The influence of Ivanka Trump
Four years ago, some people believed that whoever would be America's first daughter would have the power to persuade moderate voters and control her father's impulses. Since then, things have changed quite a bit.
On the fourth night of the Republican National Convention she was introduced to viewers as "the Honorable Ivanka Trump."
Her title was a recognition of the high position she holds in the White House, although the official protocol on her title is not very clear. The task she was given was clear. Although the White House insisted that she would make the presentation "during her free time" and only as an eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump introduced her father Thursday night before the president addressed the convention from the lawn. White House in an overtly political act carried out on federal land and possibly in violation of the Hatch Act.
But for Ivanka Trump, who has spent the past several years hovering between her dual role as first child and her senior adviser, these are little more than details.
It was, in many ways, an appropriate setting for his presentation because it emphasizes how blatantly he has mixed the personal, the political, and the governmental, a mix that has defined his father's approach to politics, almost as much as polarization has done. prosper your brand.
Once, the distance that was perceived between her and that mark was hers greater than her asset. Her appearance at the 2016 convention, for example, was meant to grab the attention of suburban women. The campaign believed they might view the eldest of the president's daughters as a more centrist and professional counterpart to a troublemaker candidate with a history of misogynistic behavior. And before Thursday, as the penultimate act of a convention that has already been largely tailored for such women, attendees were hopeful that she can reach the same audience and project similar appeal.
Ivanka Trump urged voters to look beyond her father's rhetoric and tone and judge him for her policies. “I recognize that my dad's communication style is not liked by everyone. And I know his tweets can seem a bit unfiltered, ”she said. "But the results speak for themselves."
She also touched on her own work to increase the childcare tax credit and said the president had kept his promise to "support mothers in the workforce."
"Four years ago I told them that I would fight alongside my father," Ivanka Trump said. "And four years later, here I am."
In 2016, Ivanka Trump was one of the campaign's most sought-after presences, her cosmopolitan influence and apolitical rhetoric serving as a kind of balm for women who might have been drawn to the idea of a businessman in the White House but that they would never be seen chanting "Build the wall!" However, her participation was only a slight trace along the way.
She now, instead, is eager to do more for the campaign, adopting an explicitly political role. For Donald Trump's campaign, the question is whether Ivanka Trump's transformation will complicate her speech with moderate Republicans and swing voters who once appreciated her for looking more like a check than a stamp of acceptance on the father's agenda. her.
"When voters see Ivanka and the issues she focuses on, they generally have a positive response to her," said Lorna Romero, a GOP strategist in Arizona, where the president's chances in the November election likely depend on moderate Republican women, many of whom have felt alienated from the party under Trump.
"But four years later they recognize that, not only as her daughter, but being her senior adviser, she must support the president's rhetoric and the policies they don't support," she explained. "It is a more conflicting opinion."
In 2016, when she made her political debut and viewers only knew her name from The Apprentice or from a rack full of affordable dresses at Macy's, they were subtly encouraged during the campaign that she was a moderating influence. While her father flirted with a travel ban for Muslims, or suggested that Russian officials investigate Hillary Clinton's emails, Ivanka Trump discussed the punitive cost of childcare and her passion for feminine issues on the pages of Harper's. Bazaar.
The campaign hoped that women could take its silence on the most controversial elements of her father's campaign as filial deference to the tactics necessary to win the presidency, rather than tacit approval.
But now Ivanka Trump carries the burden of the presidency, nearly four years by which those voters can judge whether the cornerstones of her image - she was projecting a dampening effect, a commitment to a more progressive agenda on issues like climate change - have been confirmed.
Going back to a segment on Saturday Night Live that called her an "accomplice" in early government actions, such as a Muslim travel ban, Ivanka Trump has privately complained of the nickname "moderating influence," arguing that it is an image imposed on him by others that never truly reflected his own views. This is, in many ways, accurate: At no point in her father's 2016 campaign did the Trumps' eldest daughter hint that she was against, for example, building a wall along the border, of "Lock up" the opponent of his father or any other central element of the candidacy.
But whether or not this softer image was accurate, it is also true that early in her tenure in the White House, Ivanka Trump cared very much to protect her. She made clear her support for the Paris Climate Agreement and her attempts to prevent her father from withdrawing from the pact, which were ultimately unsuccessful. Coverage of the first daughter often included anonymous quotes - from people described as close to the family and knowledgeable about her thinking - revealing her disapproval of any firestorm unleashed in the west wing.
However, at one point she seemed to tire of maintaining the appearance of being careful with taxpayer dollars. If the identity she had built was intended to keep suburban women on the president's side, the 2018 midterm elections showed that she was not working.
With that in mind, she seemed to change her own demeanor, as if she was aware that perhaps there were only two years left of her father's tenure and she felt more comfortable taking advantage of the spoils of proximity to the leader of the free world. She began rubbing shoulders with international leaders during high-profile overseas trips and accompanied her father in the historic meeting with Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in the demilitarized zone. In many of those activities, even Ivanka Trump herself had difficulty explaining the need for her presence and what was the relevance of her portfolio of women's economic empowerment initiatives. But the point is that she felt less and less compelled to try to justify herself. (That June day in Seoul, she told reporters that "women have an enormous role" in accompanying the beginning of "peace" on the peninsula).
"She is certainly an unconventional first child," said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “She seems to have inexhaustible access to everything and everyone in the White House: she in many ways she acts like a second first lady. We have never seen anything like this ”.
On the policy front, and despite his initial setbacks, Trump has scored some victories such as increasing the child tax credit as part of the president's tax cuts in 2017. He also managed to rally many Republicans to support the low-income legislation. parental pay, an issue that before Trump's presidency rarely excited GOP circles.
However, any breakthrough as a figure capable of convening both parties has been overshadowed by her growing willingness to get involved in political work, a scenario she previously preferred to let the rest of his family navigate, especially Donald Trump Jr. .
Earlier this year she became more actively involved in her father's reelection campaign. She attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative activists, and organized fundraising events in different cities, enjoying her ability, as she put it, to generate "record-breaking" figures for the Bell.
All this has coincided with a more frank use of his Twitter account to defend his father, in contrast to the posed family images and some political reflections to which he was previously limited. In October 2019, when a Democratic-dominated lower house moved forward with impeachment proceedings against her father, Ivanka Trump shared a quote from Thomas Jefferson about the "enemies and spies" who were among her political opponents. In July, she tweeted a photo of herself with a can of Goya beans in which she applauded the brand after support from the company's CEO sparked a call to boycott the company.
Introducing her father on Thursday, Ivanka Trump touched on many of the same topics she commented on in 2016 and reassured voters about her father's commitment to helping working families, as well as her own dedication to empowering women and of everyday affairs that transcend party divisions.
However, this time she left no doubt about the precise nature of her political identity and the extent to which she aligns with that of her father. As she officially announced earlier this year, Ivanka Trump is now a "proud Trump Republican."
