Ivanka
Trump is a shoo-in for the Iron Throne
Marina Hyde
Friday 18 November
2016 16.32 GMT
Before you could say
‘conflict of interests’, America’s most dysfunctional family
have already begun blurring the lines between politics and business
Has ground been
broken on Melania Trump’s auto-parodic anti-bullying initiative
yet? Only I can’t help feeling the second lady could kick things
off with a case close to home. “Dear Me. I believe my husband is
gaslighting me. It’s more subtle than the lamps dimming without
explanation. I mean, he’s spent years saying the only thing
stopping him from coming on to his hot daughter is the fact they’re
related. Then yesterday I went into the gold drawing room and found
Ivanka sitting in for the meeting with the Japanese prime minister …”
She’s not wrong.
Thanks to a picture circulated by the Japanese government, we now
know that Donald Trump shared a curved sofa in a room in his New York
penthouse with Shinzo Abe, while Ivanka watched from a reproduction
tub chair (her husband, Jared Kushner, seems to have shown up for
photos at the end). How screamingly quaint it now seems that the
Simpsons were once frequently described as America’s most
dysfunctional family. The Trumps are clearly of a different order of
magnitude. I’m not going to get into the elder sons today – Uday
and Schmuday, as my friend Matthew refers to them – but the
dynamics of the Donald-Melania-Ivanka triangle increasingly read like
a script rejected by David Cronenberg for being “a bit too weird,
thanks”.
Now that Trump is
the president-elect, of course, Ivanka is supposed to be running his
business interests, along with her talentless brothers, in some kind
of blind trust/King Lear prequel. Which, as you hardly need to be
sharp-eyed to point out, makes it a bit odd that she’s sitting in
on presidential state business. I guess a meeting with the Japanese
premier is a diplomatically tactless moment to bring up the concept
of Chinese walls. Anyway, we can probably surmise that Chinese walls
don’t even make the top 10 of Donald’s favourite notional walls.
And that journalists are already clamouring for a keyboard shortcut
for the phrase “conflict of interest”.
After all,
throughout the campaign, Ivanka was at pains to state that she was
not political, and that she was seeking no role at all in her
father’s administration. “I’m going to be a daughter,” she
elaborated earlier this week. However: “I’ve said through the
campaign that I am very passionate about certain issues. And that I
want to fight for them.” Maybe one of those issues is advancing the
rights of Tokyo to get a Trump hotel built in it.
Behold, then, an
Ivanka’s-eye view of Dad’s first day at the international office
– peering through the candelabra in a Trump Tower room whose decor
offers one clue as to why Donald Trump can never bring himself to
condemn, or even dislike, various dictators. After all, he shares the
classic despot’s taste in interior design. To take in the full
scheme of the room is to wonder what is just out of shot – a
20-foot gold statue of Saddam, or a room full of slot machines?
Possibly both. I am given to understand it is a large apartment.
Disappointingly,
though, Ivanka has failed to inform the legions of Americans who’d
be Tasered if they came within a 20-foot exclusion zone of Trump
Tower what it is she’s wearing for her conflict of interest. When
madam appeared alongside her father and various other family members
on last Sunday’s edition of 60 Minutes, her firm promptly
press-released a “style alert” in relation to the $10,800 bangle
she had been wearing during it. For those whose eye was caught by the
piece in question, as opposed to the coming war on abortion rights or
whatnot, I can share the details: “Ivanka Trump was wearing her
favourite bangle from the Metropolis Collection.” We must await the
Rust Belt Collection with interest.
Given that Trump
essentially conducts himself as a Trump parody account, it seems
uncharacteristically restrained of him to have not begun
press-releasing his own products when they feature in presidential
business. By what vast oversight can we still be in the dark as to
whether the president was wearing Empire by Donald Trump or Success
by Donald Trump for this meeting with Abe, both of which male
fragrances retail at a competitive price point? I would like the
presidential cologne choices to be announced from now on, allowing us
to really put ourselves inside the smells of a Trump bilateral.
As for Ivanka’s
closeness to her father, there is perhaps a historical precedent for
this kind of indispensability, though not quite on this scale (and
certainly not including the ogling). Donald Trump’s favourite book
is clearly The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump, many passages of
which he is even believed to have read, or at least listened to on
audiobook while getting a massage.
His second favourite
book, though, is highly likely to be his well-thumbed copy of Team of
Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s study of Abraham Lincoln’s journey
to the White House, and his subsequent success in drawing his most
formidable opponents into his cabinet, managing their conflicting
personalities, and getting the best out of their skills.
In which case, Trump
will be more than familiar with the figure of Salmon Chase, once
Lincoln’s rival for the Republican nomination, who moulded his
daughter Kate as his political helpmeet, and who would clearly have
had the function of a de facto first lady, had Chase beaten Lincoln
to the White House. By the age of 45, Chase had buried three of his
wives – not figuratively, like Donald, but literally – and
instead looked to his daughter as his partner in politics. I am sure
Trump would point out that Ivanka is merely the Kate Chase de nos
jours – however tough on her stepmother that may be.
Admittedly, there
will be those who insist that Ivanka’s family ties are born of a
darker place, and seem rather more reminiscent of something out of
the Lannisters from Game of Thrones. To many of us foreign outsiders,
the fact that Ivanka has already been touted as a future US
presidential candidate (along with Michelle Obama) does increasingly
suggest that the White House has become analogous to the Iron Throne,
with just a few families permitted to fight and scheme for it.
Chelsea Clinton as the eventual mother of dragons? Only time will
show. For now, we must simply marvel at Ivanka’s ability to
straddle two worlds, and order her pavé diamond Security Clearance
Amulet just as soon as it hits the stores.
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