USA: Ivanka, Donald Trump's absolute weapon
Beautiful, intelligent, Ivanka Trump is Donald Trump's favorite daughter. It is also his most effective weapon in the campaign, and even his fiercest opponents find no fault with it.
Daughter of Donald Trump and his first wife Ivana, it is she who, at 34, will present the Republican candidate for president, before his acceptance speech Thursday evening at the Republican convention in Cleveland.
And if anyone can help her win back American female voters, mostly hostile to the big-mouthed billionaire, it's Ivanka.
She was already in Cleveland on Tuesday, with her brothers Donald Jr. and Eric, and her half-sister Tiffany, when he was nominated for the party after a campaign like no other.
"It's unreal, I'm so proud of my father," she said, visibly moved, smoothing her long blonde hair in the huge sports complex where the convention is being held.
A mother of three young children, married to real estate developer Jared Kushner for whom she converted to Judaism, Ivanka Trump is vice president of her father's company, the Trump Organization. Economics graduate, businesswoman, she also created her eponymous brand of clothing and accessories, and has a website where she provides advice to working women.
Brilliant, elegant, speaking calmly, this New Yorker, still recently friend of Chelsea Clinton, is present on a daily basis in the campaign of her father who adores her.
She speaks in certain meetings, advises him in private, defends him when he is attacked. She had notably stepped up to the plate in May, when he was widely criticized on the subject, to say that he had "total respect for women". Going so far as to qualify him as a "feminist". A theme that she should resume Thursday evening.
She was very involved in the choice of her possible vice-president, and one of the candidates for this choice, Senator Bob Corker, had even considered that she would have made a formidable running mate. Others see him as an important role in a possible Trump administration.
Unifier
But by then, Ivanka is the indispensable asset in his necessary conquest of the female electorate, while only 34% of women support Donald Trump, according to a recent ABC News / Washington Post poll.
Before her speech on Thursday, she toured the television sets. She also sent a first political message relayed by the campaign, to call for financial contributions to her father's campaign. "He is ready to bring his passion, leadership and determination to the White House and revive the American dream for you and our entire country," she wrote Thursday.
In the gallery, she should, like her brothers and her half-sister in recent days, tell of a hard-working father, attentive, encouraging, demanding of his children, even if he was not very present.
"He was funny; great sense of humor. He was demanding with us. He had great ambitions for us, and I think he really encouraged us to pursue our passions," she said on Wednesday on CNN.
From her father she has ambition, but neither impulsiveness nor violence. "The Trumps play to win," she likes to say.
She admitted to having sometimes during the campaign recommended to be less outrageous.
Does he listen to her?
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and sometimes for a limited time," she explained. "In the end, he makes his own decisions."
Unifier in chief, Ivanka also likes to give the image of a perfectly united family, in spite of the three marriages of her father. And she has stepped up to the plate in recent hours to defend Melania, his third wife, in the midst of a turmoil at the convention, after her speech, paragraphs of which were plagiarized from a speech by Michelle Obama.
Melania, 46, has not been seen in Cleveland since.
“Melania is an amazing mother,” Ivanka told People magazine. "It's quite unusual for a candidate's wife not to campaign every day. She's made a decision that I completely respect, which is that she has a young son, he needs stability and routine."
