- Ivanka Trump told a story in her speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday night about her son giving the president a Lego replica of the White House for President Donald Trump.
- Andrea Bernstein, a WNYC reporter who wrote a book about the Trump family, pointed out that she told a similar story about building a Lego Trump Tower for her father.
- That story turned out to be made up.
- Ivanka also claimed that the replica of the White House is displayed on the mantle in the Oval Office.
- Recent images of the mantle show no replica – if any Lego sets – and White House journalists say they have not seen one.
- Visit the Business Insider website for more stories.
In her speech that her father introduced at the Republican National Convention, Ivanka Trump told a story of her son giving the president a Lego replica of the White House.
“When Jared and I moved to Washington with our three children, we did not know exactly where we were going. But our children loved it from the beginning,” said the White House presidential adviser. “My son Joseph immediately built Grandpa a Lego replica of the White House. The president still shows it on the mantle in the Oval Office and shows it to world leaders, just so they know he has the biggest grandchildren on earth. . “
The story is similar to another that Ivanka Trump has told about herself, as Andrea Bernstein, a WNYC reporter, said on Twitter. According to “American Oligarchs”, a book Bernstein wrote about the Trump and Kushner families, Ivanka said in an interview with Conan O’Brien in 2007 that she built a Lego replica of Trump Tower for her father. She also said that her brothers contradicted her, each claiming to have built the Lego tower.
—Andrea Bernstein (@AndreaWNYC) August 28, 2020
Bernstein said I the story was plagiarized from ‘The Art of the Deal’, the best-selling book by President Donald Trump ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz.
Schwartz told Bernstein that the story was probably made up.
“There’s a significantly less than fifty percent chance that something like this ever happened,” he told Bernstein, per “American Oligarchs.”
In her 2009 book “The Trump Card”, Ivanka even admitted that the story was fake.
“The story stands as one of the first and best examples of how we work together as a family,” she wrote.
If the Lego White House really is, then where is it?
Recent images of the fireplace mantel in the Oval Office do not show such a Lego set. Here is one from a week ago, when Trump hung out with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi:
President Donald J. Trump, along with Vice President Mike Pence, will attend a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi of the Republic of Iraq on Thursday, August 20, 2020, at the Oval Office of the White House.
Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead; Lauren Frias / Business Insider
To look? Lots of images. No Lego White Houses.
Bloomberg News White House editor Alex Wayne tweeted that none of the journalists at his outlet had ever seen the Lego White House.
—Alex Wayne (@aawayne) August 28, 2020
Ivanka is accused of violating the Hatch Act by speaking at the RNC event that was hosted at the White House South Lawn. The law prohibits federal employees, other than the president and vice president, from engaging in political activities, including campaigning, with federal sources.
Her office told the Associated Press that she had been approved to speak at the convention in her personal capacity as Trump’s daughter instead of her advisory role in the White House, although she did speak in her speech about the work of the Trump administration. .
Representatives of the Republican National Convention did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
