WATCH: @IvankaTrump talks advising her father, her differing viewpoints, and grades the president | @ainsleyearhardt pic.twitter.com/vjM4TDspMh
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When Ivanka Trump was named an official White House employee back in March, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, it made perfect sense in terms of the self-serving nepotism this administration runs on. But as for actual qualifications for being hired into a high-ranking position with at least great theoretical power? Not as much. Despite having no experience in anything even tangentially related to politics, Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are official advisers to the president.
So how does she advise on something she knows nothing about? An interview with Fox & Friends’ (of course) Ainsley Earhardt has finally provided a sort-of answer: she doesn’t! She told Earhardt, “I don’t profess to be a political savant so I leave the politics to other people.”
Cool. Cool cool cool. Except that’s, you know, literally her job. To advise. On politics.
As usual, an Ivanka Trump interview leaves us with more questions than answers. When asked point blank what she discusses with her father, she answers only, “a plethora of things!” Okay, but like what? Well, she and her father are “different people, so there are areas where [they] disagree.” No, Ivanka, we’re really asking. What do you talk about? What is your job? What do you do?
“I think it’s normal to not have 100% aligned viewpoints on every issue,” she says. “I think that would be a very strange scenario.” Um, yes, we agree. No one thinks you should or would agree with you dad about everything. In fact, we’re hoping you don’t. Ivanka keeps selling herself as the advisor who can make her father listen, and people are onboard for that. But she has yet to prove she actually gives him anything to listen to, ever. Instead, she appears only to exist as an empty, fake-progressive, fake-feminist figurehead meant to assuage her father’s tyrannical homophobic, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic agenda. And she’s right, that is a very strange scenario.
Trump says that while she does disagree with her father, all the negativity is just too much. Because of course “It’s much easier to criticize than to dive in and effect change.” So instead, she likes to focus “on areas where I can add positive value.” She says she’s “more interested in being for something than against something.” Apparently White House adviser and bumper sticker slogan writer are the same job now.
She does finally list some of those subjects she likes to focus on: workforce development, policies that allow working families to “thrive,” helping veterans, and addressing the nation’s opioid problem.
And yet then in the very next breath, she made that statement that she tries to “stay out of ‘politics.'” And yes, she used air quotes around “politics.” Which I guess is why all those issues she just mentioned are being trampled by her father. Who, by the way, she was asked to grade on his performance. Obviously (her word) she gave her dad an A. An A on his Muslim travel ban; an A on his cuts to veterans’ benefits; an A for undermining advancements made in LGBTQIA rights. An A all around.
So, I suppose the question is still on the table. Ivanka Trump, what do you actually do?
(image: screengrab, Fox)
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