VISIT FROM IVANKA
Ivanka Trump greets Trump 2020 supporters at the Asian Pacific Americans for Trump volunteer center in Orlando on Wednesday. The senior White House adviser also spoke to a group of about 60 people at the Citrus Club downtown.
Ivanka Trump thanked Asian American volunteers for her father’s presidential campaign at a stop in Orlando on Wednesday.
The senior White House adviser also spoke to a group of about 60 people at the Citrus Club downtown.
The visit came just two days before President Trump’s scheduled campaign rally at the Orlando Sanford International Airport.
“It’s your effort that’s going to help us over the finish line,” Trump told volunteers at the Asian Pacific Americans for Trump office on West Colonial Drive. “It’s the thousands of volunteers across this country just like yourselves, volunteering their time, their energy, or resources because they know what’s at stake in this election.”
Thuy Lowe, who guided her around the room, said the volunteers included many Vietnamese Americans who have never voted before despite living in the U.S. for nearly 50 years.
“They may not speak English very well, but they understand that they’re coming to register to vote for the first time because of President Trump,” Lowe said.
At the Citrus Club, Ivanka Trump was interviewed by Mercedes Schlapp, a Trump campaign staffer and former White House director of strategic communications
She said her father “as he likes to say, he’s kept more promises that he’s made, which is actually true.”
She did not talk about her father’s debate performance Tuesday night against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, which led the Commission on Presidential Debates to change the format of upcoming debates so the president will not be able to continually interrupt and speak over the moderator.
She also did not mention the New York Times story from Sunday about her father’s taxes, which included reporting that President Trump paid her almost $750,000 in unexplained “consulting fees,” part of $26 million that he wrote off on his taxes from between 2010 and 2018.
Instead, she praised the pre-COVID-19 economic situation under President Trump, which “if you just go back to January, it’s amazing.”
“When the President’s policies started really kicking in, [including] renegotiating trade deals, tax reform, tax cuts, energy independence … the economy started just soaring.”
But after “this plague descended on us,” she cited the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program in the CARES Act as a major help for small businesses in the state.
“In 14 days, two weeks, the SBA issued more loans than in the 14 years prior,” she said.
“So it’s extraordinary. And bring it back down to the state level, that in Florida alone protected 3.2 million jobs of people employed by close to a half a million small businesses here in the state.”
Asked why the Trumps got involved in government, she said, “This country has given so much to our family. And the opportunity to give back is a privilege.”