Ivanka Trump's title in WH is "Assistant to the President." It's the highest staff title. Even the Chief of Staff is an Asst to the Pres.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) March 29, 2017
As is the National Security Advisor . She has the same rank as General McMaster (3 stars) https://t.co/G2AoItpaE2
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) March 29, 2017
Ivanka Trump: Special Assistant In Charge of The Stuff Jared Isn't In Charge Of
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 29, 2017
I’ll be honest: I find it easier to abuse Jared Kushner than his wife, because a lot of the attacks on Ivanka skirt (at best) misogynistic assumptions about what women can or should do. But she does deserve scrutiny, especially when she’s taking on responsibilities for which her only qualification is having been born a member of the Lucky Sperm Club. Per the NYTimes:
Ivanka Trump, the elder daughter of President Trump, is becoming an official government employee, joining her husband, Jared Kushner, in serving as an unpaid adviser to her father in the White House…
Ms. Trump said last week that she planned on serving as an informal adviser to her father, and she already has an office in the West Wing — upstairs from her husband’s. She was also in the process of receiving government-issued security clearance and communications devices. But that plan had prompted criticism from ethics experts, who had said it would allow her to avoid financial disclosure rules.
“This arrangement appears designed to allow Ms. Trump to avoid the ethics, conflict-of-interest and other rules that apply to White House employees,” Norman L. Eisen and Richard W. Painter, White House ethics lawyers for Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively, wrote in a letter to Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel…
Critics have accused Ms. Trump of using her position in the White House to promote her brand, whose hashtag, #womenwhowork, meshes with her carefully developed image as an advocate for women in the Oval Office. (Photos of Ms. Trump posing next to the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, or sitting in on meetings with business leaders have replaced pictures of her shoes and handbags in her Instagram feed.) Those criticisms are likely to intensify as Ms. Trump cements her official role in her father’s inner circle…
Perhaps more significantly, Ms. Trump and her husband, along with the president’s top economic adviser, Gary D. Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive, provide the moderate political ballast against an economic nationalist wing of the White House led by Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist, and the policy adviser Stephen Miller…
… Or so a couple of White House insiders, whose names sound like Javanka and Ired, would like you to believe. They’re the good guys here! The moderating forces!
Dear America, @realDonaldTrump is running the White House as a family business. You've seen how their businesses end: broke and failing.
— Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) March 30, 2017
Kushner & Ivanka have to be around at almost everything bc if not they won’t be able to keep track of what Trump said bc he can’t be trusted
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 29, 2017
The “power couple” have already started to grate on their new neighbors, according to the Washington Post:
… With their long history of hosting Washington dignitaries, Kalorama residents were largely unfazed when they learned that the Trump-Kushner clan, as well as former president Barack Obama and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, were moving to the neighborhood after President Trump’s election.
The neighbors are willing to put up with the Secret Service blockade on both ends of Belmont Road NW, the nearby street where Obama lives. He’s a former president, after all. And they appreciate that the State Department’s security detail placed a few relatively unobtrusive orange cones outside Tillerson’s house on 24th Street NW.
But the security surrounding the six-bedroom house that Trump and Kushner rent?
“Are you kidding me?” asked Marti Robinson, a trial attorney who lives across the street. “This is the adult child of the president. Sometimes there are 10 cars out here.”
Metal barricades along Tracy Place and Kalorama Road now make it impossible for pedestrians to use the sidewalk bordering the house. Neighbors talk of clusters of Secret Service agents lingering on the pavement, conversing in loud voices and even changing their shirts in public view.
“They’ve completely taken over the whole street — as if they have the authority!” said Robinson, an Obama appointee to the U.S. Product Safety Commission. In her own email to the mayor, Robinson wrote that the Secret Service encampment “has truly ruined my peaceful enjoyment of my house.”…
“When Ivanka moved in, we were all excited to shine a spotlight on our pretty neighborhood,” said Kay Kendall, who lives on Tracy Place with her husband, AOL International founder Jack Davies.
Kendall, chair of the District’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities, even envisioned throwing them a welcoming party.
