Ivanka Trump

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      in US Politics

      What is Ivanka Trump's legacy? Enabling her father's odious actions | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Ivanka Trump has wound up her time in the White House in the most fitting way possible: with a scandal about a $3,000-a-month toilet. Members of the Secret Service, it was recently reported, were banned from using any of the bathrooms in Jared Kushner and Ivanka’s Washington DC mansion and, instead, had to rent an apartment to relieve themselves in (although Jared and Ivanka have denied this). Talk about flushing taxpayers’ money down the drain.One imagines Ivanka did not plan to spend her final days in DC dealing with the fallout from a violent insurrection and battling embarrassing leaks about her loos. When she appointed herself special adviser to the president, Ivanka was a handbag and shoe saleswoman bursting with ambition. She was going to empower women everywhere! Little girls around the world would read about Saint Ivanka for decades to come. She would be a role mogul: her branded bags would fly off the shelves.Four years later, Ivanka’s clothing line has shut down and her personal brand has been damaged enough for a university to cancel her as a speaker. It seems she is persona non grata in New York and her dad has been banned from parts of the internet for inciting violence. By rights, Ivanka should be sobbing into her sheets wondering how everything has gone so wrong.But Ivanka is a Trump: narcissism and self-delusion are in her DNA. As DC braces for pre-inauguration chaos Ivanka has been blithely tweeting her “achievements” and retweeting praise in an attempt to convince us she has left an important legacy.According to her Twitter feed, one thing Americans should all be thanking Ivanka for is paid family leave, which has been one of her marquee issues. And, to be fair, if Ivanka is to be praised for anything, it’s for pushing Donald Trump to pass a bill giving federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental time off. Would that have happened without Ivanka? I don’t know. But she facilitated it. Does it make up for the many odious things Ivanka also facilitated? No.Another of Ivanka’s big projects was the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) initiative, which aims to reach 50 million women in the developing world by 2025 and … well, I’m not sure exactly what’s supposed to happen then. The initiative is so buzzword-laden that it’s somewhat hard to understand. You get the impression Ivanka launched it via vague instructions to “empower women in powerful ways via strategic pillars of empowerment”.Ivanka has been very keen to turn the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity initiative into part of her political legacy … But she got greedy and insisted on using her version of the billAnyway, all that empowering has paid off, according to a report W-GDP released last week: almost 12.6 million women worldwide have been equipped with the skills they need for economic advancement, thanks to Ivanka. Let’s be charitable and say W-GDP has done some good. The problem is, that good is massively outweighed by the Trump administration’s worldwide war on abortion: the administration imposed an harmful expansion of “the global gag rule”, which bans US federal funding international NGOs that provide abortion services or advocacy. Trump also did his best to try to destroy the budget for foreign aid.Still, Ivanka has been very keen to turn the W-GDP into part of her political legacy. Last year, she was behind the bipartisan launch of a bill formally authorising the programme so that it would live on after her dad left office. That could well have happened: Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic senator, initially lent Ivanka her support. But Ivanka got greedy and insisted on using her version of the bill. Shaheen abandoned her support, explaining that Ivanka’s version of the legislation focused too narrowly on women’s economic advancement, minimising issues such as education, healthcare and gender-based violence. Not so much “let them eat cake”, as “let them start cake-making businesses”. Last month, the bill was dropped and now the future of Ivanka’s biggest project is unclear.I don’t want to be unfair to her. She may not have empowered women the way she promised she would, but she did empower herself. Ivanka and Kushner have made a fortune while “serving” in the White House. And you know what they say about charity: it begins at home. More

