throughout our friendship there were so many instances where her dad would be behaving in a way that was so inconsiderate to other people and I would just think to myself, if my father was behaving this way I’d say, “Dad, stop it”, in front of everyone and I would challenge him to behave better, but I guess that’s what separates us,’ she said.
Ohrstrom also described how their relationship had been strained over their opposing stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which became a bigger issue when Ivanka began dating Jared Kushner and converted to Judaism.
Ohrstrom, who lived in Beirut for a period of time after graduation, said it became a ‘big deal’ after Ivanka’s wedding ‘because my pro-Palestinian stance was not a publicly acceptable.’
Ohrstrom said she wishes Ivanka would have publicly opposed her father when he announced he was running for president
Lysandra says she and Ivanka stopped talking the day after Ivanka’s wedding to Jared Kushner in 2009, in which she was a bridesmaid
‘I wear a necklace that says my name in Arabic that I got made for me at the end of my first stint in Beirut and I wear it every day and she would just make little comments about it,’ she said.
‘And at one point, towards the end of our friendship when we were really not seeing eye-to-eye on things, she looked at me and said, “how does your Jewish boyfriend feel when you’re having sex and that hits him in the face? That necklace just screams terrorism.”‘
Ohrstrom admitted she had chosen to remain quiet about their friendship and even turned down requests from journalists during Trump’s 2016 run out of respect for her old friend even though they had not been in contact at the time.
She said she had even forwarded email requests from the media to Ivanka, who had asked her to send them over so she would ‘know what kind of stories are being worked up about me.’
‘And I did that actually. Until her dad won, I did that because I did not think he was gonna win and she was my old friend.
‘So when people say I’m being disloyal, please keep in mind how much I was not disloyal,’ Ohrstrom said.
Lysandra described how they would use President Trump’s credit card to go shopping in Manhattan. Ivanka is pictured aged 15 in 1996 (left) and (right) aged 18
Ivanka aged 14 in 1998. Lysandra said Ivanka was queen bee at their all girls school
‘I have really been grappling with whether to do this for so long since Ivanka’s dad announced that he was running.’
Ohrstrom said the idea came to her when she was on line to cast her vote for Biden earlier this month and ran into a former classmate who expressed shock no one from their school has spoken publicly against Ivanka.
‘I just went home. I sat at my computer and I started writing a long essay about why her dad shouldn’t be president. And it was very much pegged to my recollections of growing up with him,’ Ohrstrom said.
Ohrstrom recalled how Trump had made comments about her weight during their interactions and had called their other young friends by different model names.
‘I remember there was always one girl who he was referring to as Cindy Crawford. I actually hadn’t spoken to her in 18 years and she called me after this article and we were just reminiscing about Mr Trump’s stories,’ she said.
When asked if she recognized herself as Cindy in the article, the woman replied: “No, I wasn’t Cindy. Somebody else was Cindy, I was actually Christy Turlington”. And then she started listing all the model names’.
Ohrstrom however, said she did not receive that attention from Trump, who she claimed ‘he ignored me because I wasn’t very attractive and he almost never remembered my name.’
She told the hosts she wishes Ivanka would have used her place in high society to go against her father instead.
‘I wish that Ivanka – rather than go with her dad – she should’ve used all her political capital and cachet among these people to start a super PAC and vocally oppose her dad.’
When asked if she believes Ivanka could reclaim her position in New York City after Trump’s presidency she said: ‘Based on the number of people who will not go on the record about their comments vowing that she can’t, I would say yes. She’ll be right back there in five years.’
‘I think it’s just seen as pretty tacky to talk about your friends but I also think part of it [reason why people have stayed silent] is that she was really nice and fun and great to her friends sometimes, amid the “Trumpian edges”.’
Lysandra Ohrstrom, 38, wrote in Vanity Fair last week about her friendship with Ivanka when they attended Chapin (pictured) an Upper East Side girls’ school
Ivanka, aged 15, in 1996, attending her father’s 50th birthday party at Trump Tower
Ohrstrom in her essay claimed Ivanka had coaxed other girls into bad behavior, including flashing their breasts at ‘the hot dog man’ from the windows of their school, then talked her way out of trouble when they were caught.
‘One of the earliest memories I have of Ivanka from before we were friends is when she blamed a fart on a classmate.
‘Some time later, she goaded me and a few other girls into flashing our breasts out the window of our classroom in what has since been labelled the ‘flashing the hot dog man’ incident in Chapin lore.
‘Ivanka had basically been the ringleader, but she pleaded her innocence to the headmistress and got off scot-free.
‘The rest of us were suspended,’ she said.
She also claims to have spent time with the president, who asked her if Ivanka was the ‘prettiest’ girl in their grade and, she claims, was stunned when she said she wasn’t.
‘Before I learned that the Trumps have no sense of humor about themselves, I remember answering honestly that she was probably in the top five.
‘Who’s prettier than Ivanka?’ I recall him asking once with genuine confusion, before correctly naming the two girls I’d had in mind.
‘He described one as a young Cindy Crawford while the other he said had a great figure,’ she wrote.
A friend who is close to Ivanka earlier told DailyMail.com: ‘Ivanka has been nothing but a genuinely sincere, smart and compassionate person throughout my years of knowing her.
‘It’s disappointing and sad to see people become so blinded by their partisanship that they go out of their way to attack those they know to be good people.
‘Her real friends know who she is and will always support her.’
Lysandra’s comments are of the same nature as those of Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a woman who claims to be the First Lady’s former best friend.
She shared unflattering recordings of Melania cursing before the election.
Melania responded by saying she was a hanger-on who she hadn’t been able to get rid of.