“I felt friendly, there was a friendliness,” she said. “I think those signs were not friendly. What can I say?…
New York City manners!, probably.
5 ways to get promoted in 2017:https://t.co/X2CjY6vpxo pic.twitter.com/GSq18vMe7n
— Ivanka Trump HQ (@IvankaTrumpHQ) March 27, 2017
EBT
She is a conniving grifter. So easy to hate her.
patrick II
Obama had Michelle, Bush had Laura, Bill had Hillary. Melania stays in NYC. I do not begrudge Trump having a family member around he can talk to, I think he would be even more insane if he didn’t.
Craigie
Ah the banana republicans at work
EBT
@patrick II: I begrudge my active enemy every comfort and succor.
Villago Delenda Est
Her problem is not her gender.
Her problem is her sire.
jl
But she is an official staffer now who has to follow some rules and has accountability? Or not?
If not, she deserves whatever criticism she gets.
But if she has gone through the process of holding a real job at the WH, then hold her accountable like anyone else. (though that is tricky, since in the Trump system, everyone would flunk by any standard set over the last 30 years, or maybe 60, or maybe 80.)
Any half sane grifter there who can do some arithmetic to water down the influence of Bannon and other Trumpster scum- and nutbags is good.
Edit: problem with the cartoon at the top of the post is that it seems to omit the early toddler high chair splattered with drool and baby food. Which would be funny, except I think Bannon is still sitting in it. At least the two kids have managed to move up a few seats.
hovercraft
When I read the WaPost article the thing that stuck out to me was that they don;t actually own the house, a company bought it in I think December and is renting it to them. Who is this company? Why would a company buy a house for them, what do they expect in return? Their pissing off their neighbors is par for the course for these grifters, the only people who sue them more than the people they screw over in business are their neighbors. I’d like to know more about their living arrangement and who it’s with, also too why.
EBT
@jl: She has to follow exactly as many rules as her father does. So you tell me how much accountability she has.
@hovercraft: It’s done to limit liability. The company almost certainly ultimately is controlled by them but to any casual observation it’s not an asset they own.
mouse tolliver
Ivanka Trump suffers from the same disease as her father: narcissism. Watch this clip from the 2003 documentary Born Rich…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCer9g-fh8o
It shows Ivanka talking about that time when her dad saw a homeless man sitting outside of Trump Tower. According to Ivanka, her loving father pointed at the homeless man and said, “That guy has $8 billion more than me.”
This is so Donald. He sees a homeless man and thinks “Poor me!”
jl
@EBT: But that applies to everyone in the Trumpworld administration. No matter what the formal and official arrangements are, Trump will act like a lawless entitled ass. But that is a different issue.
I read that at first she did not have an official position, and did not have any official duties and obligations of a formal employee in the Executive Branch. Has that changed or has it not? Does she have an official position and associated formal obligations and responsibilities along with her power and perks. That is what I want to know.
patrick II
@EBT:
I’m thinking about how insane that fckr would be without someone in family to talk to. More than any president he has no real friends. He’s scary enough for the country as it is.
Mary G
I consider myself a feminist, but I have no scruples ragging on Ivanka. Such a hypocrite.
The NYT has an interesting article on a pioneering German feminist, who is friends with Angela Merkel.
Now that’s a woman I can get behind.
Mary G
George Takai and his husband have bought a home in Visalia (farm country) so that he can run against Devin Nunes next year. I’ll donate to that.
SgrAstar
@Mary G: Donating to the Takei campaign is going to be incredibly gratifying. Mr Sulu for the win!
eemom
Oh good Lord. Why is it that no matter how long I stay away from this place, you’re still the same clueless faux-feminist every time I come back?
But ok, I’ll try to play nice. If you could please explain exactly how any of the attacks on Ivanka are “misogynistic assumptions about what women can or should do”?? Cuz I REALLY don’t see it. Thanks.
NotMax
Have said all along they are going to run it like a business.
Unfortunately, the business is Enron.
More seriously, are she and odious hubby receiving federal government health benefits? With a salary of zero, that may well be illegal.
Keith P.
#6 – Go work for Daddy.