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      in Elections

      Trump heads for new life in Florida, marking end of an era in New York

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      When Donald Trump leaves the White House on 20 January, reports indicate that he will not return to his home town of New York City but rather, reside at his Mar-a-Lago home in south Florida. Indeed, Trump formally changed his residency to the so-called Sunshine State in fall 2019.Trump’s seemingly permanent departure to a state known for its large population of elderly retirees marks the end of an era in New York, the city where he grew up and moved from its suburbs of Queens to become an icon of brash Manhattan style and wealth in the 1970s and 1980s.“He made his presence known on the island of Manhattan in the mid 70s, a brash Adonis from the outer boroughs bent on placing his imprint on the golden rock,” the New York Times reported in 1983. “Donald John Trump exhibited a flair for self-promotion, grandiose schemes – and, perhaps not surprisingly, for provoking fury along the way.”Trump’s flashiness arguably encapsulated the unapologetic financial excesses of the 1980s and beyond with him sticking his family name on seemingly everything he got his hands on. There have been 17 properties in New York City that bore Trump’s name over time, NBC News reported.Trump became a tabloid fixture, feeding the papers stories about himself, according to the Hollywood Reporter and other outlets. One of them was the famed New York Post cover about his relationship with Marla Maples, who became his second wife. The headline read: “Marla boasts to her pals about Donald: ‘BEST SEX I’VE EVER HAD.’”Trump even had a cameo in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Macaulay Culkin, as the star Kevin, asks him for directions to the lobby of the Plaza hotel, which Trump owned at that time.While Trump’s cultural cachet was bizarre, it had power. Director Chris Columbus said in a December interview with Insider that Trump “did bully his way into the movie” by demanding that he get a role in return for allowing shooting to take place at the Plaza.The majority of New Yorkers are not mourning Trump’s departure. They long seemed ready for it.When news emerged that Trump was changing his residency, Governor Andrew Cuomo said in as statement: “Good riddance. It’s not like Mr Trump paid taxes here anyway. He’s all yours, Florida.”Cuomo’s reaction encapsulated the feelings of many residents. New York is a blue state, and the city still more liberal; since Trump took office, there have routinely been demonstrations against White House policies outside his eponymous properties.New Yorkers’ dislike of Trump hit new highs last spring. His administration’s mishandling of coronavirus was felt especially deeply in New York City, an early US center of the pandemic. City and state officials begged a seemingly uninterested Trump for help.“How on earth do you think that New York City can get back on its feet without federal support?” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “Mr President, are you going to save New York City, or are you telling New York City to drop dead?”Cuomo, speaking of the coronavirus-spurred financial crisis in September, remarked: “Trump is actively trying to kill New York City. It is personal. I think it’s psychological. He is trying to kill New York City.”Since many New Yorkers feel this way, it’s not surprising that Trump and his clan have nothing left for them here, except for a sea of legal problems.De Blasio announced this week that New York City was cutting its contracts with Trump’s companies for his involvement in spurring a deadly attack on the Capitol. That means Trump will lose $17m in deals to run the Central Park Carousel, Wollman and Lasker skating rinks, and Ferry Point golf course in the Bronx, according to ABC News.Trump’s cronies speculate that Trump’s departure from New York City could also include his business interests, given his dislike of local and state officials, ABC News reported. Meanwhile, the Manhattan district attorney and state attorney general are investigating Trump’s financial dealings.Trump’s departure from the White House also means that civil litigation against him here might finally proceed, as he can no longer cite presidential duties in efforts to delay proceedings.Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, are not expected to be welcomed in New York City’s elite circles when they leave Washington, according to reports. They purchased a $30m property in Miami’s luxe Indian Creek village.Donald Trump Jr and girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle are also relocating to Florida and are eyeing homes in Jupiter. “There is no way they can stay in New York. They’d be tortured in the streets,” a source told the New York Post of Junior’s impending move.As Trump and his family try building a new life, and potential Maga capital, in south Florida, the ostracism they faced in New York might follow them to some degree. Ivanka and Kushner might struggle with the south Florida social scene.The New York Post quoted a source saying: “The Indian Creek country club members are very picky and the word is that Javanka need not apply.”Even Trump’s appearance in Home Alone 2 has come into question, with Culkin supporting social media commentary in favor of removing Trump from the movie. More

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      in US Politics

      Sorry, try Obama's house: Secret Service barred from using Ivanka Trump's bathrooms

