The Golden Couple (Ivanka and Jared)

[candygirl200413]

Where is her whole "stopping cyberbully" campaign coming out? She is just waiting till the days she isn't in the house anymore.

[GrumpyGran]

9 hours ago, JMarie said:

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/23/ivanka-trump-faces-criticism-off-the-shoulder-dress-picnic/22759950/

I call foul on Ivanka wearing a dress from last season.  Last season?

And then there's this gem from Melania:

"So many great stuff."  We could have had an Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar lawyer for a First Gentleman, but instead we get Ms. Great Stuff.

Ivanka's dress, I think she was going for something there, but she's so tone-deaf to the real world that she strikes out as much as she makes it to a base.

And Melania... It is difficult to pick up English when it's not your native language but didn't wife number one do a much better job? It just shows how insulated and coddled she's been. FFS, she's been in this country for over 15 years, at least? Is she having conversations with anyone who speaks English on a regular basis?

I'd say we need a thread for her but maybe we should wait until we see her more than once a week. What would we talk about, her bazillion dollar wardrobe?

[Ali]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

And Melania... It is difficult to pick up English when it's not your native language but didn't wife number one do a much better job? It just shows how insulated and coddled she's been. FFS, she's been in this country for over 15 years, at least? Is she having conversations with anyone who speaks English on a regular basis?

I'd say we need a thread for her but maybe we should wait until we see her more than once a week. What would we talk about, her bazillion dollar wardrobe?

I hate defending her, but some people pick up on foreign languages better than others just like some have an easier time learning math than others. 

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, Ali said:

I hate defending her, but some people pick up on foreign languages better than others just like some have an easier time learning math than others. 

Oh, I agree, @Ali, especially considering her native tongue. But as she is FLOTUS now, I would hope she could spend a bit of time with a diction coach so she could talk to us as we are expected to accept her as representing us. If her husband were a democrat you know the flaming would be hard.

Listen, I don't care if she ever has a platform. I'm just ticked that we had a FLOTUS who was nearly flawless in every way and she was picked apart like roadkill every day. Now all there is to say is "Look! There she is! Doesn't she look lovely?" I'm sure this wasn't her choice but she is going along with it so, sorry but I expect a little more than occasionally watching her waft around in couture. I think we're past that, I think every woman should be past that.

[fraurosena]

This is what happens when arrogance meets nepotism:

Report: Trump may exit peace talks after 'tense' Kushner/Abbas meeting

Quote

A Palestinian official claims Abbas is furious at American demands, accuses the US of taking sides.

US President Donald Trump is reportedly weighing whether to pull out of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations following a "tense" meeting with White House senior staff and officials in Ramallah, according to London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat on Saturday. The report claimed that Trump is to determine the future of reigniting Mideast peace talks in the near future, including the possibility of withdrawing completely from the process.

The al-Hayat report came just days after a meeting between the administration's senior adviser Jared Kushner and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, which was described as "tense" by an Abbas advisor present at the talks. 

Abbas was supposedly furious with the president's son-in-law after Kushner relayed Israeli demands to the 81-year-old Palestinian leader which included the immediate halt of payments to terrorists and their families. Abbas angrily accused Kushner and Trump's lead international negotiator, Jason Greenblatt, of taking Israel's side and refused to commit to the request. 

The report claims that the Trump administration was equally upset with Abbas after he failed to denounce the latest stabbing attack in Jerusalem, leaving 23-year-old St.-Sgt. Maj. Hadas Malka brutally stabbed to death in a terror attack last week. Ties were further strained after Abbas reportedly refused to meet  American ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

The Palestinian official also told the paper that the Americans demanded Palestinian officials curb inflammatory statements regarding Israel.

"(Kushner) will submit his report to the president and, after it is submitted, Trump will decide if there's a chance for negotiations or it might be preferable to pull out peace talks," the official said. 

Abbas claimed that Israel is using the issue of payments to terrorists and their families as a pretext to avoid entering peace-talks, saying that the payments are a part of the Palestinian government's "social responsibility."

Of course, now things aren't exactly going his way, the presidunce is thinking of withdrawing completely from the peace process. 

[Cartmann99]

6 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Listen, I don't care if she ever has a platform. I'm just ticked that we had a FLOTUS who was nearly flawless in every way and she was picked apart like roadkill every day. Now all there is to say is "Look! There she is! Doesn't she look lovely?" I'm sure this wasn't her choice but she is going along with it so, sorry but I expect a little more than occasionally watching her waft around in couture. I think we're past that, I think every woman should be past that

Whenever I see Melania in something sleeveless, my jaw involuntarily clenches. I remember how the Republicans were slumped over their fainting couches when Michelle Obama started wearing sleeveless outfits, but when Melania Trump does it, they are silent. First Ladies wore sleeveless outfits long before the Obamas ever moved into the White House, but Michelle Obama was always held to a much higher standard than her predecessors. 