Raoul
There’s lots of joking, but the tragic thing (and I mean tragic for our country, I don’t really feel sorry for that horrible oaf a-hole) is that he is incredibly isolated, has no he can trust but immediate family, and will no doubt be going down in flames.
Of course he has no one to trust because he’s the least trustworthy man to have occupied the WH in, well, I don’t know. But he makes Shrub look almost decent and almost functional, so that’s f’ing bad.
JGabriel
patrick II:
Yeah, he might start walking away from EO’s, forgetting to even sign them.
tpherald
@Mary G: April Fools !!
Raoul
Oh, and Trump walking out on the EO ‘signing’? He’s a coward. Like most every bully, he is completely unequipped to handle pushback of any sort.
It’s why he bailed out on the MLB first pitch.
He’s the most special snowflake of all.
Kropadope
@Raoul: All questions are, ipso fatso, unfair. I can’t believe someone would expect a President to expand on his prepared remarks in an extemporaneous manner.
Chet Murthy
@Villago Delenda Est: Is it worse to be called “daughter-wife” than “Uday/Qusay”? Really? I think not. -Their- problem is not merely their sire, but their complicity in his crimes. Nobody beats up on Tiffany.
Kropadope
@Chet Murthy: I wouldn’t say “nobody.” Is it true her name is Tiffany “Oh Right, Her” Trump?
Chet Murthy
@Kropadope: The -only- negative things I’ve read about Tiffany, are that she’s ignored by her father. That’s no reflection on her, except insofar as you think her father’s esteem is something worthy of having.
So no, nobody beats up on Tiffany.
thruppence
Since this is an open thread; a dog question. Our roommate just brought in a dog she almost hit in the road – a wet black lab nearly invisible against the wet black pavement in this Denver suburb. Older, male, unfixed, blue collar, no tags, seems well fed if not well groomed. Picture here. We’ll visit the vet tomorrow and put some posters up, but does anybody know of any good / widely used websites for matching lost pets with searching owners? We already have three cats and two dogs and can’t take in another. Thanks.
Anne Laurie
@thruppence: Can’t help you with specific websites, but your vet clinic should be able to do so. They should also be able to check the old boy for a microchip (although people who don’t fix their dogs may not have ‘chipped’ them either, unfortunately).
Any shelters in your area should also have a good idea of how to track down missing owners.
Don’t know whether your town/suburb has an ‘Animal Control’ department, but whatever the local ‘Public Safety’ branch is called should know. (When our new rescue dog escaped by jumping out a window, ten years ago, I called the local police department, which put me through to Animal Control, where they’d just gotten a call from a local veterinary clinic that a dog running loose had been brought in.)
Best wishes, and bless you for taking him off the road! If you need help paying for any medical expenses incurred, don’t hesitate to contact me at annelaurie dot verizon dot net & I can put up a bleg.
thruppence
Thanks, Anne. (what are you doing up at this hour?) My sister and her roommate are old hands at dog rescuing, so we should be able to handle the basics. I put up a post on our local craigslist lost and found, so we’ll see what happens. I’m going back to bed.
Major Major Major Major
@Kropadope:
Who? …Her?
Splitting Image
The problem with Ivanka is that King Donald has given her more power than Hillary Clinton (that grasping, ambitious harpy) had in her husband’s administration. And Trump voters who say they disliked Clinton because of how much power she had back then, and who have already moved on to disliking Chelsea Clinton because of how much power nepotism has brought her in their fevered imaginations, are predictably letting Ivanka skate.
It’s almost as though principled conservatives were lying for 20 years whenever they talked about why they hated the Clintons. (Cf. “I can’t support Bill Clinton because of his infidelity.”)
burnspbesq
Time to brag on a family member.
I’ve mentioned my niece who plays water polo a couple of times.
This week, she was named national defensive player of the week by the Collegiate Water Polo Association.
Yeah, we’re kinda proud of her. Kid works ungodly hard in the pool, the weight room, and the classroom, and it’s great to see her get rewarded.
satby
@burnspbesq: Congratulations to her!
Raven
Speaking of women, Mississippi State ended UConn’s 111 game winning streak on a buzzer beater in OT!
