The Golden Couple (Ivanka and Jared)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Ivanka Trump faces skeptical audience in Berlin"

Quote

BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to the White House last month may have been filled with awkward moments, but she left with one key takeaway — identifying the first daughter as her back-channel to President Donald Trump.

The White House was broadly criticized for seating Ivanka Trump, who at the time held no official government position, next to the German leader during a meeting on workforce apprenticeship, essentially elevating a family member with no political experience to the level of Europe’s most important leader.

But for Merkel, a skilled political operator forging relations with the third U.S. president to gain power during her 12 years in office, it was a useful signal of how to work the Trump White House.

She followed up by elevating Ivanka Trump even more, inviting her to speak Tuesday at the W20 Summit in Berlin alongside Queen Maxima of the Netherlands and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, among others, for a panel on women’s entrepreneurship.

A White House official said the panel will be more in the weeds and wonky than sweeping and symbolic; Ivanka Trump has been prepping for weeks, immersing herself in McKinsey & Co. reports on women in the workforce, rather than searching for soaring language with a speechwriter.

Her inclusion on a panel of world leaders gives as much insight into Merkel’s strategy for diplomacy with the U.S. president — who during the 2016 election called her “insane” and accused her of “ruining” Germany — as it does about the ambitious first daughter. But it provides Trump with her biggest international platform yet.

“The Germans are as bemused as everybody else is, in attempting to navigate how this White House manages its official relationships,” said Constanze Stelzenmuller, an expert on German policy and politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

But knowing how heavily the president relies on his family members as top West Wing advisers, Stelzenmuller said, “It seems obvious that you would engage Ivanka Trump. Merkel is saying, ‘This is the hand I’ve been dealt, and this looks promising.’”

James Jeffrey, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and a former deputy national security adviser and ambassador to Iraq under President Barack Obama, said Merkel is working out how to approach an atypical U.S. leader.

“Merkel is sly as a fox. The unorthodox road to this guy is Ivanka. That’s the person you go to, not the second secretary in the Embassy in Berlin,” Jeffrey said.

In this case, Merkel doesn’t have much choice: Trump has yet to appoint an ambassador to Germany (an Obama-era deputy, Kent Logsdon, is filling the role on an interim basis). She will appear on a panel about democracy with Obama next month.

In seeking to reach the president through his daughter, now a special assistant in the White House, Merkel has given Ivanka Trump an opportunity to prove to skeptics at home and abroad that she is the serious, policy-minded, moderating political force she aims to project, not just a softer saleswoman for her father’s ideas.

...

In Berlin, Trump faces a skeptical audience, one that views the new presidency with fear and suspicion and is unsure of what to make of the first daughter.

“What does a daughter with no political experience have to do in the White House?” said Andrea Seibel, an opinion editor at Die Welt, the influential conservative-leaning Berlin daily, where editors huddling in the newsroom Monday afternoon planned to give front-page coverage to the visit.

“We have family clan experiences in autocracies,” Seibel said. “Ivanka Trump isn’t elected, she is a daughter. She didn’t say anything in the elections when he was saying nasty things about women and migrants. She is his voice, but somehow she has a nicer face.”

The coverage of Ivanka Trump in the German media in the days leading up to her speech was similar to that at home, where she has been criticized on late night programs like “Saturday Night Live” for being “complicit” in her father’s agenda.

The front page of one daily newspaper, Berliner Zeitung, featured a photograph of Ivanka Trump under the headline “First Flusterin,” or “the first whisperer.” The story questioned whether the first daughter would push her father toward a moderate course or act as a “loyal accomplice.”

...

Merkel laid the groundwork for her own outreach in February, when she approached Vice President Mike Pence at a Munich security conference.

When she came to Washington in March, she told Pence she wanted to participate in a roundtable on apprenticeship, according to a person familiar with Merkel’s thinking and a White House official. Merkel hoped to discuss how American and German private sector companies could better train workers.

One of her aims in picking that issue, according to the person familiar with her thinking, was to engage the first daughter, who has expressed interest in working with CEOs to improve conditions for women in the workforce. Appealing to Ivanka Trump was an easier target for Merkel than the president’s top political adviser, Steve Bannon, an anti-globalist who supported last year’s Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and is critical of the EU.

In Berlin Tuesday, the White House official said, Trump plans to stick to the basics: Highlighting the role of women in the global economy and discussing the importance of access to capital for female entrepreneurs. It’s an issue she has studied since before the campaign and one that she has focused on since moving to Washington, where she has been on a listening tour of sorts with CEOs such as Pepsi’s Indra Nooyi and General Motors’ Mary Barra.

After the conference, Trump, a converted Orthodox Jew, is scheduled to tour manufacturing company Siemens and visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin’s Holocaust memorial.

She will be accompanied by three White House aides: Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser and senior economic counselor; communications adviser Hope Hicks; and her newly named chief of staff, Julie Radford.

Even with Europe’s future in turmoil, Ivanka Trump’s visit dominated front pages in Berlin. “Who knows,” said Oliver Michalsky, deputy editor-in-chief of Die Welt. “Maybe she’ll become America’s first female president.”

 

[JMarie]

6 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/04/john-oliver-jared-kushner-ivanka-trump-last-week-tonight?mbid=social_twitter

 

The best bit starts at about 12 min and culminates to a clip of Jared speaking. 

