Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter, is taking time off from the frenetic presidential campaign to go traveling with her husband and share some bonding time with a close friend, Wendi Deng Murdoch, ex-wife of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and current girlfriend of guess who?
Vladimir Putin.
Trump met with Putin’s girlfriend in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Speaking to Vogue earlier this summer, she said of Murdoch, “Everything she has is available to her friends, which, believe me, is not common. There’s nothing that doesn’t interest her, and she can hit five topics in a 35-second conversation. It’s really a whirlwind with Wendi. I can’t recall the last time I had a conversation with her that didn’t conclude with her connecting me to four people who might become great friends or great business opportunities.”
As US Magazine wrote breathlessly last March:
How’s this for a new couple alert? The rumor circulating around the corridors of power — from Washington, D.C., to Europe and Asia — is that Vladimir Putin and Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife, are dating. Reports of the pair have been floating around for years, ever since their respective divorces in 2014 and 2013. One insider close to the powerful leader tells Us Weekly the relationship is “serious.”
The Daily Mail wrote in 2014 that the two women were friends long before Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, as Wendi made her way through one power player after another:
Ivanka had close ties with Wendi when she was married to publisher Rupert, even joining them for a trip to Jordan to meet with Queen Rania in 2011. Wendi divorced billionaire publisher [Rupert] Murdoch last year and was said to have developed a flirtatious friendship with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Vanity Fair reported in March, 2016:
It is difficult to imagine finding a fourth mate who could out-titan a media mogul, a king of technology, and a world leader, who, combined, are worth about $23 billion. But if there’s someone you want to bet on reaching that summit, it is Deng, who is now allegedly dating Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to the gossip magazine Us Weekly. Maybe Deng, then, is the lightning.
… The two have yet to be spotted together in public, because that level of self-serving malevolence in one single frame would likely crumble the earth onto itself. But US did report Deng was spotted earlier this week boarding the St. Barths–docked yacht of Russian businessman Roman Abramovich. After Putin’s election, the billionaire reportedly gifted him a $35 million yacht to add to his collection of playthings, according to the Daily Mail. This one degree of mega-yacht separation isn’t quite a confirmation, but it has to count for something, right?