President Donald Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump has an expansive portfolio took her dad’s seat at a meeting of world leaders Saturday.
President Donald Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump has an expansive portfolio in her father’s administration. But on Saturday, she literally took his seat at the table at the Group of 20 summit.
The first daughter was spotted slipping into Trump’s seat at a working session on «Partnership with Africa, Migration and Health, » putting her shoulder-to-shoulder with British Prime Minister Theresa May. Russian President Vladimir Putin was sitting one seat down.
Ivanka Trump’s presence at the high-level table was somewhat unusual, given that government ministers or senior officials are typically the ones called to stand in for heads of state at such sessions. But she is both the president’s daughter and an «assistant to the president, » a title with no defined portfolio and no salary.
She entered the session with her father but «briefly joined the main table when the President had to step out, » a spokesman for the first daughter said.
It isn’t the first time Ivanka Trump has participated in high-level meetings at the summit. On Thursday night she and her husband Jared Kushner, another Trump adviser, joined the president at a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Kushner also participated in Trump’s bilateral meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Friday.
Earlier on Saturday, Ivanka Trump and her father participated in a World Bank session on women’s entrepreneurship, an issue that she has been particularly focused on.
In his remarks, Trump praised his daughter effusively for her work as a «forceful advocate» for women entrepreneurs: «I’m very proud of my daughter, Ivanka — always have been, from day one — I had to tell you that, from day one, » Trump said. «She’s always been great. A champion. She’s a champion.»
Ivanka Trump has taken up a slate of issues since taking a role in the West Wing, including workforce training, paid family leave, and women’s economic empowerment as her portfolio. But she has also weighed in on major disputes within her father’s administration, including disagreeing with her father on his decision to leave the Paris Climate Agreement.
The growing international isolation of the United States under President Donald Trump was starkly apparent Friday as the leaders of major world economies mounted a nearly united opposition front against Washington on issues ranging from climate to free trade.
At a gathering of the Group of 20 world…
The growing international isolation of the United States under President Donald Trump was starkly apparent Friday as the leaders of major world economies mounted a nearly united opposition front against Washington on issues ranging from climate to free trade.
At a gathering of the Group of 20 world…
Much has been made of the degree to which she disagrees with him on tone and substance. And on Saturday, he seemed to acknowledge that he often puts his daughter in a difficult position. «If she weren’t my daughter it would be so much easier for her, » Trump said. «Might be the only bad thing she has going, if you want to know the truth.»
She has defended the role she plays in her father’s administration, saying that while she disagrees with him, she does not always air those disagreements in public.
«I would say not to conflate lack of public denouncement with silence, » she told CBS in an interview in April. «I think there are multiple ways to have your voice heard.
«In some cases, it’s through protest and it’s through going on the nightly news and talking about or denouncing every issue on which you disagree with. Other times it is quietly and directly and candidly, » she added. «So where I disagree with my father, he knows it and I express myself with total candor.»
The president and his older daughter also differ greatly in terms of temperament. Ivanka reportedly pleaded with her father to apologize after the disclosure of a 2005 tape from Access Hollywood in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women.
While she is known for her measured discipline, her father frequently lashes out at his perceived enemies on social media and in public. Most recently, he attacked Mika Brzezinski, calling the MSNBC host «crazy» and claiming that she was «bleeding badly» from her face after a cosmetic surgery operation.