I wonder if Donald Jr. and Eric are super pissed off that they're stuck with their dad's businesses, instead of them and their spouses getting cushy White House jobs.

[faraway]

I'm watching the livestream of the G20 panel and Ivanka was challenged big time with some serious shade. Welcome to Europe Ivanka. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"German crowd boos Ivanka Trump for calling her father a ‘champion’ for families"

Quote

A German crowd booed Ivanka Trump on Tuesday after she called her father a “tremendous champion of supporting families.”

Trump was taking her first crack at diplomacy abroad in her new role as assistant to the president, vowing at a women's economic conference in Berlin to create “positive change” for women in the United States.

“He encouraged me and enabled me to thrive,” she said on a panel with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and other female leaders. “I grew up in a house where there was no barrier to what I could accomplish beyond my own perseverance and my own tenacity.”

Miriam Meckel, editor of the German magazine WirtschaftsWoche, noted the audience’s response of groaning and hissing and asked Trump whether her father is actually an “empowerer” of women.

“I've certainly heard the criticism from the media, and that's been perpetuated,” Trump said on the panel, “but I know from personal experience, and I think the thousands of women who have worked with and for my father for decades when he was in the private sector are a testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women.”

President Trump was caught on tape in 2005 talking about grabbing women’s genitals without their permission and, in a 2004 interview, called pregnancy an “inconvenience” to employers.

Ivanka Trump, who moved into her own West Wing office last month, advocated for gender equality during the campaign and is now working to overhaul the nation’s child-care system. Her visit to Germany comes a week before the release of her advice book, “Women Who Work.” 

Her father has called her the mastermind behind his paid maternity leave proposal, unveiled last September, but the White House has made no moves on the family leave front since Trump took office.

The U.S. position on paid maternity leave stands in sharp contrast with Germany's, where mothers are entitled to take six weeks of paid time off before the birth of a child and eight weeks after an infant arrives. (The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not offer any paid leave to new parents.)

Ivanka Trump had hoped to use her appearance in Berlin to talk about boosting female entrepreneurs. But some of those entrepreneurs in the United States say the White House is making their jobs even harder.

...

 

[faraway]

Maternity leave in Germany is way more than that, you get 65% of your salary after the  8 week period for one year but are entitled to 3 years in total of which 2 are unpaid. There's also paternity leave. Someone didn't do their homework.

[Childless]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"German crowd boos Ivanka Trump for calling her father a ‘champion’ for families"

 

Ha!  Champion for families?!?!?  The guy who's nominee for SCOTUS said women wanting maternity leave were just manipulating their employers?  Whatever.

[GreyhoundFan]

Gosh, you mean Ivanka's clothing line doesn't treat workers well? Color me surprised. End sarcasm font. "Workers endured long hours, low pay at Chinese factory used by Ivanka Trump’s clothing-maker"

Quote

Workers at a factory in China used by the company that makes clothing for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line and other brands worked nearly 60 hours a week to earn wages of little more than $62 a week, according to a factory audit released Monday.

The factory’s 80 workers knit clothes for the contractor, G-III Apparel Group, which has held the exclusive license to make the Ivanka Trump brand’s $158 dresses, $79 blouses and other clothes since 2012. The company also makes clothes for Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and other brands.

Trump has no leadership role in G-III, and the report did not give the factory’s name or location, or say whether it was working on Ivanka-brand products at the time of the inspection.

...

The inspection offers a rare look at the working conditions of the global manufacturing machine that helped make Trump’s fashion brand a multimillion-dollar business.

Its release also comes as the president’s daughter has sought to cast herself as both a champion of workplace issues and a defender of her father’s “buy American, hire American” agenda. Trump, whose book “Women Who Work” debuts next week, was in Germany on Tuesday for public discussions about global entre­pre­neur­ship and empowerment.

“We can add billions to the global economy by creating an enabling environment, increasing women’s labour force participation and business ownership, and improving the productivity of their work,” Trump wrote in a Financial Times essay Monday.

Trump’s company declined to comment on the factory inspection. Messages left with G-III were not returned.

Now an official adviser to her father’s White House, Trump stepped down from her management role but retains an ownership interest in her name-brand company. Its assets were moved into a trust that is now overseen by her husband’s siblings. Trump is the sole beneficiary of the trust, which is valued at more than $50 million.

Chinese factories are by far the dominant suppliers for Ivanka clothes, though G-III also works with manufacturers across Vietnam, Bangladesh and South America. G-III factories overseas have shipped more than 110 tons of Ivanka-brand blouses, skirts, dresses and other garments to the United States since October, shipping data shows.

The clothing line licensed by President Trump’s private business is also almost entirely made in foreign factories. Trump last week signed an executive order that he said would push the government to “aggressively promote and use American-made goods and to ensure that American labor is hired to do the job.”

Workers at the G-III factory in China were required to work 57 hours a week “on a regular basis” to hit production targets, inspectors found. Though Chinese law sets the limit for overtime at 36 hours per month, workers in all of the factory’s departments exceeded that limit, working up to 82 hours of overtime a month between September 2015 and August 2016.

The factory’s workers made between 1,879 and 2,088 yuan a month, or roughly $255 to $283, which would be below minimum wage in some parts of China. The average manufacturing employee in urban China made twice as much money as the factory’s workers, or roughly 4,280 yuan a month, according to national data from 2014.