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      The dying days of the Trump administration have been plagued by yet more scandal in the form of riots, Twitter bans and impeachment. Now the Washington Post has added another: water closet gate.
      In a multi-bylined article one of America’s top investigative news outlets has chronicled in leg-crossing detail the apparently extreme difficulty that the Secret Service detail assigned to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have had in finding a place to go to the bathroom.
      According to the Washington Post the president’s daughter and her top White House adviser spouse have apparently exiled the squad of men and women assigned to keep them from harm’s way from using the toilets in their sprawling Washington DC mansion.
      “Instructed not to use any of the half-dozen bathrooms inside the couple’s house, the Secret Service detail assigned to President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law spent months searching for a reliable restroom to use on the job,” the paper reported, citing neighbors and law enforcement official.
      It quoted one law enforcement official as saying: “It’s the first time I ever heard of a Secret Service detail having to go to these extremes to find a bathroom.”
      It added that Secret Service members in the couple’s detail who were desperate to relieve themselves had resorted to a porta-potty, as well as bathrooms at the homes of Barack Obama and Vice-President Mike Pence.
      The solution to the problem was not a cheap one. Since September 2017, the paper reported, the federal government rented the stricken Secret Service members a basement studio with a bathroom for the purposes of them going to the loo. The cost to taxpayers? Some $3,000 a month.
      A White House spokesperson denied the couple restricted agents from their home. But the Post stuck by its investigative guns, saying: “That account is disputed by a law enforcement official familiar with the situation, who said the agents were kept out at the family’s request.”
      The Post’s story is unlikely to endear Washington citizens – or indeed many other Americans – to Ivanka Trump and her husband as they leave office after four high-profile years in Donald Trump’s administration. Multiple reports have already gleefully detailed the couple’s likely rejection from the New York and Washington DC social circles in which they have previously moved.
      Not that the couple will lack for a place to call home. They have recently bought a $30m plot of land on an exclusive island in Florida nicknamed the Billionaire’s Bunker. More

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      in US Politics

      Speculation swirls over Ivanka Trump’s potential run for US Senate in Florida

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      Speculation about the post-White House career of Ivanka Trump is now centered on Florida, where the soon to be ex-first daughter and senior aide to her president father has reportedly bought an expensive plot of land for a house and may be considering a run for Senate.Ivanka Trump is frequently mentioned as desiring a political career of her own and during her time working for Donald Trump has sought to position herself as a more media-friendly version of her father.Now US media reports are focusing on Florida – where Donald Trump owns the Mar-A-Lago resort – as a potential base for his daughter to launch a political career of her own.“Ivanka definitely has political ambitions, no question about it,” a source told CNN. “She wants to run for something, but that still needs to be figured out.”Florida might offer one potential avenue in a Senate race in 2022 when current Republican incumbent Marco Rubio’s seat is up for re-election. Rubio was a harsh critic of Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican nomination race but later morphed into a loyal supporter of Trump once he had the won election.“I think she’d be the immediate frontrunner if she ran for US Senate against Rubio, given her father’s popularity in the Sunshine State,” Adam C Smith, former Tampa Bay Times political editor and now consultant with Mercury Public Affairs, told CNN.Supporting the speculation are news reports that Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner – who has also been a prominent and influential member of the White House team for the last four years – are spending millions of dollars on a property in Florida that will serve as their future home base.The New York Post reported that the pair are spending more than $30m on a land lot on Miami’s exclusive Indian Creek Island, which has been dubbed the “Billionaire’s Bunker”. The island reportedly boasts its own private police force for its handful of ultra-wealthy residences.Ivanka Trump is not the only member of her family potentially eyeing up a political future post-Trump. Donald Trump Jr – who is popular with his father’s conservative base – is often seen as likely to make a serious bid to enter politics in his own right. Meanwhile, daughter-in-law Lara Trump has been mentioned as a potential candidate for the Senate in North Carolina. More

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      The Guardian view on US presidential pardons: go no further | Editorial

