Ivanka and Jared 2: Tarnished Gold

[fraurosena]

There is no "seems" here. He literally says "The advice I gave". People should stop couching their words to give these trashers of national security the benefit of the doubt. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Jared Kushner’s remarkably unremarkable effort to downplay Russian interference"

Spoiler

To hear White House adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner tell it, the Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election was really not a big deal.

“Quite frankly, the whole thing is just a big distraction for the country,” Kushner said during the Time 100 Summit in New York on Tuesday, referring to the special counsel’s investigation into that interference.

“You look at what Russia did, you know, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent and do it, and it’s a terrible thing,” he said. He later explained: “I think they said they spent about $160,000,” referring to the paid ads bought by the Russian social-media team. “I spent $160,000 on Facebook every three hours during the campaign."

Those aren’t the lines that attracted the most attention, though. The lines that raised a few eyebrows were these:

“I think the investigations and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads,” he said, later adding that “if you look at the magnitude of what they did and what they accomplished I think the ensuing investigations have been way more harmful to our country.”

The claims about the Facebook ads are broadly disingenuous, but in a way that’s on-brand for Kushner. Waving away the interference effort as “a couple of Facebook ads” does downplay the number of ads that were purchased. But it’s fair to note that the scale of those ads was small, particularly given the breadth of Facebook’s reach. It was also spending that occurred over a much broader timeline than most people seem to realize.

He focuses on those ads because that’s what he focused on during the campaign. He was the data guy, the guy who bought the ads. So that’s what he sees as the Russian effort, too. But Russia had another component to its social-media push, one that was much more sweeping: the creation and promotion of Facebook pages and various Twitter accounts all meant to highlight issues intended to stoke partisan anger. If the Russian ads mirrored Kushner’s campaign role, the rest of the social media effort mirrored his father-in-law’s.

But that social media effort — generally unfocused, often sloppy and only loosely centered on the election itself — was the much less important component of what Russia did. Far more important was Russia’s hacking into the Democratic National Committee and the email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Material stolen in those hacks was later released in bulk by WikiLeaks.

A July 2016 dump of material stolen from the DNC had precisely the divisive effect the Russians were looking for, amplifying tensions within the party as it was trying to unite after the protracted Clinton-Bernie Sanders primary fight. The October 2016 dump of Podesta’s emails — a dump carried out day after day — helped successfully distract the media from other issues, including mounting allegations of sexual misconduct by then-candidate Donald Trump. We’ve noted before that WikiLeaks’ document releases quickly flooded out cable-news discussion of the “Access Hollywood” tape that month.

Kushner doesn’t address any of this, instead isolating a subset of a subset of what Russia did and then dismissing its already narrow scope. It’s not an honest assessment. But notice the point he’s hoping to serve with that argument. He’s arguing not about effects or about ethics. He’s arguing about “harm” to the country.

The investigations and speculation “had a much harsher impact on our democracy” than the Facebook ads, he said. “f you look at the magnitude of what they did . . . the ensuing investigations have been way more harmful to our country.” (Especially if you downplay that magnitude.)

Well, of course Kushner sees an effort meant to aid the election of Trump as less harmful to the country than investigations into his father-in-law. Of course Kushner believes what he did on Facebook to get Trump elected was far more sweeping and important. Of course he thinks that Russia buying ads to help promote Trump’s candidacy isn’t that big a deal. Of course he thinks that investigations into the administration — investigations of which he is also a subject — are much more dangerous.

I’m not saying Jared Kushner is Al Capone, but I suspect that Capone had exaggerated opinions on income-tax laws relative to most Americans. That perhaps we should have taken Capone’s views on the relative harms to society of bank robbery with a grain of salt.

As a member of the Trump administration, there appears to be an unwritten rule that your view of controversial issues should be in line with the president’s. It’s certainly the case that, for many of the reasons outlined above, Trump sees the investigation into Russian interference as more fraught than the interference itself. Kushner, like many of those closest to Trump, is simply highlighting that same difference.

At least he admits the interference happened.

 

[fraurosena]

Who would have thought they were using their positions in the WH to enrich themselves? /s

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Jared should have continued to hide and not speak publicly.

 

[fraurosena]

15 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Jared should have continued to hide and not speak publicly.

 

Oh, I prefer he makes an idiot of himself for all the world to see.

[GreyhoundFan]

24 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Oh, I prefer he makes an idiot of himself for all the world to see.

I do too, but it doesn't help his image. I wonder if Daddy (in-law) Dumbass will finally kick him to the curb, dismissing him as a coffeve boy.

 

 

[fraurosena]

Just now, GreyhoundFan said:

I do too, but it doesn't help his image. I wonder if Daddy (in-law) Dumbass will finally kick him to the curb, dismissing him as a coffeve boy.