Fewer than a third of the factory’s workers were offered legally mandated coverage under China’s “social insurance” benefits, including a pension and medical, maternity, unemployment and work-related injury insurance, inspectors found. The factory also did not contribute, as legally required, to a fund designed to help workers afford housing, inspectors said.

Workers earned five days of leave a year, though a small fraction of experienced employees were eligible for more. The factory did not have a union, inspectors said, and the workers’ lone representative was a factory appointee.

Inspectors also cited the factory for a number of workplace safety concerns. It did not train loading workers on safety techniques or provide employees with equipment that could reduce injury, including lifting belts or seats with backrests.

The factory, which began operating in 1992, had also never sought an assessment of occupational disease hazards like those common among workers dealing with repetitive tasks and harsh chemicals.

Two inspectors from SMT-Global, a third-party monitoring group, inspected the factory one month before President Trump’s election victory. The Fair Labor Association then alerted G-III to the problems it had discovered — including 24 violations of standards set by the United Nations’ International Labor Organization — and asked what steps it would take in response.

The factory pledged to make some progress to improve training, assess hazards, hire more workers and reduce overtime demands. But it did not commit to increasing worker pay and at times pushed back against recommendations that could improve workplace safety.

Of occupational hazards, inspectors wrote that the “factory thinks the worker’s health is covered by social welfare and insurance policy, and working conditions such as chair and loading staff safety are not as important.”

The Washington-based Fair Labor Association was founded in 1999 by a group of nonprofits, universities and clothing companies after a series of scandals over sweatshop labor and other abuses.

The group has inspected more than 1,500 factories used by its affiliate companies, including G-III, whose contract factories in China, India and Pakistan have been inspected seven times since 2007. Factories are chosen at random for inspection, though company leaders are alerted of the audits beforehand, a Fair Labor Association spokesman said.

Other G-III factories in China have been cited for similar issues. In a 2015 Fair Labor Association audit, inspectors found that 15 percent of one factory’s workers made below minimum wage, or as little as $3.30 a day. The factory was also cited for weak safety protections, including running most of its sewing machines without needle guards and stocking its first-aid kits with only cotton swabs and Band-Aids.

Since partnering with Ivanka Trump’s company in 2012, G-III has been the sole licensor of Ivanka-brand clothing, though other firms hold contracts to make the brand’s shoes, handbags and jewelry. Trump has championed the company, saying in a 2012 statement that “G-III has distinguished itself as a trusted partner for some of the world’s finest and most visible brands.”

Global sales of Trump’s brand have boomed in the months since her father began his pursuit of the White House. Net sales for her clothing collection soared by $17.9 million in the year that ended Jan. 31, G-III data shows.

...

Hmm. It would be nice if she had the clothes made in the US. Of course, that would cut into profit, so it won't happen.

[candygirl200413]

She is such trash, and our stock with the rest of the world will forever keep dropping cause we have idiots running this country.

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

Ivanka's book is crying out for some good cover art.  Might I suggest this?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Bribe Cases, a Secret Jared Kushner Partner and Potential Conflicts"

Quote

It was the summer of 2012, and Jared Kushner was headed downtown.

His family’s real estate firm, the Kushner Companies, would spend about $190 million over the next few months on dozens of apartment buildings in tony Lower Manhattan neighborhoods including the East Village, the West Village and SoHo.

For much of the roughly $50 million in down payments, Mr. Kushner turned to an undisclosed overseas partner. Public records and shell companies shield the investor’s identity. But, it turns out, the money came from a member of Israel’s Steinmetz family, which built a fortune as one of the world’s leading diamond traders.

A Kushner Companies spokeswoman and several Steinmetz representatives say Raz Steinmetz, 53, was behind the deals. His uncle, and the family’s most prominent figure, is the billionaire Beny Steinmetz, who is under scrutiny by law enforcement authorities in four countries. In the United States, federal prosecutors are investigating whether representatives of his firm bribed government officials in Guinea to secure a multibillion dollar mining concession. In Israel, Mr. Steinmetz was detained in December and questioned in a bribery and money laundering investigation. In Switzerland and Guinea, prosecutors have conducted similar inquiries.

The Steinmetz partnership with Mr. Kushner underscores the mystery behind his family’s multibillion-dollar business and its potential for conflicts with his role as perhaps the second-most powerful man in the White House, behind only his father-in-law, President Trump.

Although Mr. Kushner resigned in January from his chief executive role at Kushner Companies, he remains the beneficiary of trusts that own the sprawling real estate business. The firm has taken part in roughly $7 billion in acquisitions over the last decade, many of them backed by foreign partners whose identities he will not reveal. Last month, his company announced that it had ended talks with the Anbang Insurance Group, a Chinese financial firm linked to leading members of the ruling Communist Party. The potential agreement, first disclosed by The New York Times, had raised questions because of its favorable terms for the Kushners.

Dealings with the Steinmetz family could create complications for Mr. Kushner. The Justice Department, led by Trump appointees, oversees the investigation into Beny Steinmetz. Even as Mr. Kushner’s company maintains extensive business ties to Israel, as a top White House adviser, he has been charged with leading American efforts to broker peace in the Middle East as part of his broad global portfolio.