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      A US president’s power to pardon and commute sentences for federal offences seems to explode America’s claims as a nation of laws and proper process. Donald Trump is no respecter of laws in any aspect of his life, so there is no surprise that he may now be gearing up to make extravagant use of the power before he is prised out of the White House in January.Two things should be remembered here. First, the pardon power does not extend to state laws, only federal ones. Second, other presidents have been here too. Barack Obama, who issued 212 pardons in eight years, granted 330 commutations on his very last day as president in 2017. At this stage of his own presidency, Mr Trump is a remarkably light pardoner and commuter. At the time of writing, he has issued a mere 28 pardons and 16 commutations, although all that could change soon.One explanation, and a difference between Mr Trump and his predecessors, is that a high proportion of his acts of clemency have directly involved his own allies and staff. The latest of these included commutation for his friend Roger Stone, and a pardon for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, both of whom were convicted of obstructing the Robert Mueller investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign.As the end nears, Mr Trump may be planning to break new ground in other ways. He has sometimes mused that he can pardon himself, something no president has ever done and which many lawyers think is unconstitutional. But he is widely reported to be eyeing “pre-emptive” pardons to his children, Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka, as well as to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani. This week, it has been confirmed that the justice department is investigating an alleged “bribery for pardon” scheme at the White House. Any of these actions, never mind all three, would plumb new depths in Mr Trump’s four-year abuse of the presidency.Shocking though such possibilities are, there is an established legal argument for pardons. In this country, a royal pardon was issued in 2013 to the scientist Alan Turing, who took his own life after being convicted under anti-homosexuality laws in 1952. This leads to a wider moral point. “Pardon’s the word to all,” pronounces Cymbeline in the final scene of Shakespeare’s late play. The former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has described Cymbeline’s line as a moral clarion call. The ability to pardon a person helps to elevate human beings, the archbishop argued. The human capacity for compassion and reconciliation is, he has said, evidence of the hand of the divine.There is, though, nothing remotely divine or compassionate about Mr Trump. The legal power he wields should be used very sparingly, and only in line with a proper and transparent process. Mr Trump has no interest in such things. He may not be able to put himself beyond the law, but he can do massive damage along the way. That would indeed be unpardonable. More

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      in US Politics

      Ivanka Trump quizzed as part of inauguration fund lawsuit

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      Ivanka Trump was interviewed by attorneys alleging that Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee misused donor funds, a new court filing reveals.The document, first reported by CNN on Wednesday, shows that Ivanka Trump, the president’s oldest daughter and a senior White House adviser, was interviewed on Tuesday by attorneys from the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office.The office has filed a lawsuit alleging waste of the nonprofit’s funds, accusing the committee of making more than $1m (£746,000) in improper payments to the president’s Washington, DC, hotel during the week of the inauguration in 2017.As part of the suit, they have subpoenaed records from Ivanka Trump; the first lady, Melania Trump; Thomas Barrack Jr, a close friend of the president who chaired the inaugural committee, and others. Barrack was also interviewed last month.Trump’s inaugural committee spent more than $1m to book a ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital as part of a scheme to “grossly overpay” for party space and enrich the president’s own family in the process, the District of Columbia’s attorney general, Karl Racine, alleges.He has accused the committee of misusing nonprofit funds and coordinating with the hotel’s management and members of the Trump family to arrange the events.“District law requires nonprofits to use their funds for their stated public purpose, not to benefit private individuals or companies,” Racine has said. “In this case, we are seeking to recover the nonprofit funds that were improperly funnelled directly to the Trump family business.”The committee raised an unprecedented $107m to host events celebrating Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, but its spending has drawn continued scrutiny.In a statement, Alan Garten, from the Trump Organization, said that “Ms Trump’s only involvement was connecting the parties and instructing the hotel to charge a ‘fair market rate,’ which the hotel did.” More

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      Operation Rebrand Melania: What can we expect from the first lady’s rumoured memoir? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Melania Trump is a woman of few words: she Be Best at brevity. Now that the first lady is getting ready to vacate the White House, however, it looks as if she may have found her voice. Rumour has it that Melania is planning to write a memoir about her time in public office. “She’s not done, or going as quietly as you might expect,” a mysterious source recently told the New York Post.Well, of course she isn’t. Melania may not have the gift of the gab, but she is good at grabbing any opportunity for self-advancement that comes her way. When Donald Trump took office, a lot of liberals seemed to want to see Melania as a victim. #FreeMelania memes circulated; theories that she had done a runner and been replaced by a body double abounded. But Melania, it has become painfully clear, is no shrinking violet. She is no victim. She is every bit as conniving as her husband, not to mention petty: if Melania’s former friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, is to be believed, the first lady spent a large part of the past four years devising devious ways to undermine Ivanka. During the inauguration, for example, Melania reportedly launched “Operation Block Ivanka” and arranged the seating to ensure that you could not see the first daughter on television during the president’s swearing in. Princess Ivanka was blocked by Queen Melania’s head.Extreme pettiness is not a good trait in a human being. However, it can make for excellent content in a memoir. I have high hopes that Melania will fully embrace her dark side after leaving the White House and take down the Trump family in a scandalous tell-all. If she does not dish the family dirt, her memoir risks being extremely anaemic: her time as first lady has not exactly been action-packed, after all. Chapter one: It was Be Best of times and Be Worst of times; I launched an anti-bullying initiative despite being married to the world’s biggest bully. Chapter two: Stormy Daniels compared my husband’s genitals to “the mushroom character in Mario Kart”. Chapter three: I went on a Kenyan safari in a weird colonial hat. Chapter four: I ranted about migrant children and Christmas. Chapter five: I dug up the Rose Garden. Chapter six: I contracted coronavirus.As Melania prepares for the next chapter of her life, it seems that she has already started throwing her nearest and dearest to the wolves in an attempt to clean up her image. On Monday, the New York Post published a fawning piece about the first lady, declaring that she had been done a severe disservice by Stephanie Grisham, her chief of staff and press secretary. One imagines the insiders quoted in the piece are pals of the first lady who have been instructed to launch Operation Rebrand Melania.There has been a lot of mirth about the idea of Melania writing a memoir, but I have a horrible feeling that she is the one who will be having the last laugh. She may not produce anything like Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming, but she will make a quick buck and become even richer. Her husband may need to be dragged out of the West Wing kicking and screaming, but Melania is going to strut out smirking and scheming. More