On that note, I just read that Frances Cleveland, President Cleveland's much younger wife, upset the conservatives of her day:

Quote

Frances favored gowns that showed off her bare neck, shoulders and arms, which alarmed the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. They rallied their ranks and issued a petition asking her to stop wearing these dresses because it corrupted the morals of young women who copied her. She ignored the petition. Others who were less scandalized by her copied her every move, which included shaving the napes of their necks in order to perfectly replicate her hairstyle. Photos and drawings of her likeness were used without her permission to sell products like perfume, playing cards, liver pills, and underwear. Her and her husband’s residence in an upper Georgetown area even inspired the neighborhood’s name–Cleveland Park

http://style.time.com/2013/02/18/our-fair-ladies-the-14-most-fashionable-first-ladies/slide/frances-cleveland/

It's one thing to have your likeness used to sell perfume, but liver pills!?!

[JMarie]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Whenever I see Melania in something sleeveless, my jaw involuntarily clenches. I remember how the Republicans were slumped over their fainting couches when Michelle Obama started wearing sleeveless outfits, but when Melania Trump does it, they are silent. First Ladies wore sleeveless outfits long before the Obamas ever moved into the White House, but Michelle Obama was always held to a much higher standard than her predecessors. 

On that note, I just read that Frances Cleveland, President Cleveland's much younger wife, upset the conservatives of her day:

http://style.time.com/2013/02/18/our-fair-ladies-the-14-most-fashionable-first-ladies/slide/frances-cleveland/

It's one thing to have your likeness used to sell perfume, but liver pills!?!

Nancy Reagan wore a one-shouldered inaugural dress, and not a peep.

[fraurosena]

Judge orders Ivanka Trump to answer questions in lawsuit over shoe design

Quote

Ivanka Trump has been ordered to answer questions for a lawsuit with an Italian shoe designer. 

A federal judge said Donald Trump's daughter, an unpaid White House advisor, will have to give a deposition in a case filed by Aquazurra Italia in June 2016. 

She may not be on the official salary list, but I'm pretty sure the violations of the emoluments clause (that she also participates in) means that she certainly does get paid.

Quote

The company has claimed Ms Trump's fashion line copied what they refer to as their "coveted" designs, particularly the "Wild Things" shoe. 

Aquzzurra said Ms Trump's "Hettie" shoe design is too close to that design to be a coincidence. 

Ms Trump's lawyers have claimed in court documents that Aquazurra designs are not distinctive enough to prove that their client copied the Italian shoe company's style. 

They call the lawsuit a publicity stunt. It was filed as Mr Trump was about to receive the Republican nomination for President. 

Ms Trump stepped down from her corporate position before her father took office and her legal team said she should not be deposed because she "does not possess any unique information" about her company's shoe designs. 

Could that be because the designs were copied, perchance, and therefore they are not unique?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Kushner firm’s $285 million Deutsche Bank loan came just before Election Day"

Spoiler

One month before Election Day, Jared Kushner’s real estate company finalized a $285 million loan as part of a refinancing package for its property near Times Square in Manhattan.

The loan came at a critical moment. Kushner was playing a key role in the presidential campaign of his father-in-law, Donald Trump. The lender, Deutsche Bank, was negotiating to settle a federal mortgage fraud case and charges from New York state regulators that it aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme. The cases were settled in December and January.

Now, Kushner’s association with Deutsche Bank is among a number of financial matters that could come under focus as his business activities are reviewed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining Kushner as part of a broader investigation into possible Russian influence in the election.

The October deal illustrates the extent to which Kushner was balancing roles as a top adviser to Trump and a real estate company executive. After the election, Kushner juggled duties for the Trump transition team and his corporation as he prepared to move to the White House. The Washington Post has reported that investigators are probing Kushner’s separate December meetings with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, and with Russian banker Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, a state development bank.

The Deutsche Bank loan capped what Kushner Cos. viewed as a triumph: It had purchased four mostly empty retail floors of the former New York Times building in 2015, recruited tenants to fill the space and got the Deutsche Bank loan in a refinancing deal that gave Kushner’s company $74 million more than it paid for the property.

The White House, in response to questions from The Post, said in a statement that Kushner “will recuse from any particular matter involving specific parties in which Deutsche Bank is a party.” Kushner and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

Deutsche Bank loans to Trump and his family members have come under scrutiny. As Trump’s biggest lender, the bank supplied funds to him when other banks balked at the risk. As of last year, Trump’s companies had about $364 million in outstanding debts to the bank.

Democrats from the House Financial Services Committee wrote on March 10 that they were concerned about the integrity of a reported Justice Department investigation into the Russian money-laundering matter “given the President’s ongoing conflicts of interest with Deutsche Bank,” citing “the suspicious ties between President Trump’s inner circle and the Russian government.” The Justice Department did not respond to a question about whether it is following up on the money-laundering settlement that Deutsche Bank reached with New York state regulators in December.

On May 23, the Democratic members asked Deutsche Bank to disclose what it had learned in its internal review about whether Trump may have benefited from the improper Russian money transfers. The bank refused, citing U.S. privacy laws. The Democratic letter also raised the possibility that the bank had conducted a similar review of Kushner — without mentioning his name — by referring to a review of accounts “held by family members, several of whom serve as official advisers to the president.”

The Democrats wrote that it was important to learn more about Deutsche Bank loans to Trump and family members to determine whether they were “in any way connected to Russia.”

