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Ivanka Trump: Daddy’s Little Monster


Image an alteration of original artwork for “Suicide Squad,” copyright DC Comics.

Ivanka Trump is many things her father is not.

She can appear dignified.
Articulate.
Intelligent.
Empathetic.

Well read.

And in so many ways, she is not her father.

She is sometimes appears measured and thoughtful in her speech.
She is capable of restraint.
She can finesse a sentence with several polysyllabic words.
She can convincingly replicate a myriad of human emotions; empathy, sadness, joy.

And unlike her father, she understands how to craft an attractive social media persona; her Twitter feed a brilliant blend of moving photo ops with veterans, elementary students, and national monuments; sassy shout outs to working women, and lots of sugary Ivanka being a mom images. She often talks of the importance of “empowering young women,” and positions herself as a staunch defender of the American family.

But make no mistake—she is also her father’s daughter.

She is his advisor, his confidant, and easily his most effective public mouthpiece, never wavering in her support, always reiterating her father’s platitudes (albeit in a far more palatable and sensible manner), and fully sanctioning every move he has made since assuming the Presidency, no matter how destructive or ill-advised.

Ivanka Trump is simply her father in a less alarming, less egregious form. She is just better at covering her malice with a veneer of relative humanity. 

Her business dealings are as equally eyebrow raising as her father’s. She’s allowed White House spokespeople and Government websites to shill for her jewelry. She’s shown up at official meetings with foreign dignitaries as a civilian. She’s slipped into a decidedly ambiguous role in her father’s administration, and has essentially replaced the First Lady. She is perpetuating his agenda as well as her own, with book deals and career opportunities and brand building, all at the expense of the struggling families she’s apparently for. Ivanka would have us believe she is an advocate for women and the working poor, while being a champion of her father’s incessant attacks on them. I’m not sure she gets to have it both ways. Nepotism giveth and it taketh away.

A juxtaposition of the Ivanka that is and the Ivanka that we’re supposed to believe and embrace was on full display in a home video of her having a dance party in the kitchen with her children had gone viral; painting her once again as a dedicated, fun, doting working mom who is one of us. She may indeed be a dedicated, fun, doting working mom but she is not one of us—at least not the 99 percent of us. She is a Trump, and Trumps are privileged, callous, and apparently oblivious to irony.

The day that video popped up on my news feed, was the very day her father had just won a political “victory” that could strip nearly 24 million Americans of their healthcare, and establish as barriers to coverage everything from pregnancy to C-sections to postpartum depression to sexual assault to birth control. 

So as Ivanka danced blissfully with her kids, and the world cooed at the collective cuteness, tens of millions of other families were rightly terrified at the prospect of being financially wiped out by a sickness or accident—as a direct result of the work of her father (and employer and mentor.)

And this is the rub.

Ivanka could afford to dance that day. Her children will always have healthcare. They have a pre-existing condition: It’s called privilege and she and they are fully afflicted with it. This is why despite clever efforts to appear otherwise, she is as insulated and detached as her father; because neither of them has known lack or fear or the sleeplessness that comes when the person who controls the health, safety, and future of your children doesn’t seem to give a damn about them.

She may project being more decent or compassionate or caring than her father (which isn’t a very high bar, by the way), and she may feign a heart for the working poor and for those who are marginalized—but she is simply may be far better than he is at concealing her toxic agenda. She likely may be every bit as malevolent and self-serving and dangerous as he is. She may just be a super-villain without the bombast and noise.

Ivanka Trump can try and craft an image of warm sweetness and noble strength, and outwardly peddle female advocacy all she wants—it rings hollow. As her father and his cohorts mock and malign the likes of strong, capable, successful women like Elizabeth Warren, Sally Yates, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Maxine Walters—she can’t align herself with this Presidency and claim to be about empowering women simultaneously.

She is her own person, of course and she isn’t responsible for the man her father is. I can’t imagine what it’s been like to be raised by someone so devoid of decency, so filled with contempt for women. It’s had to be a certain kind of gaslighter’s hell that’s left scars. However, soon she’s going to have to break ranks with him in fundamental, clear, and very vocal ways on policy or method, or we’re going to have to admit that while less abrasive and less obviously corrupt—that the rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the family tree.

Ivanka seems to be an intelligent, motivated human being. But this country is filled with such people, who will never experience the world with as little turbulence or resistance as she has had.

She may adore her children and she should—but millions of Americans victimized by the Presidency she is an integral part of, adore their children too and have far less to dance about these days due to this new profitable arm of their family business.

We surely need more strong, wise women of integrity in the highest levels of leadership of this country. What we don’t need, regardless of gender, is someone who wants to play the American hero while throwing so many of us under the bus in the process.

Ivanka Trump wants us to believe she has a fully functioning soul, that she honestly cares for those hardest hit by her father’s handiwork, and that she is committed to leveraging her privilege for the good of all people. I’m not buying it.

Initially it appeared she might be a lone, welcome bit of integrity and decency in this Administration—but it turns out that was all relative.

Ivanka Trump seems to just be daddy’s little monster: fully complicit in his abomination of a Presidency—just not as brazen and loud as he is about it all.

We shouldn’t be fooled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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