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      in US Politics

      Will New York's elite give Ivanka and Jared a warm welcome or the cold shoulder?

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      In the purgatory of Donald Trump’s unacknowledged election defeat, the knives are out for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump who, like dozens of other lesser-placed Trump acolytes, may be looking to return to New York, a city that the lame-duck president calls an “anarchic jurisdiction”.
      The reception they will receive, judging from the city’s press commentary, could be brutal.
      “They are the Faustian poster couple of the Trump presidency, the king and queen of the principle-torching prom at which so many danced alongside them, although in less exquisitely tailored attire,” wrote Frank Bruni in the New York Times this week.
      Posing a question broadly to what he called “the whole shockingly populous court of collaborators”, Bruno addressed the couple directly: “Tell me, Jared. Be honest, Ivanka. Was it worth it?”
      The answer, of course, is one for the couple alone to answer. But that hasn’t stopped others from offering their thoughts. “I see them as Glenn Close at the end of Dangerous Liaisons, with the entire opera house jeering,” says Jill Kargman, creator and star of Odd Mom Out, a highly praised TV comedy that skewered the Ivanka-style perfectionism of Upper East Side mothers.
      Andrea Bernstein, a WNYC investigative reporter and author of American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power, says it’s not clear that they plan to return to New York, since the Kushner family real estate empire is now focused in the mid-Atlantic states and his wife no longer runs a fashion accessories business.
      Moreover, Bernstein points out, twin New York city and state investigations into Ivanka’s $780,000 in Azerbaijani consulting fees, the on-the-record skewering by former Manhattan friends and increased politicization (she joined the rightwing chat site Parler this week) suggest Democratic New York may not be an optimal place to relocate.
      “I don’t see any indication they are coming back or would be welcome back here,” Bernstein says. “The investigations are a symbol of the problems the family could face back in New York, while the article in Vanity Fair was interesting not for what it said, but that the author said it so publicly.”
      If they do return, they will probably arrive in New York during another period of Covid restrictions. Restaurants are limited to 25% capacity and four per table, the charity and museum gala circuit upon which New York society revolves is on pause, and so opportunities to express the chill of social ostracism may be limited.
      “They’ll have to come back to Republican New York because they won’t be welcomed in liberal quarters,” says New York Times styles writer David Colman.
      “The interesting part is: will organisations that are essentially apolitical, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art – already sitting on pots of money from the Koch brothers – the Frick Collection or the Audubon Society, accept their donation and put them on a table?”
      The Kushners, Colman predicts, will give money to hospitals, medical charities and do something with sick children – “things people can’t get mad at” – and spend time in the Hamptons, the expensive getaway for the rich and powerful. “And she’ll distance herself from her father because he’s going to stay his crazy, fulminating self on Twitter.”
      Top New York hairdresser John Barrett says Ivanka will face no trouble if she chooses to return. “America is all about second acts, and there’s always somebody trying to advance a position or cause. Obviously, some people have been burnt by the administration, but it’ll take very little time for them to buy their way back pretty and rule a certain roost.”
      Not all are so accommodating. One former friend told Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox: “They’ll be welcomed back by people who know the Trumps are as close as they’ll get to power. But everyone with self-respect, a career, morals, respect for democracy, or who doesn’t want their friends to shame them both in private and public will steer clear.” More