Ivana Trump, President Trump’s first wife, said her then-husband didn’t know “how to speak the children’s language” and decided she would take over raising them after their split.
“He did not know how to speak the children’s language. He was not able to do it until the kids were in university,” Ivana Trump told John Catsimatidis on AM970’s “The Answer” in an interview that aired Sunday.
She said at the end of their 15 year marriage, she took sole control of the children – Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric.
“I told Donald, ‘There can only be one chef in the kitchen,'” the 68-year-old Czechoslovakia native. “And it was me.”
Ivana Trump, who recently wrote “Raising Trump” about her life with her three children and Donald Trump, said she kept her daughter and two sons busy but made sure they were never spoiled.
“You don’t give your kids too much money,” she said. “Ivanka had singing classes, piano classes, ballet classes. The boys had hockey classes, karate classes, skiing classes, golf classes, tennis classes. You try everything, and then you watch to see what the kids are good at…Ivanka, for example, she did not like the piano classes, so I cut them off. She did not enjoy it. And I know if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you can never be great at it.”
She said the three are “fabulous.”
“I’m very proud of them and Donald should be too,” said Ivana Trump, who was married to Donald Trump from 1977 to 1992.