 

 

Sadly, I don’t think there will be any kicking done, unless Jared started to squeal. Then he’ll be dismissed as Ivanka’s drunken one night stand.

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm so glad Princess can keep adding money to her pockets <end sarcasm> "Ivanka Trump took in nearly $4M from DC hotel last year"

Spoiler

NEW YORK (AP) — Ivanka Trump took in nearly $4 million in revenue last year from her stake in President Donald Trump’s hotel down the street from the Oval Office, up slightly from a year earlier.

A financial disclosure report released by the White House on Friday also shows her fashion line of handbags, shoes and dresses took in at least $1 million, down from at least $5 million. Trump announced in July last year that she planned to close her company to focus on her work as a White House adviser.

The disclosure for her husband, Trump adviser Jared Kushner, shows he took in hundreds of thousands of dollars from his holdings of New York City apartments, and holds a stake in the real estate investment firm Cadre worth at least $25 million.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Treason Barbie tries to look smart:

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Treason Barbie tries to look smart:

The ironic thing is, these are the same people who had conniption fits when Michelle Obama and her daughters traveled. 

[JMarie]

On 6/21/2019 at 7:43 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

Treason Barbie tries to look smart:

She thinks the glasses help in the smart department, right???

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Rex Tillerson airs concern about Jared Kushner’s secret dealings with foreign leaders"

Spoiler

In newly disclosed testimony, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson said President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, operated independently with powerful leaders around the world without coordination with the State Department, leaving Tillerson out of the loop and in the dark on emerging U.S. policies and simmering geopolitical crises.

In a transcript of his testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Tillerson also described the challenge of briefing a president who does not read briefing papers and often got distracted by peripheral topics, noting he had to keep his message short and focus on a single topic.

“I learned to be much more concise with what I wanted to bring in front of him,” Tillerson told the House panel during a seven-hour session in May.

He stood by his previous characterization that Trump does not dive deep into details and said he learned not to give the president articles or long memos. “That’s just not what he was going to do,” he said.

The Washington Post and other news outlets received an advance copy of the redacted transcript before it was published by the committee Thursday.

On several occasions, Tillerson said he was blindsided by Kushner’s discussions with world leaders.

In one instance, Tillerson said he learned that Kushner was meeting with Mexico’s foreign secretary, Luis Videgaray, because he happened to be in the same Washington restaurant while the two men hashed out a “fairly comprehensive plan of action” that Tillerson didn’t know about.

“The owner of the restaurant . . . came around and said, “Oh, Mr. Secretary, you might be interested to know the foreign secretary of Mexico is seated at a table near the back in case you want to go by and say hello to him,” Tillerson said. “And so I did.”

Tillerson said he saw the “color go out of the face” of the foreign secretary as he walked into the room. “I said: Welcome to Washington. . . . Give me a call next time you’re coming to town.”

In another instance, Tillerson explained in detail being stunned by the 2017 Persian Gulf crisis in which key Arab allies severed ties with Qatar, another key U.S. ally. He said he was in Australia at the time with then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and both were caught off guard.

“I was surprised,” Tillerson said.

He also said he was not aware of meetings that had been occurring between Arab leaders and Kushner, including a private huddle May 20, 2017, between Kushner, Trump’s former adviser Stephen K. Bannon and the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. During the meeting, Arab leaders discussed their intention to impose a blockade on Qatar, though the White House later denied prior knowledge of the June 5 closure.

“What’s your reaction to a meeting of that sort having taken place without your knowledge?” Tillerson was asked by committee staff.

“It makes me angry,” Tillerson said. “Because I didn’t have a say. The State Department’s views were never expressed.”

Tillerson said he asked Kushner to stop making trips overseas without consulting with the embassy or the State Department.

“On occasion the president’s senior adviser would make trips abroad and . . . was in charge of his own agenda,” he said.

When he raised the issue, Kushner said he “would try to do better,” Tillerson recalled. But “not much changed,” the former secretary of state said, making it difficult because everyone was not working from the “same playbook.”

Tillerson declined to answer questions about whether he expressed the sentiment that the president was a “moron,” as publicly reported.

“We really should move on,” Tillerson attorney Reg Brown said when asked about the report. Asked again, Brown said, “We’re ready to move on.”

Tillerson, a former ExxonMobil CEO who tried but failed to change a number of processes at the State Department, said he was startled that many career diplomats had no idea what their authority was — or what they were supposed to be doing.

“I thought: This is nuts. I mean, this is crazy. You couldn’t run a corner gas station that way,” he said.

Tillerson also spoke about a two-hour meeting he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin about bilateral challenges, including election interference. Tillerson told Putin that Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election created “huge challenges for us here in Washington” in improving U.S. relations with Russia.

Tillerson said no one from the White House gave him any guidance on how to handle the topic — nor did they talk about it with him after the meeting.

He said Putin denied any Russian interference, a response Tillerson didn’t believe.

