Ivanka Trump appears to have confirmed she won’t be rejoining her father Donald at the White House for his second term as US president.

Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner were key members of Trump’s inner circle during his first term in the presidency from 2016 to 2021, serving as senior advisors.

Ivanka, 42, also served as director of the Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship, while Kushner was director of the Office of American Innovation.

Appearing in The Skinny Confidential podcast this week Ivanka Trump rejected a return to the White House, saying she “hates politics” and the “darkness” that surrounds “that world”.

Now living in Florida, she said the main reason she chose to distance herself from her father’s latest election campaign was her children and her desire to protect them from all that she experienced.

“The main reason I am not going back to serve now is, I know the cost,” she told hosts podcast Lauryn and Michael Bosstick.

“It’s a price that I’m not willing to make my kids bear. My primary goals were just to be the best freaking mum.”

Trump said that every time she had to miss a family event during her father’s first term, she thought “I will never let this happen again in the minute I leave the White House”.

During the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol building, Trump encouraged her father to make a video on Twitter condemning the riots and acted as an intermediary between besieged US officials and the then-president.

Ivanka, the daughter of Trump’s first wife Ivana, and mother of three children, said that working in the White House put her under extreme pressure.

“You become a little bit calloused. It’s very dark, negative. And some people love the gladiator aspect of it. The fight — that was never me,” Trump said.

While Ivanka Trump has no plans to return to Washington, her stepmother Melania says she’s packed and ready to move in.

Melania, who was absent during much of Trump’s election campaigning, said this week in a Fox and Friends interview on the Murdoch-owned Fox News, she had already chosen the furniture she wanted to bring to the executive mansion.

She said the second time moving to the White House was easier because she knew the rooms where the family would live.

Melania and Donald’s 18-year-old son Barron, who is studying at New York University, will have a room for when he visits.

Melania said she was still hiring for her team and planned to resurrect and expand her Be Best initiative, which was centred around childhood well-being, social media use and opioid abuse.

Despite not wanting to join her father and Melania for a second term, Ivanka insisted that Donald Trump was surrounded by “great energy” and had put in an immense amount of work preparing for his return.

“He’s got so much energy and support and excitement,” she said.

“I think the four years has really allowed him to calibrate … how he wants to spend this next four years. And he’s incredibly excited and enthusiastic.”