“Mr. Kushner continues to work with the Office of the White House Counsel and personal counsel to ensure he recuses from any particular matter involving specific parties in which he has a business relationship with a party to the matter,” said Hope Hicks, a White House spokeswoman.

...

It's a lengthy article, but a good read. Jared is neck deep in the muck.

[hoipolloi]

Another good read on Ivanka-Jared by Sarah Kendzior, whose work is excellent.

Quote

 

Once upon a time, there was a dictator who had a daughter. The dictator, who came to power vowing to make his country great, enacted a series of repressive policies under the guise of nationalism. He persecuted the media and the opposition, used “war on terror” rhetoric to justify a clampdown on civil rights, maintained a close but complicated relationship with Russia, and built a kleptocracy that ensured the country’s riches lined his pockets.

The daughter seemed different – or at least, she wanted to be seen that way. She was an Ivy League-educated cosmopolitan socialite who married into a powerful business family before making her mark as a fashion designer and businesswoman. Like her father, she encouraged an avid personality cult; and like her father, she hid her own brutal practices under the pretext of a soft “feminism”, claiming to represent the ideal modern woman of her country.

I’m talking, of course, about Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov and his daughter Gulnara Karimova. That this description evokes the burgeoning Trump political dynasty should concern you.

 

 

[fraurosena]

Rachel Maddow makes a good point here. 

 

Begs the question how the judiciary can be separated from the administration if the DOJ is part of said administration. 

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Rachel Maddow makes a good point here. 

 

Begs the question how the judiciary can be separated from the administration if the DOJ is part of said administration. 

The problem is: in the past, there has always been an assumption that the players are ethical. Since, with this administration, we have to assume the exact opposite, it is so frustrating.

Sessions is such a weasel that, if Pence made a backdoor deal with him that would give him carte blanche after Agent Orange resigns or is impeached, I could see him bringing charges against anyone, even his own mother. Of course, since he recused himself from the Russia investigation, it would have to be his deputy bringing charges.

[GreyhoundFan]

How very true: "Ivanka Trump’s White House role is a symbol of democratic decline"

Quote

I’ve no doubt she thinks she is qualified. Politics is not really all that different from advertising, right? You promote handbags; you promote nice causes. Women entrepreneurs, friendship between nations, edgy earrings — whatever. These are all part of a lifestyle that everybody wants, and it’s a lifestyle that Ivanka Trump has been selling, for profit, for most of her life.

But when Trump appeared on a podium in Berlin this week, purportedly to discuss women in the workforce, she did not seem qualified. On the contrary, she provided a shocking reminder of the damage that the Trump lifestyle brand will do (and has already done) not just to America’s “image” but to America’s reputation as a serious country, even to America’s reputation as a democracy.

Why was she there at all? The other panelists — the Canadian foreign minister, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — raised no eyebrows, because their official functions explain themselves. But Trump was there as “first daughter,” a notion which the moderator of the panel — another impressive woman, the editor of a business magazine — at one point asked her to explain. “The German audience is not that familiar with the concept,” she said. “. . . Who are you representing, your father as president of the United States, the American people or your business?”

Trump has enough media training to know what to deny. “Certainly not the latter,” she said quickly (only to contradict herself, a few moments later, by saying, as she is no doubt accustomed, “Speaking as an entrepreneur . . .”). But the question never got a real answer. As everyone in the room knew perfectly well, Trump was not on the panel because she is an entrepreneur, or because she represents the American people or even because she speaks for her father, which is far from clear. She was on the panel because Merkel, ever the pragmatist, realizes President Trump is not interested in history, ideas, policy or any of the other things that have long tied the United States to Germany. To maintain its deep political and economic relationship with this American administration, Germany therefore needs to be solicitous of Trump’s daughter.

...

But the real problem with Trump is not what she and her husband, Jared Kushner, contribute to the president’s “image,” but what their presence says about the culture of this White House. One of the things that distinguishes rule-of-law democracies from personalized dictatorships is their reliance on procedures, not individual whims, and on officials — experienced people, subject to public scrutiny and ethics laws — not the unsackable relatives of the leader. That distinction is now fading.

No ordinary public official would be allowed to dine with the leader of China, as Trump did, on the same day that China granted valuable trademarks to her company. No civil servant would be able to profit from the jewelry she advertises by wearing on public occasions. Only in kleptocracies are sons-in-law with broad international business interests allowed to make foreign policy.

Yes, sure, “the Clintons did it” — and look how that turned out. First lady Hillary Clinton’s attempt to craft a health-care policy ended in fiasco largely because her mixed roles created hostility. Even though she acquired genuine legitimacy by being elected senator and serving as secretary of state, that hostility remained. The suspicion of nepotism haunted her throughout her career, and it probably cost her the presidency.

For all I know, Trump might really care about the lives of working women, though she has never demonstrated much interest in how they are treated at the factories that produce her products in China (so much for “America first”). But it makes no difference. When she plays with the role of public official as if she were trying on a new hat, she demeans the public servants who take their jobs seriously, who acquire them through expertise and competition, who work for salaries and obey ethics laws. The presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House, particularly in a White House that has failed to nominate hundreds of senior officials, is a glaring symbol of democratic decline, and around the world it is already recognized as such.