Sam
Having family around for support and comfort is one thing. Assigning them duties to run the government is quite another. The worst case of nepotism ever seen in the US government. I hope there are endless lawsuits. Immoral, incompetent and extremely dangerous.
Frankensteinbeck
Jesus Christ with the whitewashing. No, they provide the corrupt extreme plutocratic and embezzlement wing against the NEO-NAZI WHITE SUPREMACIST wing. It is unreal how obsessively the media refuses to acknowledge racism.
@Raoul:
It’s worse than that. He was already leaving. He forgot he was at a signing, which can only mean senility.
Ramalama
@Splitting Image: This. Thank you.
randy khan
@Raven:
A great game and a stunning result. I thought for sure that UConn would pull it out after the flagrant foul call.
msdc
@Keith P.: That’s also 1 through 5.
trnc
I don’t doubt that someone has made inappropriate comments, but all of the criticism I’ve seen has been focused on her lack of qualifications. Since she is no more qualified than Jared to have any position of authority in our govt, she deserves just as much of your scorn as Jared does. No less
rikyrah
@burnspbesq:
Congratulations to her ??
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
Tell that truth
efgoldman
Anne I can’t believe that you missed the opportunity for the obvious snarky headline:
“Well There Goes the Neighborhood”
Zinsky
Ivanka has no qualifications for this job, nor does Jared for his. They are being kept close to prop up a 70 year-old tottering degenerate who is showing signs of senility or dementia (witness the next thread). Trump probably can’t or doesn’t read more than what flashes by him on a TelePrompTer, so we now have governance of the most powerful country in the history of the world by a senile old pervert, a big-busted bimbo and a snotty face 35 year old preppy boy who thinks he knows it all. Sad!
GregB
This smells like the level of corruption of the Somoza family in Nicaragua.
It didn’t end very well.
Lurking Canadian
@patrick II: That was my reaction at first (back in December) when it was first bruited about (and people were complaining) that Ivanka would be the “First Lady”. “Melania doesn’t want the job, the job is bullshit nepotism no matter who holds it, there’s historical precedent for a non-wife to do it, so who gives a shit?”
That’s NOT what this is. This is the president giving his child a responsible position in the government. This is just plain banana republic shit.
(Whether it’s different than Hillary Clinton’s role in the early 90s is a question I can’t answer. I don’t know enough.)
And I chime in with all those who have expressed disgust at the “Ivanka’s a moderate” bullshit. This is the same media impulse that called hiring Reince Fucking Priebus “working across the aisle”. Were all Washington media types dropped on their heads as children? In their inability to see what is in front of them they’re like the dwarves at the end of The Last Battle, except instead of eating ambrosia and believing it’s shit, they are eating shit and insisting it’s ambrosia.
GregB
@Raoul:
Yuuuge snowflake.
Kay
It isn’t the “lack of qualifications” to me. It’s bigger than that. The lack of qualifications combined with the absolute arrogance that allows these two to get up every morning and sincerely believe they are the “best people” is disqualifying. There’s no internal check, no monitor, that tells them “wow -THIS is a bad idea!”
This comes back to character. We’re all always searching for laws or norms to rein them in because they don’t possess the ethical qualities that are part and parcel of the laws and norms. You know WHY there weren’t specific statutes covering every single possible conflict for the President? Because before the Trump Family they weren’t needed.
Rather than giving any serious thought to whether she was qualified or whether this nepotism is good for the country, Ivanka hired a lawyer to find an exception. This is who they are. They lack essential qualities – they don’t self-police.
I said the day he took office that they would push this as far as they possibly could until they were halted with a court order. True then and true today. There are people who REQUIRE laws and rules and regs and the Trumps are a prime example. They’ll inspire a whole host of regulations that no one ever needed before. This is to MAKE UP for their complete lack of character. They don’t have an internal ethics monitor so the law will have to provide an external ethics monitor.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
Ivanka is no better than her father. No sympathy here. I hope the entire family goes down. Fuck ’em.
Kay
If Donald Trump were a decent person he COULD say “you know, I could hold every public event at one of my properties and fatten my own bank account but that makes the country look bad and also makes me look bad so I won’t”
But he’s not so he doesn’t. Instead he says his sleazy behavior isn’t BARRED by any specific law, or hasn’t yet been.
