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Opinions: Ivanka Trump wants power, and laughing at her expense won't stop her
Opinions
Ivanka Trump wants power, and laughing at her expense won’t stop her
By Helaine Olen, Opinion writer
July 1 at 6:02 PM
This past weekend, left-wing Twitter was enthralled by a short clip of Ivanka Trump attempting to insert herself into a conversation among French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Theresa May, International Monetary Fund president Christine Lagarde and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while at the annual Group of 20 summit in Japan. The group appeared to be patiently tolerating Trump — at least, until the moment it became clear Lagarde could no longer contain her disdain for America’s first daughter. For a split second, viewers caught a look of utter contempt on Lagarde’s face. Her mouth quirked and she gave Trump a side-long glance, before she resumed a blank expression.
It was an incident straight out of a Victorian ballroom, a dowager putting the young, presumptuous and nouveau-riche upstart in her place. If the scene had taken place in an Edith Wharton novel, Trump’s reputation would never recover. In a William Makepeace Thackeray tome, her glad-handing would be just another bit of comical overreach on a path to ultimate success. ... What it ultimately means for the real Ivanka Trump is still to be determined.
....
While many portray Ivanka Trump’s White House service as a part of her psychodrama with her father, there is another way to look at it. President Trump claimed earlier this year that if his older daughter “ever wanted to run for president, I think she’d be very, very hard to beat.” In his bestselling 2018 book “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff claimed that Ivanka wanted to run for president one day, as did Emily Jane Fox in “Born Trump” and Vicky Ward in “Kushner, Inc.”
We need to take what is being reported about Ivanka Trump’s presidential ambitions seriously. I dare say that if there were multiple reports of a Trump son musing about a presidential run, we would have long since done just that. It’s easy to ridicule the first daughter, but Ivanka Trump appears to be an all-but-unstoppable force, impervious to snubs, ridicule and setbacks — all traits that are mighty helpful for a presidential run. That’s the thing about social comedies: It’s the smug dowagers who end up answering to the upstarts.
Helaine Olen is a contributor to Post Opinions and the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry." Her work has appeared in Slate, the Nation, the New York Times, the Atlantic and many other public
ations. She serves on the advisory board of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Follow https://twitter.com/helaineolenIvanka Trump wants power, and laughing at her expense won’t stop her
By Helaine Olen, Opinion writer
July 1 at 6:02 PM
This past weekend, left-wing Twitter was enthralled by a short clip of Ivanka Trump attempting to insert herself into a conversation among French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Theresa May, International Monetary Fund president Christine Lagarde and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while at the annual Group of 20 summit in Japan. The group appeared to be patiently tolerating Trump — at least, until the moment it became clear Lagarde could no longer contain her disdain for America’s first daughter. For a split second, viewers caught a look of utter contempt on Lagarde’s face. Her mouth quirked and she gave Trump a side-long glance, before she resumed a blank expression.
It was an incident straight out of a Victorian ballroom, a dowager putting the young, presumptuous and nouveau-riche upstart in her place. If the scene had taken place in an Edith Wharton novel, Trump’s reputation would never recover. In a William Makepeace Thackeray tome, her glad-handing would be just another bit of comical overreach on a path to ultimate success. ... What it ultimately means for the real Ivanka Trump is still to be determined.
....
While many portray Ivanka Trump’s White House service as a part of her psychodrama with her father, there is another way to look at it. President Trump claimed earlier this year that if his older daughter “ever wanted to run for president, I think she’d be very, very hard to beat.” In his bestselling 2018 book “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff claimed that Ivanka wanted to run for president one day, as did Emily Jane Fox in “Born Trump” and Vicky Ward in “Kushner, Inc.”
We need to take what is being reported about Ivanka Trump’s presidential ambitions seriously. I dare say that if there were multiple reports of a Trump son musing about a presidential run, we would have long since done just that. It’s easy to ridicule the first daughter, but Ivanka Trump appears to be an all-but-unstoppable force, impervious to snubs, ridicule and setbacks — all traits that are mighty helpful for a presidential run. That’s the thing about social comedies: It’s the smug dowagers who end up answering to the upstarts.
Helaine Olen is a contributor to Post Opinions and the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry." Her work has appeared in Slate, the Nation, the New York Times, the Atlantic and many other public
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