 

I know some folks thought/hoped that she'd keep a rein on daddy dearest, but I think she's just as, if not more, dangerous as he is. In fact, I was thinking she is like the Bates and daddy is like the Duggars.  She's actually more dangerous because she looks and sounds almost normal, whereas he's a hot mess.

[Soulhuntress]

On 4/27/2017 at 8:24 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

How very true: "Ivanka Trump’s White House role is a symbol of democratic decline"

I know some folks thought/hoped that she'd keep a rein on daddy dearest, but I think she's just as, if not more, dangerous as he is. In fact, I was thinking she is like the Bates and daddy is like the Duggars.  She's actually more dangerous because she looks and sounds almost normal, whereas he's a hot mess.

Good description.  I feel for her kids.  The eldest is in a school where the tangerine tyrant is not....popular to say the least....

[fraurosena]

Here's the real reason daddy-dearest invited Duterte to visit:

 

Oh, the joys of nepotism and corruption!

[GreyhoundFan]

"Ivanka Trump’s West Wing Agenda"

Quote

A month before Donald J. Trump was elected president, he and his aides watched his daughter’s coolly composed surface crack open.

Inside Trump Tower, the candidate was preparing for a debate when an aide rushed in with news that The Washington Post was about to publish an article saying that Mr. Trump had bragged about grabbing women’s private parts. As Ivanka Trump joined the others waiting to see a video of the episode, her father insisted that the description of his comments did not sound like him.

When the recording finally showed he was wrong, Mr. Trump’s reaction was grudging: He agreed to say he was sorry if anyone was offended. Advisers warned that would not be enough.

Ivanka Trump made an emphatic case for a full-throated apology, according to several people who were present for the crisis discussion that unfolded in Mr. Trump’s 26th-floor office. Raised amid a swirl of tabloid headlines, she had spent her adult life branding herself as her father’s poised, family-focused daughter. She marketed her clothing line with slogans about female empowerment and was finishing a book on the topic. As she spoke, Mr. Trump remained unyielding. His daughter’s eyes welled with tears, her face reddened, and she hurried out in frustration.

Seven months later, Ms. Trump is her father’s all-around West Wing confidante, an adviser whose portfolio appears to have few parameters, making her among the highest-ranking women in a senior staff stocked almost entirely with men.

The two trade thoughts from morning until late at night, according to aides. Even though she has no government or policy experience, she plans to review some executive orders before they are signed, according to White House officials. She calls cabinet officials on issues she is interested in, recently asking the United Nations ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, about getting humanitarian aid into Syria. She set up a weekly meeting with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary.

...

She has one skill unmatched by almost anyone else, family members and aides say: She can effectively convey criticism to a man who often refuses it from others, and can appeal to him to change his mind.

“I’m his daughter. I’ve known him my entire life. He trusts me,” she said. “I don’t have a hidden agenda. I’m not looking to hit him to help myself.”

Though their demeanors are different — she is guarded where he is unfettered — Ms. Trump is more like her father than most people realize, according to people who know them both.

She has his eye for image and branding, his sensitivity to perceived criticism. They are both skilled at the art of the sale. Like him, she sometimes makes sweeping, and arguably overreaching, claims: She portrayed Mr. Trump as an advocate for women in last summer’s convention speech, and described her brand as a stereotype-shattering movement. Like him, she appears confident she can master realms in which she has little expertise or experience. The two even speak in similar streams of superlatives: “tremendous,” “unbelievable.”

But can she influence his actions as president? In her 35 years, she has left little traceable record of challenging or changing the man who raised her. Mr. Trump did tape an apology for the “Access Hollywood” recording, but by then doing so had become a political necessity.

...

For now, Ms. Trump acknowledges how much she has to learn and asks the public to be patient with her.

“I do believe that in time I’ll get to the right place,” she said. “In the short run I’ll have missteps, and, in some cases, I’ll take shots that I could have avoided if I had publicly said what I think.”

“I’m really, really trying to learn,” she added.

It's a lengthy article, but an interesting read.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Ivanka Trump quoted Jane Goodall, who responded with a plea: ‘Stand with us’"

Quote

In Ivanka Trump’s new book, “Women Who Work,” released Tuesday, the president’s daughter includes a quote from Jane Goodall, the renowned chimp researcher and crusader for conservation.

“What you do makes a difference,” the quote reads, “and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

It was one of several quotes in Trump’s book attributed to people who have criticized President Trump or voiced support for presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The reference to Goodall, 83, was also particularly timely, considering the book dropped less than a week after scores marched in Washington to push for action on climate change, a movement Goodall has ardently supported.

So, as the conservationist has done before, Goodall took the opportunity to make a statement. And give the president’s daughter a bit of advice.

“I understand that Ms. Trump has used one of my quotes in her forthcoming book,” Goodall said in a statement provided to The Washington Post. “I was not aware of this, and have not spoken with her, but I sincerely hope she will take the full import of my words to heart.”

Goodall said legislation passed by previous governments to protect wildlife — such as the Endangered Species Act, efforts to create national monuments and other clean air and water legislation — “have all been jeopardized by this administration.”

“She is in a position to do much good or terrible harm,” Goodall said. “I hope that Ms. Trump will stand with us to value and cherish our natural world and protect this planet for future generations.”

...

Shortly before Trump won the Republican nomination for president, she told the Atlantic that in many ways, “the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals.”