That’s a character issue. He lacks the necessary character to self-police. He has to be ORDERED to do the right thing. Given a choice of options he will always choose the sleaziest and most self-interested unless and until someone orders him to do the right thing.
Aunt Kathy
@Raoul: Yeah, looking at it objectively, she HAS to be in the room, cuz Jared can’t be there all the time. And 45 needs somebody he can trust to fill in the blanks from briefings, someone who (probably) won’t leak that he doesn’t/can’t understand the info that he’s getting. Cuz, you know, dementia.
hovercraft
@burnspbesq:
Congrats to her , well earned!
Woodrowfan
that neighborhood had narrow streets with cars parked along side, and numerous one-ways. Blocking a couple streets would make traffic hell.
Used to work there. Almost got stuck for a night when some foreign president was coming for a dinner with his Ambassador across the street and the SS went door to door telling people if they wanted to leave, to do so in the next 20 minutes, or else they’d be stuck inside until the foreign leader left.
PIGL
@eemom: Wow. Just wow. Always ready to be educated or challenged about feminism; just not by the likes of you.
ET
Sorry for the long “comment” but I have been thinking about the whole nepotism thing in the WH with Jared and Ivanka. While I am sure there is no small amount of grift involved – after all the Trumps are grifters and grifters gotta grift, I still can’t help but feel that there also something else in play.
We all know that Trump is all about Brand Trump. And Brand Trump is all Donald Trump. Everyone, including the kids, are in service to the Brand and the Brand is the father. Now, since winning the presidency was likely a surprise – and maybe a bit of unwelcome one at that – they were caught flatfooted. No one that he really trusted was really in place – and he obviously only trusts a few in any case.
Now, being president is A LOT more complicated than he and they ever anticipated. SURPRISE! First, there is the fact that it is a lot more public – and more public in ways the family is not used to. They are used to controlling the message to a large extent, while still maintaining some privacy – that isn’t possible for any president. Now why they didn’t see/understand that is beyond me. Celebrity and popularity are not the same thing. In the universe of reality TV and the celebrity culture the Donald loves and needs so much, all press is good press. That is most definitely not the case in DC politics where bad press builds upon itself and once the smell of rot is in the air people pile on while looking for the door. But they still have to try, and that is now up to Jared and Ivanka on behalf of the next generation(s) of Trump grifters.
Second, they (though not he) likely realize this is NOT a job he is particularly well suited to either temperamentally or intellectually. He is a bit of an idiot when it comes to most things (though in his own mind he is the always the smartest person in every room) and he has the impulse control of a 5 year old. Both of those things can and will, continue to get him into trouble. But they still have to protect Brand Trump and Brand Trump has to survive for the family to continue to grift to the level they have gotten used to. Jared and Ivanka know that if this presidency goes really, really bad that the Brand is going to suffer and they are not the prime public face of Brand Trump, the Donald is, and they don’t have his skills at the self-aggrandizement that is so essential to Brand Trump.
That means that to continue to protect dad, he has to be surround with people he trusts as well as people who have a very personal interest in protecting him – mostly from himself – and that is not Bannon or Conway or any of the other 4th raters that inhabit the WH because really, those people are there to be discarded once they are no longer useful or sacrificed when they cause too many problems. That means Jared and Ivanka.
When Trump’s ego trip started in the primaries it was all part of the PR of Brand Trump. I doubt they thought he would win, and maybe they even didn’t want him to. In the beginning. Then The Donald’s ego got even more stroked, and since he likes to bill himself a winner, he decided to go for it. Then he won. What is that thing they say about being careful what you wish for the gods may answer your prayers? Brand Trump (or at least Jared and Ivanka) is learning that what they thought would be a boost to Brand Trump, could in the end, do some real damage to their future grifting opportunities.