The refinancing loan with Deutsche Bank is mentioned in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a public offering of ­mortgage-backed securities. It states that Kushner and his brother, Joshua, “will be guarantors” under what was called a “nonrecourse carve-out.” Such guarantees require more than a loan default to kick in. They are commonly known as “bad boy” clauses, a reference to how a lender could seek to hold the guarantor responsible for the debt under circumstances that might include fraud, misapplication of funds or voluntary bankruptcy deemed inappropriate. The terms of the guarantee, which generally are not secured by collateral, are negotiated between lender and borrower.

“The way to look at this is, so long as you’re not a ‘bad boy’ and don’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about,” said James Schwarz, a real estate lawyer who is an expert in such clauses. “To the extent you would do something fraudulent, then you have things to worry about.”

The corporate loan and Kushner’s personal guarantee are not mentioned on his financial disclosure form, filed with the Office of Government Ethics. Blake Roberts, a lawyer who represented Kushner on the matter, said in a statement to The Post that Kushner’s form “does not list the loan guarantee” because the disclosure relied on “published guidance” from OGE that he said “clearly states that filers do not have to disclose as a liability a loan on which they have made a guarantee unless they have a present obligation to repay the loan.”

The Post sent the language cited by Kushner’s lawyer to Don Fox, a former general counsel and acting OGE director. After reviewing the wording, he said in an interview that he would have advised Kushner to disclose the personal guarantee of the $285 million corporate loan because of its size and possible implications.

“If I were still at OGE and somebody came to us with that set of facts, I would say, ‘By all means, disclose it,’ ” he said, referring to “the spirit of the law.”

After being informed of Fox’s statement, Roberts contacted Fox to present his view that no disclosure was required. Fox said in a follow-up email to The Post that even if OGE “advised there was no requirement to disclose,” he would not have argued that point but “I would have nonetheless recommended Jared over report in this instance given the magnitude of the contingency and the public interest in liabilities — actual and potential — to Deutsche Bank.”

Separately, Kushner disclosed that he and his mother have a personal line of credit with Deutsche Bank worth up to $25 million.

The Deutsche Bank deal was one of the last Kushner orchestrated before joining the White House. It is among the dozens of complex transactions that he was involved with during his decade in the real estate business.

Although Kushner divested some properties in an effort to address potential conflicts, he retains an interest in nearly 90 percent of his real estate properties, including the retail portion of the former New York Times headquarters, and holds personal debts and loan guarantees.

The deal that led to the Deutsche Bank loan is rooted in a holiday party held in late 2014 at the Bowlmor bowling alley, which is located in the retail portion.

At the party, Kushner decided that the four retail floors of the building, while rundown, could be transformed into a thriving tourist destination, according to his associates.

The building passed through several owners after the newspaper sold the property for $175 million in 2004 to Tishman Speyer. Tishman sold it three years later for $525 million to a company called Africa-Israel Investments. (Those transactions prompted Trump a few months ago to poke fun at the Times, tweeting that the “dopes” at the newspaper “gave it away.”)

Africa-Israel’s decision to purchase the building was made by its chairman, an Uzbek-born Israeli citizen, Lev Leviev. He is one of the world’s wealthiest men, known as the “King of Diamonds” for his extensive holdings in Africa, Israel and Russia. He was then expanding his real estate holdings in New York City.

Leviev told the New York Times shortly after the building’s purchase that he was a “true friend” of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, largely through his work with an influential Jewish organization in the former Soviet Union. The newspaper wrote that he kept a photo of Putin in his office in Israel. Leviev’s company said in a statement to The Post that Leviev “does not have a personal relationship” with Putin but has met him “on a few occasions.” Leviev’s statement said he was referring to his belief that “Mr. Putin has been a ‘true friend’ to the Jewish people in Russia.”

In 2008, a year after the building’s purchase, Leviev invited Trump to his Madison Avenue store, an ultra-high-end establishment called Leviev Jewelry, where they were photographed together, according to the Leviev statement. Leviev hoped to work with Trump on Moscow real estate deals, according to an article in Kommersant, a Russian newspaper. The Leviev statement said that the two “never had any business dealings with one another, contrary to speculation.”

Six years later, Kushner saw an opportunity for his own company.

Leviev, whose company was having financial difficulties, according to an Israeli press account, sold the building’s 12-floor office portion for $160 million, a transaction that did not involve the four retail floors.

Leviev’s daughter, Chagit, took charge of her father’s U.S. subsidiary and set out to find a buyer for the retail portion of the building. The company said it would entertain offers no lower than $300 million.

Kushner’s company offered $265 million, which was rejected. Kushner himself then negotiated with Chagit Leviev and others in 2015 and succeeded with a $296 million offer, according to an official involved in the matter.

“It was a very hard back-and-forth New York negotiating style,” said Kushner’s broker, Lon Rubackin. Leviev’s partner in the deal, Five Mile Capital, did not respond to a request for comment.

Few knew it at the time, but the negotiations were nearly consummated when Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, ran into Chagit Leviev on May 4, 2015, at an after-party for a Metropolitan Museum of Art gala — an encounter that was memorialized in a picture posted on Instagram.

“Such a pleasure seeing ­@jaredckushner and his stunningly beautiful wife @ivankatrump last night [at] the #metball­afterparty,” Chagit Leviev wrote.

