USA TODAY International Edition
Ivanka Trump is front and center at the White House
She says she’s there to push for women’s issues
The pictures say it all. In all the turbulence of the Trump administration so far, there has been one constant: Ivanka Trump, front and center at the White House, at work and at play.
It was expected the first daughter would be at her father’s side more than first lady Melania Trump; what’s unexpected is she’s been there almost as much as her husband, senior adviser Jared Kushner, who actually works there.
Despite her modest protestations after the election that she planned to be just “a daughter” in her father’s administration, the pictures since the inauguration already show something different.
“I’ve never seen a ( presidential) child this involved in her father’s administration,” says Kate Andersen Brower, author of a study of first ladies, First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies. “There’s nobody else like her. Even George W. Bush, during his father’s administration, he was involved in campaign stuff but he wasn’t sitting in on meetings at the White House as far as I know.”
Not so for Ivanka, 35. There she is sitting at the president’s desk in the Oval Office in a picture on her glossy Instagram page featuring other pictures of her and her children at the White House. “A great discussion with two world leaders about the importance of women having a seat at the table!” she wrote.
There she is sitting next to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a White House conference on women in business last week, directing her beatific smile at the handsome young pol from the north.
There she was Feb. 10, in the front row of the joint press conference with POTUS and Prime Minister Shinzō Abe of Japan, flanked by such Trump titans as chief strategist Steve Bannon, chief of staff Reince Priebus and National Security honcho Michael Flynn. A few days later, Flynn was gone, fired over questions about his judgment and veracity.
But Ivanka is still there. “Ivanka is front and center because she wants to be,” says first lady historian Jean Harris of the University of Scranton’s Political Science Department and Women’s Studies.
On Wednesday, Ivanka was once again in the front row at the joint press conference of Trump and visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, sitting next to Kushner, the first lady and Netanyahu’s wife, Sara. She posted that picture on Instagram, too. Kushner was there for a reason: He’s been tasked by Trump with negotiating peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
When Trump was asked at the press conference about the rise in anti- Semitic attacks since he was elected, he didn’t answer directly, instead pointing out that Ivanka, Kushner and their three children are Jewish. “You’re going to see a lot of love, OK?” he concluded.
Ivanka has said in interviews that she wants to make empowering women in business her signature issue during the Trump administration, and she’s already started: She’s been at two White House conferences with business leaders, plus she and Kushner hosted a dinner for a group of CEOs last month at their new home in a pricey neighborhood of Washington to talk about working women and issues like paid maternity leave.
In one sense, Ivanka’s prominence is natural. She really is close to dad and he is proud of her. In another sense, it’s strategic, as Trump suggested in his now- famous tweet blasting Nordstrom for dropping Ivanka’s fashion line. “She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!” he tweeted on Feb. 8.
“It was very telling and I don’t think he’s saying that ironically,” Brower says. “I think he realizes she is a positive part of his image right now. She’s the only women in his orbit who is seen as relatively moderate or seemingly so. He recognizes that people want to think she is advising him.”
Harris, however, is skeptical that her father or his advisers are plotting to put Ivanka forward. She is doing it herself, Harris says, because she wants to influence policy on child care and paid maternity leave.
“However, such policies are not typically supported by Republican officials and she therefore may be limited in affecting such matters,” Harris says. “Being the daughter of the president typically does not offer the same leverage with the public as does being the president’s wife.”
The Netanyahu visit was Melania Trump’s first appearance at the White House in a FLOTUS duty, greeting the visiting dignitaries and acting as hostess. Later Wednesday, Mrs. Trump accompanied Mrs. Netanyahu on a tour of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. She hosted the Abes at Mar- a- Lago over the weekend, but notably did not accompany Mrs. Abe when she toured Washington.
But we already knew Melania would initially be a part- time first lady; just after the election the Trumps announced she would remain New York until the youngest Trump child finishes the school year in June.
Ivanka was seen as a natural stand- in, and she did so when she accompanied her father to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to receive the remains of a fallen soldier. But she didn’t host Mrs. Abe either; she was at the White House. In fact, Ivanka has pushed back at the stand- in speculation, telling ABC News it was “an inappropriate observation.”
But there she was again, with her husband and children, climbing aboard Air Force One with the Trumps and the Abes for their weekend of golfing and diplomacy at Mar- a- Lago.
Not everything Ivanka has done so far has gone over well: She posted an ill- timed Instagram picture of herself and Kushner — she dressed in a $ 5,000 silvery couture gown — in the midst of the chaos and protests that erupted last month at international airports over Trump’s order barring refugees and travelers from some Muslim countries. It provoked a backlash of mocking “Let them eat cake!” tweets and pictorial comparisons to bleak Syrian refugees.
Even the picture of her sitting at POTUS’ desk, flanked by the president and Trudeau, got push- back from critics who accused her of using the Oval Office as a prop. On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah mocked her.
On Election Day, BuzzFeed’s culture writer, Anne Helen Petersen, posted a feminist take- apart piece that asserted Ivanka’s poise and polish only mask how closely her thinking aligns with the president’s.
“Like her father, she turned her lifestyle into a brand. And like her father’s brand, Ivanka’s is guided by a simple, if cloaked, understanding: that the world should be run by straight white men. ” Petersen wrote.
Unlike her father, Ivanka ignores all this, at least in public. Is her presence having an effect, good or bad, on the Trump administration’s image or decisions? It’s too early to tell; after all, Trump has been president just one month. But he has appeared to respond to her issues by at least talking about women in business at the White House.
“I don’t think she’s helping much yet,” says Brower. “If she’s so influential, how come the ( Trump administration) head of the Environmental Protection Agency and other cabinet posts aren’t reflective of her implied policies, when they’re rolling back regulations that impact climate change, for instance? Is she really pushing ( her father) to care about the environment?
“So far, she hasn’t done something to show she’s influential in a real way.”