Losing a parent is never easy, but finding them in their last moments is a pain that stays with you forever. For Eric Trump, that painful moment came in July 2022, when he found his mother, Ivana Trump, had passed away inside her Manhattan home.
In his new memoir, Under Siege: My Family’s Fight to Save Our Nation, Eric, who is Donald Trump’s youngest son, shared some deep personal stories. One of the stories is of the day his mother, Ivana, passed away and the impact it left on him. The 73-year-old Ivana died after falling down the staircase in her Upper East Side townhouse. This is a strategy that stunned even those close to their family.
Eric shared how he walked into his mother’s home and witnessed the unimaginable. “I sat in silence. She was gone,” he wrote. “But I couldn’t really grieve yet. Her fall down the staircase had left a gruesome trail of blood. I sat and slowly, carefully, cleaned her blood off the stairs, in the house she called home for many years.”
Eric describes the moment as a very haunting and strangely grounding feeling. That moment also taught him, almost forced him to confront loss in the most personal way possible. Eric also opened up about his mother’s struggles with alcohol, admitting that it likely played a role in her fall. “It’s true that my mom had an alcohol problem later in life,” he wrote. He even added that he hoped people would remember her love, strength, and drive, and not just her death.
In Eric Trump’s memoir, “Under Siege,” he writes of discovering mother Ivana Trump after she had died, and speculates that alcohol was involved in her fall. https://t.co/kSYkaWGygV
— The List (@TheListDaily) October 28, 2025
Through his words, Eric explained how disciplined, warm, and resilient Ivana was as a woman. He credited her “Eastern European grit” for shaping the values that kept him humble despite growing up in privilege. “We went to the best schools and saw amazing places, but if I wanted a bike, I had to earn the money to buy it,” he shared.
Ivana largely raised her three children on her own after divorcing Donald Trump. That experience instilled deep respect in Eric for her work ethic and determination. She made sure they held summer jobs and learned the value of independence and hard work early in life. She made sure they had summer jobs and learnt to be independent and value early in their lives. hard work and for others. She made sure they had summer jobs and learned the value of independence early on. “She expected her kids to open doors for others and finish the food on their plates,” Eric recalled.
At her funeral, Eric described his mother as “a force of nature who ruled with an iron fist and a heart of gold.” In his memoir, he echoed that sentiment, writing that Ivana Trump’s love was fierce, demanding, and endlessly loyal. It was the kind of love that stays with you long after goodbye.



