In front of his father, the little music of Ivanka Trump
Donald Trump's daughter and advisor says she is shocked by the separations of migrant families and refuses to use the term "enemies of the people" to qualify the media.
As much as her father is thunderous and follower of diatribes, so much Ivanka Trump storms in civilized ways and bursts of controlled laughter. Generally silent about her father's most extreme positions, she distanced herself from the Trump administration's anti-immigration measures on Thursday and refused to echo the expression "enemies of the people" that Donald Trump uses for qualify the media. This last point apparently annoyed the president, who tweeted his reaction.
Seeing more than 2,500 migrant children separated from their parents illegally entered the United States was "one of the worst moments" she has experienced since arriving at the White House, said the close advisor to the American president. "I have a very strong opinion on this and I am very, fiercely against the separation of families," insisted this mother of three children, during a conference organized by the Axios site in Washington. Before however qualifying: “Immigration is an extraordinarily complex subject”.
“I am the daughter of an immigrant,” she continued, referring to her mother Ivana, who grew up in what was then Czechoslovakia. "But we live in a state of law (...) and we must therefore be very careful not to encourage behaviors that put children at risk."
The voices of migrant children crying after being separated in the name of Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, implemented in early May, have toured the world. Faced with the scandal, the American president backed down at the end of June, claiming to have been influenced by his wife ... and his daughter.
"A large percentage of the media"
In another marked distance, Ivanka Trump said Thursday not to consider journalists as "the enemy of the people", an expression of his father, who multiplies the battering against the media.
On this point, the American president later pretended to agree with him ... while exhausting the general media, which he renamed "Fake News". “They asked my daughter Ivanka if the media were the enemy of the people. She correctly answered no, ”he wrote on Twitter. "It is the FAKE NEWS, which represent a large part of the press, which are the enemy of the people!"
And the tenant of the White House, in a rally in front of his supporters in Pennsylvania Thursday evening, once again attacked journalists, calling them "horrible" and "appalling people".
As for Ivanka's remarks on migrants, the White House kicked in. "The president himself said he did not like the idea of separated families," reacted his spokesperson, Sarah Sanders, before punctuating: "We do not like the idea of letting in people in our country if we don't know who they are, where they are going and why they are coming. ”
On the climate, she had not convinced her father
Faced with a Donald Trump who publicly proclaims to adore her, Ivanka's influence has firmly established her in the role of "First Girl". Especially since she forms with her husband, Jared Kushner, a tight-knit couple of close advisers to the White House.
But the one that initially crystallized the hopes of certain Democrats, wanting to believe in the moderating influence of this young New Yorker with many progressive friends - of whom, for a time, Chelsea Clinton - deeply disappointed them by her silence on controversial measures.
For those who hoped to see her curb her father, the biggest "betrayal" remains the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement in June 2017. The only sign of their unease: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner do were not present in the Rose Garden of the White House for this announcement. An extremely rare absence.
The young mother, on the other hand, had firmly broken with his father's support for a Republican candidate for the Senate, Roy Moore, accused by women of sexual assault when they were minors. “Child predators have their place in hell,” she said in 2017.
"I am truly passionate about the work I do here," Ivanka Trump testified Thursday. So much so that she decided at the end of July to end the activities of her clothing and accessories brand.
In a wink to her father, an Axios reporter asked her if she was therefore planning to spend the rest of her life "in the backwater", the pejorative nickname Donald Trump gives to Washington. "It's highly unlikely," replied Ivanka Trump with a burst of laughter.