Sadly I suspect that as bad as the WH is now with them there, imagine how bad it would be if they weren’t.
sdhays
@Lurking Canadian:
Hillary’s role in the Clinton White House was something that was fairly explicitly discussed during the campaign – a campaign slogan in ’92 was “Two for the Price of One”, if memory serves. The idea of Hillary having a big policy role in the White House was more of a campaign promise than nepotism/only trusting people in the family.
hovercraft
@ET:
Interesting take, but I disagree. They are all adults who should know better, Jared and Ivanka are rich beyond anything they or their children will ever need. Lucretia on her own is worth somewhere around 150 million, Jared is many times richer, his dad is a real billionaire and put Jared in control when he went to jail. If they were decent people they would have pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. They are just as venal, narcissistic, and contemptible as he is. Uday and Qusay are yes boys who do as they are told. Jared and Ivanka are supposed to be the smart ones, but just like Twitler himself their smarts are greatly exaggerated, they are just another pair of greedy grifters out to get as much as they can for themselves, everyone else be dammed. Twitler is the problem, but so are his kids.
ET
@hovercraft: I definitely think the kids should know better and in many ways are just as bad as the Donald even if they may not be as pathetically obvious about it. I didn’t want any of what I wrote to look like it was anything other that selfish self-interest. I just think that they are smart enough to recognize that daddy going off the rails is likely going to drag them down as well. They have the money to live will even then, but they, like their daddy, like the attention/adulation and places the Trump names get them and those are things they are protecting.
smintheus
I have never seen one attack on Ivanka that is based on misogynistic assumptions, rather than on the belief that nepotism per se is bad.
Bjacques
Collectively, it’s the system of Dr. Dunning and Professor Kruger.
J R in WV
@Raven:
And the young woman who drained the buzzer beater basket was 5’6″ tall, shot from just right of the free fall line, looked like nothing but net to me.
David Spikes
@JGabriel: The point, for people who didn’t know, is that Trump has no friends.
He goes off on his golf dates by himself-if you play golf, think about the guy at the club who the pro has to play with because no one else wants to.
Nights alone at theWH-no one to invite over.
The contrast with the Obamas is startling-no one wants to hang with this guy-even being president can’t change that.
David Spikes
Recall the recent meltdown-on both left and right-about Chelsea and her book and the CDS that it unleashed. The same people have no indignation left to direct at Ivanka, Jared and Co. sheesh.
My favorite-Ivanka will be in charge of Chinese relations. Doesn’t speak Chinese, has never visited China, found out where China is by googling it, but somehow no real indignation because, you know, let’s froth at the mouth over the speculation that Chelsea is going to run for. . . . . something.
Gvg
@smintheus: calling Ivanka darter/wife or Lolita or Lucretia isn’t misogynist to you? It sure seems that way to me. The whole First Lady expectations we have is sexist in the first place. It is not something that matters if the daughter does it instead. Bitter comments implying incest when we don’t actually know and there are important provable things we should focus on….well it all seems sleazy and sexist such that we wouldn’t condone it against someone on our side.
I would prefer we stuck to what she has actually done or failed to do and there is plenty of that. She is a hypocrit in how she treats her own employees compared to how she likes to talk especially about how great she is. She supports a dad who is sexist as all get out. She isn’t particularly talented, just born rich and connected. She can’t keep her dad from hiring real anto Semites even though her children are Jewish so she is actually powerless and no use thinking about. We need to concentrate on her dad.
Shakti
@mouse tolliver:
“I’m so proud of my parents for getting through this”? I retched.
cleosmom
Judging from the images I’ve seen of the clothes she designs, her brand has the initials D.G.
If anyone thinks these comments should be nicer, they’re welcome to skip this one. The delicate blossoms ye have with you always.
TenguPhule
We don’t judge Ivanka by what she lacks between her legs.
We judge her by what she lacks in her head.
Tehanu
@Kay:
Right on the button. Not knowing the difference between “illegal” and “wrong.” It seems to be the mindset of all these people on the right, like a colleague of mine who rants on and on about illegal immigrants; he has a law degree, but absolutely will not admit that breaking a law (e.g., going 75 in a 65-mph zone) and committing a crime (e.g., murder) can be two different things. I’m sure the Drumpf crime family think that only things that are illegal are wrong — and that those laws don’t really apply to them anyway.