Ivana Trump’s Funeral Turned Into a Very Disturbing Roast

Ivana Trump’s funeral was held in New York on Wednesday, and it sounds like most of the proceedings were pretty much as you’d expect—Upper East Side church, fancy funeral home, golden-hued coffin, etc.

Trump died at the age of 73 last week after reportedly sustaining a fall in her home. Among the mourners Wednesday were her ex-husband, Donald Trump, his current wife Melania, and the former couple’s children, Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. But, according to the New York Times’ rundown of the ceremony, there were parts of the funeral that were pretty darn… odd.

The Times noted that though Ivana spent decades as a New York society doyenne, the church was “less than half full.” The paper of record also sniffed that there were “plenty of Hermès bags” in attendance, but “few boldfaced names.” But whatever; when the end comes, it’s not rubbing shoulders with the glitterati that matters, but how your nearest and dearest choose to remember you, right?

And while it sounds like the kids shared plenty of anodyne anecdotes about their mother’s life as an immigrant from the former Czechoslovakia, high-society staple, and QVC host—amongst the memories of mom that Don. Jr. recounted were not one but two stories of corporal punishment. In the first, Junior said that Ivana responded to his bad behavior at a restaurant by carting him to a bathroom and demonstrating “what Eastern European discipline was really all about.”

He also reminisced about the time Ivanka broke a chandelier and passed him off as the culprit. In response, his mother spanked him with a wooden spoon with such vigor that, once she realized he was actually innocent, his “bum was red yet again” and his mom already “too tired to deal with Ivanka.” Good stuff, normal stuff!

But the most unusual eulogy seems to have come from Dorothy Curry, who worked in the Trump household as the children’s nanny and gave remarks in which she referred to Ivana’s isolated later years in terms that sound positively gothic:

In her two-minute speech, she alluded to that isolation, talking about how she had been close to Ms. Trump through the spring and summer of her life, after which followed an autumn and “inevitable winter” of “roses dying” as her former employer’s field of dreams became a “sinking swamp” of “parasites” who had kept her “afloat” with “illicit dreams and schemes.”

You can just picture the frenzied social media posts from followers of the baseless “Ivanna Trump was Epsteined” conspiracy theory that Curry’s remarks are going to inspire.

Ivana was later buried at Donald Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf course, which the Times noted marks, “in a way, the former couple’s final joint real estate deal.” Not every article about a funeral ends with a zinger, but it sure doesn’t sound like this was every funeral.