The deal was signed a week later and closed in October 2015. The Leviev company said in a statement to The Post that Kushner simply made the highest offer and “there was no political element to the transaction.”

Kushner took over a property that was only 25 percent leased, according to a company official. His company recruited tenants, offering some a year’s free rent to lock in long-term contracts, according to an SEC filing. As a result, the building was nearly fully leased, with higher rents, including new tenants such as National Geographic.

The strategy paid off when Kushner’s company went to Deutsche Bank for refinancing. An appraisal cited in SEC filings for the package of mortgage-backed securities placed the value at $470 million, a 59 percent increase in a year. The bank declined to release the appraisal, but a person involved in the deal said that such a rapid increase was unusual when New York real estate was rebounding from recession, and credited Kushner for finding stellar tenants.

In a statement, Kushner Cos. President Laurent Morali said the property’s value increased sharply “for a simple reason: the building’s dramatic turnaround. We had a vision for the property when we purchased it that no one else had, and are proud to say that we executed on it.”

Kushner’s company took out $370 million in new loans in October 2016, giving it $74 million more than the purchase price a year earlier. Along with $285 million from Deutsche Bank, Kushner’s firm received $85 million from SL Green Realty, where Kushner had once worked as an intern. SL Green spokesman Rick Matthews said the deal made sense because the building has been mostly leased, giving it “increased value.”

The Deutsche Bank loan was delivered just before the bank — which has long been under investigation by federal and state authorities — agreed to pay a $7.2 billion U.S. penalty in December for mortgage securities fraud in its packaging of residential mortgages. The bank also paid a $425 million New York state fine in January for failing to properly track large transfers from Russia.

Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee wrote in their March 10 letter that because “press reports indicate” the Justice Department is continuing to investigate the money- laundering case, they are “concerned about the integrity of this criminal probe” in light of Trump’s “ongoing conflicts of interest with Deutsche Bank.” Bloomberg News has reported that the Justice Department has requested records related to money laundering from Deutsche Bank as part of a probe.

Golden boy is looking dirtier and dirtier.

[JMarie]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/26/politics/ivanka-trump-donald-trump/index.html

Of course she gives him an A.  Anyone think she might get demoted if she gave a lesser grade?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, JMarie said:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/26/politics/ivanka-trump-donald-trump/index.html

Of course she gives him an A.  Anyone think she might get demoted if she gave a lesser grade?

 

I don't think she'd even consider it. I love how her kids call AF1, "the candy plane". I'm so glad we get to pay for their sugar rush. <end sarcasm>

[candygirl200413]

That line " I try to stay out of politics" when she is her fathers advisor. The gas lighting is so real.

[catlady]

12 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

That line " I try to stay out of politics" when she is her fathers advisor. The gas lighting is so real.

Sorry, Ivanka; when you accepted the role of being Daddy's advisor complete with White House office, you stepped directly into politics.  so either STFU or go the hell away.

[GreyhoundFan]

16 minutes ago, catlady said:

...  so either STFU or go the hell away.

Better yet, Ivanka should STFU AND go the hell away.

[GrumpyGran]

5 hours ago, JMarie said:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/26/politics/ivanka-trump-donald-trump/index.html

Of course she gives him an A.  Anyone think she might get demoted if she gave a lesser grade?

 

What a stinking pile of mindless fluff. As everyone above said "I try to stay out out of politics..." You need to try harder, princess. You're failing.  And she seems to be struggling with her message now. "Early on--I feel blessed to have been part of the ride from day one and before..." What's before day one? Does she think there's a day zero? This in the same paragraph where she says she tries to stay out of politics!

I bet Tiffany gave him an A- once. That's why she's not in the ambassador to Germany. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another lawyer for Jared: "Kushner adds defense attorney Abbe Lowell to Russia-investigation legal team"

Spoiler

Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and White House adviser, has retained storied white-collar defense lawyer Abbe Lowell to advise him in the ongoing Russia investigation, a White House official confirmed.

Lowell, a lawyer at Chadbourne & Parke, has defended a number of high-profile clients and was chief counsel to House Democrats during impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton. He has also represented Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) against corruption charges.

Lowell's role in Kushner's legal team was first reported by Politico.

“When Bob Mueller left WilmerHale to‎ become special counsel and three of our colleagues joined him, we asked Mr. Kushner to get independent legal advice on whether to continue with us as his counsel,” said Kushner's attorney Jamie Gorelick. “He engaged Abbe Lowell to advise him and then decided to add Mr. Lowell to the team representing him in the various inquiries into the Russia matter.”

Lowell is the chair of Chadbourne's white-collar defense, regulatory investigations and litigation group.

Kushner's business dealings are being scrutinized by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Russians and Trump campaign associates.

I wonder if he is paying or if the lawyer is cutting his fee.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

On 9/6/2017 at 4:21 AM, onekidanddone said:

If the story of her going through the full conversion is true, then she is Jewish 

I am not Jewish nor an expert in Jewish things so I'd appreciate if a truly Jewish person chimed in (such as@nastyhobbitses and @HarryPotterFan). As far as what little I know, according to a strict interpretation of Halakha, being a Jew is transmitted by the matrilineal side, meaning that Ivanka is a convert while her children are Jews. As I said though I may be wrong and I'd like to know it from someone truly knowledgeable.