“In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks,” Goodall said. “The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”

Um, "heart" and anyone with a last name of Trump don't exactly go together.

[fraurosena]

To make everyone feel slightly better after the ACHA debacle yesterday, I give you...

Ivanka Trump's book: All the most scathing reviews of Women who Work

Quote

Ivanka Trump's new book is bad. Also, water is wet.

Aside from the tangled, poisonous web of potential ethical violations she may have just crossed, with claims she could profit from her public profile as a White House advisor, alongside a government-funded website being accused of promoting the book, there's also just the small issue of it being a useless pile of fluff. 

The public have unsurprisingly been decisive in their opinions of Women who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success; while it's currently landed an average of 1.2 stars on the site for popular US bookseller Barnes and Noble, Amazon has seen 43% of ratings going straight to five stars, with 54% giving it one star. 

Critics, however, haven't held back in their takes on Trump's self-help guide for female entrepreneurs, with the book receiving a near-universal panning.

Here's a round-up of some of the most scathing reviews. 

The New York Times - Jennifer Senior

"In this way, the book is not really offensive so much as witlessly derivative, endlessly recapitulating the wisdom of other, canonical self-help and business books — by Stephen Covey, Simon Sinek, Shawn Achor, Adam Grant. (Profiting handsomely off the hard work of others appears to be a signature Trumpian trait.)"

The Huffington Post - Emily Peck

"Trump’s book... is a grab-bag of generic work-life advice for upper-middle-class white women who need to 'architect' (a verb that pops up a lot) their lives. But underneath that, and perhaps more remarkable, is Trump’s inability to truly recognize how her own privileged upbringing was key to her success."

Slate - Michelle Goldberg

"None of this is to say Ivanka hasn’t struggled over the last year and a half. 'During extremely high-capacity times, like during the campaign, I went into survival mode: I worked and I was with my family; I didn’t do much else,” she writes. “Honestly, I wasn’t treating myself to a massage or making much time for self-care.'"

"Nevertheless, she persisted. Now she may be the most powerful woman in the world, propping up the father who once publicly agreed with Howard Stern that she was a “piece of ass.” There’s a lesson in here somewhere. It’s not an empowering one."

NPR - Annalisa Quinn 

Organized into sections with titles like "Dream Big" and "Make Your Mark," Women Who Work is a sea of blandities, an extension of that 2014 commercial seeded with ideas lifted ("curated," she calls it) from various well-known self-help authors. Reading it feels like eating scented cotton balls.

Mashable - Chris Taylor

That is a noble goal, and I am happy to report that with this book, Trump has helped to level at least one playing field: Here is proof that a female CEO can write a business book that is just as bad — just as padded with bromides and widely-known examples and self-promotion and unexamined privilege and jargon — as one written by an overconfident male CEO. 

Business Insider UK - Kate Taylor

The book, which the first daughter and White House adviser wrote while her father was running for president, reads like a mashup of countless essays and articles written in the past decade aimed at female entrepreneurs.

So we can add plagiarism to her long list of dubious qualities.

[Audrey2]

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

To make everyone feel slightly better after the ACHA debacle yesterday, I give you...

Ivanka Trump's book: All the most scathing reviews of Women who Work

So we can add plagiarism to her long list of dubious qualities.

It's a Trump family trait. Remember Melania's speech at the Republican National Convention?

[candygirl200413]

AM Joy this morning had a segment about Ivanka's book which echoed your article @fraurosena and included how she used a quote from Beloved by Toni Morrison which discussed slavery as being a slave for time.

https://vid.me/k1Ob

 

This entire family have the intelligence of a rock.

[Cartmann99]

15 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

AM Joy this morning had a segment about Ivanka's book which echoed your article @fraurosena and included how she used a quote from Beloved by Toni Morrison which discussed slavery as being a slave for time.

https://vid.me/k1Ob

 

This entire family have the intelligence of a rock.

Very true, but Ivanka's an attractive rock with the last name of Trump, and that's enough for a sizable chunk of America to fawn over her. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Jared's sister, Nicole, is in Beijing, trying to make the family more money, and, as a bonus, create more ethically challenged situations: "In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family flogs $500,000 ‘investor visa’ to wealthy Chinese"

Quote

BEIJING — The Kushner family came to the United States as refugees, worked hard and made it big — and if you invest in Kushner properties, so can you.

That was the message delivered Saturday by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s sister to a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors, renewing questions about the Kushner family’s business ties to China.

Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at the Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey real estate project to secure what’s known as an investor visa.

The EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, which allows foreign investors to invest in U.S. projects that create jobs and then apply to immigrate, has been used by both the Trump and Kushner family businesses.

But President Trump’s vow to crack down on immigration, as well as criticism from members of Congress, has led to questions about the future of a program known here as the “golden visa.”

The EB-5 has been extremely popular among rich Chinese who are eager to get their families — and their wealth — out of the country, though the fact that some move their money out illegally has made the program unpopular with the Chinese government, too.

In the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton on Saturday, Chinese investors were advised to invest sooner rather than later in case the rules change. “Invest early, and you will invest under the old rules,” one speaker said.

...

Saturday’s event in Beijing was hosted by the Chinese company Qiaowai, which connects U.S. companies with Chinese investors. The tagline on a brochure for the event: “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.”

