The time has come, Lewis Carroll said, to speak of many things. I’m thinking not of cabbages and kings but of a certain president and king-maker, as Donald Trump continues to sway midterm elections. What with the economy, the war in Ukraine, the baby formula shortage, and gas prices, it’s as if America has forgotten that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol has quietly interviewed over 800 witnesses already and will go public in June with the testimonies of select supporters in Congress.
It's all been so hush-hush that I had to Google the topic to find that family members Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Kimberly Guilfoyle completed their testimonies two weeks ago. And while Guilfoyle’s remains a mystery, Newsweek reports that Ivanka and Jared basically “corroborated other testimony saying the then-president had been advised to call off the mob at the Capitol before the building was breached.” Now there’s a surprise. Based on an analysis of Ivanka’s handwriting that I conducted back in February, I didn’t think she quite had it in her.
Much has been written about the former President whose signature, the very sign of his nature as he wants the world to see him, is as heavy, sharp, and anonymous as a cement wall capped with razor wire—and image reaffirmed by his tenure in the White House. Like the man, it projects a big image.
Graphologists had a field day analyzing this persona, along with that of the First Lady’s rubber-stamp signature which appears as a testimony to her loyalty.
But what of Ivanka, viewed by many as the most influential woman in the room and a likely peacemaker in those fateful hours leading up to her father’s intervention? The favored First Daughter’s script offers several clues to the motivations of the reality TV star who remains conspicuously off-stage.
First, the exactitude with which her signature matches the body of her writing is noteworthy. It means the model and fashionista is the same person on and off-camera, a refreshingly forthright attribute for one so relentlessly in the spotlight.
Second, her generally rounded hand is the very opposite of her father’s divisive wedges. This style is common among adolescents, with neither the tall upper extensions of great intellect nor the plunging tails of strong physical and subconscious drives. Rather, it stays comfortably in the middle zone of her social whirl. Ivanka just wants everyone to get along.
Third, her reclined slant indicates both an analytical perspective of the world befitting a former businesswoman, and a need for privacy. For despite her ability to turn on the extroversion, she keeps private matters private. Whatever she chooses to say, it will be carefully considered, filtered, and presented in an unemotional fashion. Should she ultimately testify, it will not be a mawkish show.
Such forthright goodwill and diplomacy might seem to offer hope for her cooperation, whether to protect her personal image or to soften her party’s image as enablers. But there is one important letter formation, the claw shaped non-loops of her low-hanging letters, which I thought would trump all that. Like a visual of a hand gripping a shoulder for support, this formation indicates one who relies on others for recognition.
As Sheila Lowe, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Handwriting Analysis puts it, the person who chooses the claw-shape has been made to feel guilty all his life…and sets himself up for punishment. She goes on to add that her defensive attitude makes it hard for others to deal with her, as she is constantly concerned with protecting her ego.
The ultimate question then was whether Ivanka’s image among the Trumps would outweigh her image with the general public. Did she want to be rewarded by society for cooperating or rewarded by her father for protecting him? How much loyalty does she feel toward the Trump brand? Clearly, not as much as her step-mother, but I doubted that she had the gumption to stand up to a cement wall topped with razor wire. I was wrong.
As for Guilfoyle, an analysis of her signature offers little hope that she said anything that might be construed as an indictment of her future father-in-law. Her artistic scribble so obscures her last name that it fairly screams call me Kimberly—a visual renunciation of her own surname that makes her especially susceptible to the power yielded by Trump family brand. I’ll be interested to learn what she said when the record is made public.