[onekidanddone]

Just now, laPapessaGiovanna said:

I am not Jewish nor an expert in Jewish things so I'd appreciate if a truly Jewish person chimed in (such as@nastyhobbitses and @HarryPotterFan). As far as what little I know, according to a strict interpretation of Halakha, being a Jew is transmitted by the matrilineal side, meaning that Ivanka is a convert while her children are Jews. As I said though I may be wrong and I'd like to know it from someone truly knowledgeable.

I am Jewish, but not up on all the laws of who is really "Jewish".  I was always lead to believe if a woman fully converts according to Rabbinical law she and her children will be Jewish and there is no distinction between who has been converted and who was Jewish at birth. At least it is supposed to be that way in theory. Some Jews will never accept converts or Jews of Color.  But that is another rant for another day.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

22 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I am Jewish, but not up on all the laws of who is really "Jewish".  I was always lead to believe if a woman fully converts according to Rabbinical law she and her children will be Jewish and there is no distinction between who has been converted and who was Jewish at birth. At least it is supposed to be that way in theory. Some Jews will never accept converts or Jews of Color.  But that is another rant for another day.

Thank you @onekidanddone. I read a bit around and it seems an awfully complicated matter.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Silence over dad’s tweets speak to Ivanka Trump’s tight spot"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — Ivanka Trump has been vocal in using her White House role to advocate for women. But when President Donald Trump lobbed a demeaning attack on a female TV host on Twitter this week, his daughter and senior adviser kept quiet.

It was a moment of silence that spoke to the challenges and calculations Ivanka Trump faces as she tries to promote family-friendly policies in an administration led by a man whose comments about women have made women cringe and drawn bipartisan rebuke.

In recent weeks, the younger Trump has discussed family leave with lawmakers, traveled to promote job-training efforts and spoken out against human trafficking. She’s also tried to position herself as above the political fray, saying in one interview that she tries to “stay out of politics” and in another that she’s been surprised by the “level of viciousness” in Washington politics.

The tussle between her father and “Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough offered a pointed reminder to Ivanka Trump that this is a city where it’s impossible to separate policy and politics.

The MSNBC hosts, in a Washington Post column Friday, called on women close to the president to condemn him for questioning Brzezinski’s intelligence and saying that she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” in a December encounter.

“It would be the height of hypocrisy to claim the mantle of women’s empowerment while allowing a family member to continue such abusive conduct,” Brzezinski and Scarborough wrote.

Ivanka Trump did not respond to questions about the president’s tweet or how it affects her policy efforts.

While she has won some praise for trying to tackle complex issues that are not traditionally high on the Republican agenda, such as paid family leave and child care expenses, liberal advocates said her recent evasion tactics were not helpful in building bipartisan bridges.

“Moments like this make it much harder for advocates that have spent decades fighting gender stereotypes and discrimination and advancing women’s equality to view her as a potential ally,” said Vicki Shabo, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.

Said Emily’s List President Stephanie Schriock, “She’s never been one who stood up when it mattered most.”

The administration has already been criticized for the limited number of women in top positions. And the White House Council for Women and Girls, established under President Barack Obama to ensure women are considered in policymaking, has not been active under Trump. Following a report in Politico that the administration was reviewing whether to keep the council, a senior administration official said there are plans to keep it in place, though details and timing still are being worked out. The official was not authorized to discuss internal thinking on the matter on the record.

Earlier this week, Ivanka Trump appeared at a State Department ceremony unveiling an annual U.S. report on human trafficking, sounding “a clarion call into action in defense of the vulnerable and the exploited.” At the same time, however, she has come under criticism for harsh conditions at a Chinese company that produces shoes for her fashion brand and others.

All of these moments have contributed to Ivanka Trump’s real-time political education.

Embracing advocacy for women as her central focus, she stepped away from executive roles at The Trump Organization and running her own brand to join the administration. Last week she traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican lawmakers on family-friendly tax policies and paid parental leave. While her goal of a national family leave program has limited GOP backing, some more modest tax policies could be included in a Republican tax overhaul effort.

To further her priorities, Ivanka Trump has quietly reached out to Democrats. In May, she met with Democratic Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand of New York, a vocal advocate for paid leave, according to a public calendar on Gillibrand’s website. The two have not spoken since, said a Gillibrand aide, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting.

Before Thursday’s tweet from the president about Brzezinski, Ivanka Trump provided a statement to the AP about her paid leave efforts. She said that a national paid family leave plan is a “critical piece of the administration’s working families agenda.” She added, “The legislative process takes time, but I am committed to working with legislative leaders to build coalitions of support for policies that empower American working families and enable them to thrive.”

Despite Donald Trump’s history of offensive comments about women, Ivanka Trump has defended her father as a supporter of women. Speaking on a panel at a women’s conference in Berlin earlier this year, she described her father as “a tremendous champion of supporting families” — a statement which drew groans and hisses.

She'll never stand up to daddy.

[candygirl200413]

That skit in SNL with Scarlett Johansson promoting Ivanka's "perfume" complicit will forever be 110% true

[nokidsmom]

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

She'll never stand up to daddy.