Qiaowai is working with Kushner to secure funding for Kushner 1, a real estate project in New Jersey. Promotional materials tout the buildings’ proximity to Manhattan and note that the project will create more than 6,000 jobs.

“This project has stable funding, creates sufficient jobs and guarantees the safety of investors’ money,” one description reads.

Although there was no visible reference to Trump, the materials noted the Kushner family’s “celebrity” status. Wang Yun, a Chinese investor who attended the event, said the Kushner family’s ties to Trump, via son-in-law Jared, were a part of the project’s appeal — but also a source of concern.

“Even though this is the project of the son-in-law’s family, of course it is still affiliated,” Wang.

Wang reasoned that the link to Trump would be a boon if the presidency goes well but could be disastrous if it does not: “We heard that there are rumors that he is the most likely to be impeached president in American history. That’s why I doubt this project.”

...

Though the event was publicly advertised in Beijing, the hosts were exceptionally anxious about the presence of reporters.

Journalists were initially seated at the back of the ballroom, but as the presentations got underway, a public-relations representative asked The Washington Post to leave, saying the presence of foreign reporters threatened the “stability” of the event.

At one point, organizers grabbed a reporter’s phone and backpack to try to force that person to leave. Later, as investors started leaving the ballroom, organizers physically surrounded attendees to stop them from giving interviews.

Asked why reporters were asked to leave, a public-relations representative, who declined to identify herself, said simply, “This is not the story we want.”

So, I guess Agent Orange doesn't care about immigration if it comes from people who make him money.

[CTRLZero]

19 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Although there was no visible reference to Trump, the materials noted the Kushner family’s “celebrity” status. Wang Yun, a Chinese investor who attended the event, said the Kushner family’s ties to Trump, via son-in-law Jared, were a part of the project’s appeal — but also a source of concern.

“Even though this is the project of the son-in-law’s family, of course it is still affiliated,” Wang.

Wang reasoned that the link to Trump would be a boon if the presidency goes well but could be disastrous if it does not: “We heard that there are rumors that he is the most likely to be impeached president in American history. That’s why I doubt this project.”

Like the title of a section of Ivanka's book, we can "Dream Big[ly]" about impeachment.    This is so screwed up and wrong.  Trump and his family are going to get so much richer from his gig as president, and we are all so much the poorer for it.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Daily 202: Ivanka Trump’s life of privilege undermines the credibility of her new book’s message"

Quote

THE BIG IDEA: Ivanka Trump’s new book unwittingly reveals just how out of touch she is with the lives of the working women who she believes she speaks for.

-- President Trump dubiously claimed during the campaign that he was a self-made man. “My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars,” he told NBC during a 2015 interview, which he insisted he paid back with interest. “A million dollars isn’t very much compared to what I built!” During a primary debate, when Marco Rubio claimed that he had received a $200 million inheritance from his father, Trump replied angrily: “I took $1 million and I turned it into $10 billion.”

Every fact checker faulted Trump for not giving his father enough credit, for downplaying the connections and the resources he received from the family business. Court documents revealed that the candidate was omitting vastly larger loans and gifts he received over the years. His pop also bailed him out when his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt.

-- The first daughter (now a White House official) also talks at times as if she is a self-made millionaire. “It wasn’t until I built my own business from the ground up that I understood the vastness of launching your own enterprise,” Ivanka Trump, referring to her fashion brand, writes in “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success.” “Undeniably, one factor in my success has been the doors that my family’s name and privileged upbringing have opened … But they alone didn’t guarantee my success. … Curiosity, passion, hard work and perseverance have enabled me to prove my value to myself and others beyond my surname. … Anyone who knows me knows that I will outwork anyone…

“My father has always said, if you love what you do, and work really, really hard, you will succeed,” she adds. “This is a fundamental principle of creating and perpetuating a culture of success, and also a guiding light for me personally.”

-- For millions of folks in the Rust Belt – the people who delivered the White House to the Trumps – it is not a matter of “curiosity, passion, hard work and perseverance.” Working hard was not enough to keep the General Motors plant open in Janesville, Wisconsin. Being passionate isn’t enough to keep coal mines churning in West Virginia. Curiosity is not going to bring back manufacturing jobs to Ohio. (Those people also don’t have government employees promoting their products on cable and Twitter.)

-- Ivanka’s 243-page manuscript, written before the election, has an ambitious goal. She sees herself as a role model who can help others navigate the difficulties of raising children and climbing the corporate ladder. “The time to change the narrative around women and work once and for all is long overdue; in fact, it’s become my life’s mission,” she declares in the introduction.

Some may welcome this. But in dispensing advice for how working women can succeed, the 35-year-old often relays anecdotes that unintentionally highlight all the special breaks she’s gotten along the way. These are advantages average Americans could never even dream of.

-- Encouraging people to pursue jobs that they’re passionate about, Ivanka recalls receiving a cold call from the editor in chief of Vogue Magazine when she was a senior at the University of Pennsylvania: “Early one morning during finals, the phone rang. … I answered, groggy, knowing that no one would call a college student at 8 a.m. unless it was really important. It was Anna Wintour … Anna is someone I have always admired; we met when I’d done modeling as a teenager. … She heard I was graduating soon. … She wanted to offer me a job … I knew working with Anna at Vogue could positively influence my career in a big way … But I’d already given my word to (another employer).”