Ivanka is Trump's daughter first and foremost.   Not only that, the family is tight knit, she's not going to rock the family boat.  People who continue hoping that she will have any kind of moderating effect on her father's behaviour need to remember that. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"When Dad’s the president — a look inside Ivanka Trump’s complicated world"

Spoiler

Ivanka Trump’s office: clean, white, quiet. A zone of punctual start times and promptly-offered water bottles, and a conference table at which she conducts meetings. A short, winding walk away from her father’s Oval Office downstairs.

She does not necessarily appreciate daily schedules. Neither does her father. When Ivanka needs to see the president, she stops by. When he needs to see her, he calls. When he wants her opinion, he asks for it and she gives it, but without expectation that it will be followed.

She sees her role as not to persuade, but to inform and support: That much is clear to White House staffers and friends who have observed the first daughter’s early months in the White House. Anyone who has invested in her the ability to change her father clearly doesn’t understand the dynamic that has always governed their relationship and also the dynamic of a president and his staff. After all, she works for him.

“The people are different. The decisions are different and the office is different,” Ivanka, an assistant to the president, said in a recent extended interview in her office, one of the few she’s granted. “But he is the same person and I am the same person. And we interact in the same way as we always have.”

One morning last week, she was one of the senior staff who convened around a long table in the White House’s Situation Room. On the agenda was solidifying her father’s remarks at the upcoming G-20, a global economic summit, particularly in a session relating to the economic empowerment of women.

“She’s been the advocate to put these things on the president’s agenda,” said a senior White House official who was in the meeting.

Ivanka argued that the administration’s message should focus on the barriers facing women: access to capital, access to markets — issues that were her personal interests before she maneuvered them onto her father’s official platform.

In the meeting, she was, as usual, collegial and thoughtful, thanking the mid-level staffers present for their research and work.

A few hours earlier, her father had already issued a few words on one woman. Just before 9 a.m. the president had gone on a Twitter bender targeting MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski. He called her “crazy” and “low IQ.” He described her as coming to his Florida estate, “bleeding badly from a facelift.”

The media and political world exploded — another days-long uproar over a sexist remark by the impetuous @RealDonaldTrump. His words were again seen as tearing down the platform Ivanka says she is trying to build. People wondered: Who would dare tell him to stop undermining his office and damaging himself.

“Where are Jared and Ivanka right now?” Politico demanded.

Ivanka was discussing policy.

And then she went, presumably, back to her West Wing Office — small by CEO standards, big by White House ones — and to what has become the most complicated father-daughter dance in the history of American politics.

For Ivanka, moving to Washington has been a master’s course in the zigzagging political process. But there is no rule book for dealing with a president’s discombobulating tendency to overshadow everything she and everyone else in his administration is trying to do.

Her response to what she called “all the noise” has been to retreat into a cocoon of carefulness, to put her head down and work. “Every time I’m a little tired or frustrated — I remind myself that it’s the greatest privilege in the world to do this, to be in the White House,” she said.

She is learning to more carefully weigh the consequences of her opinions, which impact not the family business, but the country and the world. Unlike in business, where she felt comfortable exchanging off-the-cuff opinions with her father, she now tries not to respond too quickly. She waits until he has asked her opinion multiple times on the same issue, taking that as a cue to its importance, and then she reaches out to subject-matter experts to help her develop a reasoned position.

When she disagrees with her dad, she asks herself whether the issue was a campaign promise or not. If it was, she readily suppresses her own wishes. She believes that doing otherwise would undermine what the American people voted for. She asks herself why her opinion is more right than the 46 percent of the country who put her father in office.

Foremost, she presents him with information. She tells him what she thinks, and then lays out what the other side’s strongest arguments are. Then the president decides. As he always has.

“My father trusts me to be an honest broker,” Ivanka said. “I don’t have a hidden agenda. I have a very clear agenda. He knows exactly where I stand and I express why I care. There’s no secrecy about it.”

***

In a meeting with CEOs in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, she is her father’s mouthpiece, hosting business leaders who want to support his plan to boost workforce training. On a tour through a technical school in Wisconsin, she stayed at his shoulder, shaking hands and passing compliments to a man demonstrating an automated cutting machine. In a briefing with reporters, she constantly revised her notes with a felt-tip pen, but rarely needs to consult them as she speaks about the administration’s proposal for a workforce training program.

She said she’s pushing the administration’s “working family agenda.” She uses the language of her father — “tremendous,” “incredible.”

“When you say daughter, when you say staffer — she is definitely not a staffer,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn), who has met with Ivanka multiple times in the 16 weeks since she took on a role as adviser to the president. “No question. That is not the case. I think it’s very much she is — I don’t want to use the word ‘peer,’ but she is a partner.”

Donald Trump has relied on his daughter’s advice since she began working for him as a vice president at the Trump Organization, the tempered Athena to his furious Zeus. She was 24.

“She did not build her life thinking she was going into politics,” said a person close to Ivanka.

Over the course of a decade working for her dad, she grew accustomed to offering her opinion, sometimes off the cuff, on the family’s business portfolio: deals, properties, hotel openings and hotel design.

This is her portfolio now: Workforce development. Childcare tax credits and paid parental leave — issues that no American Congress has ever passed, and which have become Ivanka’s signature topics, and bellwethers for her success. Human trafficking. Last Tuesday, she stood by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at a crowded State Department ceremony, honoring award recipients who have contributed to the study and eradication of trafficking.

“When I have conversations with her, it’s really not about trying to influence the president,” said Corker, who was at the event and has counseled Ivanka on the issue. In meeting with Ivanka, “I feel like I’m dealing with the principal who is going to be carrying out these issues in the White House.”

At the conclusion of their meetings, on occasion Ivanka has walked Corker downstairs to wander into the Oval Office and say “Hi” to the president. And, it was clear to the senator that Ivanka has real power in the White House over issues that are on her agenda.

She may not be able to sway her father’s opinions, but she is throwing her weight behind issues such as family leave — building coalitions and, if all miraculously aligns, could see Congress pass legislation that she has helped to push.

Says her husband, Jared Kushner: “I think she’s very lucky in that she cares less about what people think and more about if she’s doing the right thing and will be able to get positive results. Ultimately that’s what has and will make her very successful.”

***

At its heart this is a story about fathers and daughters, and what happens when one becomes president of the United States and the other follows him to the White House and tries to make heads or tails of it.

This is a story of a daughter who leaves her beloved New York. Moves her three children to D.C. Marvels at having a house with an actual back yard, and wonders if the paparazzi who post themselves in front of their new home are paid in 10-hour shifts, because they’re always there to photograph when her husband Jared leaves for work at 6 a.m., but then are always gone by 4 p.m.

This is a story that gets exceptional because it’s the Trumps, for whom life and career are also always entwined with family: Ivanka as a child, building future Trump towers out of Lego sets, as one of her favorite stories goes. An older Ivanka, using the interoffice envelopes in the real Trump Tower to send her father positive press clippings about himself, as an acquaintance remembers. Season after season of “The Apprentice,” with the fates of D-list celebrities determined by the opinions of the two Trumps.

Then as now, when Ivanka presents her dad with information, she said she tells him what she thinks, and then tries to tell him what the other side’s strongest arguments are.

“A lot of the way people try to get things done, or sell things in Washington, is they present facts that align with the outcome that they want the other person to come to,” she said. “In business it’s the same — they tell you the good facts about a company, not the bad facts. I don’t do that. I have never done that.”

Maggie Cordish, a longtime friend whose husband now works in the Trump administration as an assistant to the president, said Ivanka “understands what a privilege it is to find herself in this position and to be able to move the needle on things she cares about. . . . She uprooted herself from New York to come down here to get things done.”

As she goes about her work, there is another oddity that is Ivanka-specific: the fact that she becomes a cipher into which people pour their own beliefs and aspirations, the fact that multiple people can sit in a room with her and each believe she is speaking directly to them.

Republican female lawmakers who have met with Ivanka spoke about her preparedness, and their excitement to have a representative from the White House who cared about issues they had worked on, in some cases, for years. Multiple male lawmakers spoke at length about her “elegance” and her “grace”; and then worried out loud that they seemed enamored of her.

In the eye of Democrats, Ivanka is forever moving one step forward and two steps back, forever caught up in her father’s unseemly dramas. Three months into her official role, observers who analyze her influence on Donald Trump are still doing so via a method of reading her tweets like tea leaves: Ivanka sends out support for refugees on World Refugee Day, against a father interminably stumping for a travel ban. Ivanka wishes her LGBT followers a happy Pride month, while her father eschewed Barack Obama’s tradition of issuing a proclamation. At times, she comes across as earnest, if slightly oblivious; at times it seems like she knows exactly what she is doing, which is goading her dad.

Ivanka, taken out of context, is rarely offensive. But Ivanka is all context — the context of her father. He is why people write about her, dissect her, fret over her. She is playing a flute in an orchestra. He is running around banging a gong in the background, making her look tone-deaf.

***

Trent Franks, a Republican congressman from Arizona, recently received an invitation from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for a meeting to brainstorm a pro-family tax code. A special participant — the “predicate” of the meeting, as Franks saw it — would be Ivanka Trump, the woman whose father had spent an election cycle gleefully referring to the meeting’s host as “Little Marco.”

Nine Republican lawmakers gathered around a table at which the first daughter spoke softly enough that other participants fell silent to hear her bring greetings from the president and talk about her desire for a child-care tax credit and paid family leave. The roundtable, and Ivanka’s behavior in it, was representative of how she has come to conduct business in Washington.

“She was a very active listener,” said Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), noting that Ivanka responded to each participant’s favored issue — an adoption tax credit, a caregiver tax credit — as if she had personally researched them.

“In every sincere way,” said Franks, “I left and felt like this was a meeting of consequence.”

Ivanka left and told Kushner — in one of the frenetic catch-ups that the couple holds, sometimes in his office, sometimes in the 11-11:20 p.m. timespan between when her husband gets home and when the two go to bed — that the meeting had been “really positive.”

Paid parental leave is on the administration’s proposed budget this year: a mandated six weeks for birth and adoptive parents. Ivanka knows proposed budgets never survive intact, an aide said, and that the proposal could struggle to find support from either Democrats, who don’t think it goes far enough, or from conservative Republicans, who disagree with a mandate at all.