Ivanka turned down the job, then called her dad. She became mad when he told her she should consider it: “I was shocked that he would encourage me to consider anything other than real estate; for so long, it was all we discussed. I was unnerved by the conversation and started to wonder if my father didn’t want me to eventually join the family business. I worried that he doubted my abilities as a developer. On the day of my graduation, I grilled him on his response. He said he didn’t doubt me. He only wanted me to carefully consider the job at Vogue to be sure that I was, in fact, serious about real estate.” The point of this story is not to reveal how crazy it is that Wintour offered her a job this way but to encourage readers not to let themselves get distracted from what they are most passionate about.

-- She planned to work outside the family business for “a while” after college. But Ivanka made it just 12 months before going to work for Donald at Trump Tower. In a subsequent chapter on “seizing opportunities,” she recounts her decision to launch a fine jewelry collection in 2007.

Giving advice about how to start a business, Ivanka reveals how she got help from all the most powerful players in the industry: “When I had the idea for my brand, I realized I was going to have a much steeper learning curve in fashion than I did in real estate, which I had been exposed to my whole life. So I was proactive and met with people in the industry who had created or worked at companies I respected – Tory Burch, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, and Calvin Klein, of the established players; Warby Parker, Reformation, and Everlane, of the new guard, to name a few. I sought out their wisdom and experience in trying to understand a business that I had never planned on entering and pepped them with questions about design, product, teams, business models, and infrastructure.”

I don’t think it is going too far out on a limb to speculate that most would-be entrepreneurs reading Ivanka’s book probably couldn’t schedule sit-downs with Tory Burch, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, and Calvin Klein to pick their brains about starting a fashion label. She also offhandedly notes that the whole thing started with a connection she made through her dad’s company: “I had been at The Trump Organization for about two years when I met a potential partner in real estate who had long-standing ties to the jewelry industry.”

-- Her attempts to humanize herself only reinforce the degree to which Ivanka is part of the 0.1 percent. Encouraging women to regularly bring their kids with them to work, for instance, the author nonchalantly reveals that that she has two offices: “I had a standing lunch date every Wednesday with Arabella every Wednesday before she started Kindergarten. She came into the office – she prefers my Ivanka Trump office to my real estate one, in part because it has a kids’ desk that folds out of the wall, complete with treats, toys, colored pencils, and markers. We’d play for a bit … Then we’d go downstairs to the Trump Grill for lunch.”

“In a traditional setting,” she adds, “I might feel uncomfortable if my boss heard me FaceTiming with my son or saw him in my office, eating ice cream midday.”

But she works for her dad and has her own “brand,” so it’s no big deal. “I remember at the beginning of my career I would feel self-conscious if I had to leave work early,” Ivanka admits later. “I’d say I had a meeting when really I had a doctor’s appointment. I’ve stopped doing this, in part because I’ve achieved a higher level of seniority...”

-- The first daughter repeatedly dishes out guidance on subjects it’s not clear she has meaningful experience with, such as how to ask for a promotion, “resign gracefully” and negotiate a good severance package. She has a whole section advising females to hire recruiters to help them find jobs: “A recruiter can also be a valuable advocate in breaking through the glass ceiling, which, unfortunately, still exists. It’s far better here in America than in much of the world, but we’ve still got a long way to go.” (Hillary Clinton would probably say amen to that.)

After offering five pieces of advice for women who take maternity leave, she opens up about her own struggle – with whether to post pictures of her children on social media: “I didn’t share a single picture of Arabella publicly until after her first birthday, at which point the paparazzi snapped a photo of us at the airport. I didn’t want the first photo of my daughter to be sold to the press, so I posted an image myself on one of my social media accounts. … Knowing my family was in the spotlight, I decided I was going to embrace it.”

This is a problem most women would prefer to the ones they deal with every day. It is certainly less nerve-wracking than working two jobs as a single mother, depending on spotty public transportation, worrying about being able to pay the daycare bill and stressing that legislation moving through Congress may mean your child cannot get health insurance because of a preexisting condition.

...

-- Ivanka is tone deaf in other ways, as well:

She quotes Nelson Mandela talking about apartheid in South Africa (“It always seems impossible until it’s done”) to urge women to request flextime from their supervisors.

Then she quotes Toni Morrison writing about an enslaved woman in the novel “Beloved” to tee up some very conventional advice for improving time management skills so that working women are no longer slaves to their schedules: “Bit by bit … she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

But at least Morrison and Mandela uttered the words attributed to them: On page 179, Ivanka opens a section on how to “Lead with purpose from any level” with a fake quote from John Quincy Adams. She claims our sixth president said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” Anyone who has read even a single letter by JQA knows that this neither captures his worldview nor sounds anything like him. Ironically, the president tweeted this same fake quote two years ago:

...

-- The bottom line: People like Ivanka have always had a leg up. The system has always been rigged to tilt the playing field toward the privileged and the well-connected. But reading this book and watching her wield such immense influence in a powerful West Wing role that she could never have landed if her dad was not the president, we cannot escape the hard truth that the United States is becoming less of a meritocracy than it used to be.

As she boasts about the Trump International in D.C., Ivanka expresses hopes that her six-year-old daughter eventually follows her into the family business. “I can envision Arabella overseeing this hotel someday,” she writes in the book. “If she chooses!”

...