“I think there’s going to be a question of whether it gets there, but you know, she’s happy that people are talking about this — and again she’s working hard to build coalition and understanding around the issue,” said a person close to Ivanka in the White House, who requested anonimity to speak openly.

While Ivanka did meet privately with her home state Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, according to the Associated Press, her early public meetings have largely included Republicans on Capitol Hill, leaving some Democrats who have pressed the legislation for decades wondering about her strategy.

“I appreciate what Ivanka Trump is doing to elevate the issue to make it part of the public discourse,” said Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), a veteran advocate for family leave whose own proposed bill was analyzed alongside the Trump administration’s in a recent collaborative study by the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.

“I haven’t met with her. I haven’t been asked to meet with her,” DeLauro adds. “I don’t want to be presumptuous, but since I have been engaged in these issues on the House side for such a long time I’d hope that I would be included in a discussion of these issues.”

****

When Donald Trump announced he would be pulling out of the global climate change agreement known as the Paris Accords, it angered liberals who had put their hopes in Ivanka. She had personally met with Al Gore, and gotten Leonardo DiCaprio into a room with her father to talk about climate change. She telephoned business executives, encouraging them to reach out to her father and tell him to stay in the deal. He didn’t.

“Is it possible she’s doing nothing to moderate her father?” asked exasperated HBO host John Oliver — and aides say she felt frustrated. She had done her job, as she saw it, exposing her father to a variety of ideas, but she couldn’t make her father commit to something he didn’t want to.

That is her typical approach. “I am not sort of trying to selectively curate information that will lead him to agree with me,” she said. “Debate is good.”

In other interviews, she has said she would never criticize her father in public. “Where I disagree with my father, he knows it,” she told CBS’s Gayle King in a televised interview in April. People who know her say that speaking out in public would be “inappropriate.”

At times it seems like the question of whether Ivanka could change her father’s mind misses the question of how much she wants to. Understanding her requires understanding them as a unit.

A childhood friend of Ivanka’s remembers a moment during the campaign. Ivanka was scheduled to come to California and be interviewed on stage for a Fortune magazine-sponsored summit on powerful women. The friend lived nearby, so Ivanka invited her to attend. “It was supposed to be more about her, and being a successful woman in business,” the friend recalls. “But it was hard for them not to turn it around to something like, ‘How do you define your father’s actions about X that day?’ ”

Day “X,” a quick Google search reveals, took place shortly after the president’s leaked “Access Hollywood” tape. Without preamble, the Fortune interviewer asked for Ivanka’s reaction.

“Way to warm up!” Ivanka said, laughing. “It’s lovely to be here in California.”

The friend, who asked to speak anonymously, remembered being nervous on Ivanka’s behalf, but then unsurprised at Ivanka’s easy response. Ivanka noted that her father had apologized and had always treated her with respect.

That ease could be traced to half a lifetime in the public eye: She started modeling as a teenager and spent nearly a decade on prime time TV with her father. And she had become used to explaining his behavior.

The same thing happened in April in Germany: Ivanka was invited by Chancellor Angela Merkel to attend a summit on how to achieve equality for women. Ivanka showed up and was immediately asked to defend her father’s statements about women. The fact that Merkel announced Ivanka’s involvement with a World Bank fund for women-owned businesses was overshadowed by stories about whether some audience members had booed Ivanka’s rationalization of her dad’s behavior.

The same thing happened last week while she was in the Situation Room for the G-20 meeting. On Twitter, a flurry of commenters were blasting Ivanka to explain her father.

Ivanka is always asked to explain her father.

But, the childhood friend notes: In more than two decades of knowing Ivanka, she has never once heard her complain about that.

I was never one who thought Ivanka would have a calming or moderating influence on the tangerine toddler.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Jared Kushner Wanted to Buy the National Enquirer in 2014"

Spoiler

Donald Trump’s ties to the National Enquirer are close, but three years ago they were almost much closer. Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and serves as one of the president’s top White House confidants, almost bought American Media Inc., the company that owns the Enquirer, back in 2014.

According to sources speaking with Bloomberg Politics, Kushner and brother-in-law Joe Meyer attempted to finalize a deal with Enquirer publisher David Pecker to buy their parent company—but the deal ultimately fell through because of weak advertising revenue.

In between articles about celebrity scandals and U.F.O. sightings, the Enquirer spent last year’s campaign endorsing Trump and attacking his opponents. The feud between Trump and Morning Joe co-hosts __Joe Scarborough__and Mika Brzezinski came to a head last week when Trump tweeted Brzezinski had been “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when she “insisted” on joining Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort around New Year’s Eve last year.

Bzezinski and Scarborough fired back the next day with a commentary in the Washington Post titled “Donald Trump is not well.” In the article, they claim Trump is “obsessed” with their show, even threatening to have his favorite publication publish a slanderous piece unless they begged him not to: “This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas.”

Trump answered this latest attack with, surprise, another tweet, claiming that Scarborough did call him to stop the article, and he had said no—then adding a day later that Scarborough is “crazy” and Brzezinski is “dumb as a rock.”

Wow, too bad the deal didn't go through, the Enquirer would have been the perfect Drumpf family newspaper. <end sarcasm>

[Soulhuntress]

On 6/7/2017 at 11:58 AM, JMarie said:

The comments on this tweet are AWESOME