“I wasn’t expecting mea culpas. I wasn’t expecting him to prostrate himself and say, you got me. But it was important,” Tillerson said.

“I’ve known this guy a long time; I’ve dealt with him a long time; and one thing I know he respects is people speaking the truth to him,” he said. “Whether he acknowledges that truth or not, that’s his choice, but he respects people who speak the truth to him and that they stick with it. That’s what he respects.”

During Tillerson’s tenure, the number of State Department press briefings was sharply curtailed, and fewer reporters were allowed to travel with him on his plane, a point of contention that continues under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Tillerson said it was his decision to reduce access to the news media at the agency.

“No,” he responded, when asked whether the White House had any role or reaction to it.

Tillerson, who struggled to fill senior positions in the department, said he was frustrated that he could not pick his top people, and that he was hampered by White House rules prohibiting nominees from taking positions if they had tweeted something negative about the president or signed a “Never Trump” letter. “It never did work smoothly,” he said.

“And that spread pretty widely within town. People began to understand that. And the unfortunate effect of that is a lot of people then contacted me and said: Hey . . . you can take my name off the list of consideration. It discouraged them from being considered,” he said.

Here's the transcript if you are interested.

[fraurosena]

Blond bimbo without any credentials is at the G20 for some reason and none of the adults in the room want to know. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Treason Barbie went into NK with her daddy. Too bad KJU didn't keep them.

Spoiler

Few Americans alive today have set foot inside North Korea, the isolated, nuclear-armed dictatorship sometimes called the Hermit Kingdom.

On Sunday, Ivanka Trump became one of them, capping a consequential three-day Asian trip in which the president’s eldest daughter played a very public role that blended family ties with diplomatic work that is usually performed by diplomats.

She pronounced the short walk to the other side of one of the world’s most fortified borders “surreal.”

Previously, at the Group of 20 economic summit in Japan, Ivanka Trump was everywhere — at her father’s side at times when other leaders’ spouses were present (first lady Melania Trump skipped the trip), in meetings where her presence puzzled other participants, and even giving an awkward video “readout” of Trump’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Another video of Ivanka Trump talking with British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde at the G-20 also went viral over the weekend. Lagarde’s impatient side-eye as Ivanka Trump interjects in what appears to have been a back-and-forth between Macron and May suggested irritation at finding herself standing alongside the daughter of the U.S. president — rather than the president himself.

“As soon as you charge them with that economic aspect of it, a lot of people start listening who otherwise wouldn’t listen,” May can be heard saying, as Lagarde nods in agreement.

“And the same with the defense side of it, in terms of the whole business that’s been, sort of, male-dominated,” Ivanka Trump then says, as a startled-looking Lagarde turns toward her, then purses her lips.

The first daughter’s prominence in Japan and South Korea appeared to be by design — a sign of her influence with President Trump and the current absence of influential opponents within the administration.

It’s not clear, however, to what end.

Ivanka Trump shuttered her clothing business after joining the administration, although not right away, and has largely stepped away from her old life as an entrepreneur and social mainstay in New York. She and her husband, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, let it be known last year that they would remain in Washington and in the White House indefinitely.

Her ambitions are unknown — she demurs on any desire for public office. Over time, her work on women’s issues and entre­pre­neur­ship has increasingly resembled that of a State Department envoy. She made a lengthy trip to India in November 2017, and several others since, sometimes with her father and sometimes on her own. On a solo Africa trip in April, Trump said she would campaign for women’s right to own and inherit land in Africa and promote a $50 million U.S. development project in Ethiopia.

The gray area she occupies — family, employee, envoy, advocate — frequently overlaps with the work of career diplomats. But her unfamiliarity with some elements of diplomacy were on display on this trip, including when she pronounced India a”critical ally.” It is a partner in many areas, but U.S. diplomats avoid the higher terminology of ally.

Mostly, her prominence on a major foreign trip sends a message about who other countries should listen to or court, said Christopher R. Hill, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and other nations.

“It looks to the rest of the world like we have a kind of a constitutional monarchy,” said Hill, who oversaw nuclear talks with North Korea at the close of the George W. Bush administration.

“It’s increasingly problematic in terms of our credibility,” Hill said. “It says to our allies, to everyone we do business with, that the only people who matter are Trump and his family members.”

Ivanka Trump had front-row seats at nearly every televised session in Japan and for President Trump’s visit to South Korea, where the trip to the demilitarized zone was the main event. She and Kushner were among the small U.S. delegation at the border, which included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo but not White House national security adviser John Bolton, a longtime skeptic of diplomacy with North Korea. Bolton instead had left to fly to Mongolia.

Ivanka Trump worked the room at a meeting of South Korean business leaders on Saturday, with cameras catching the smiling interactions. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not attend. She remained in the front row at Trump’s news conference in Seoul, nodding in agreement as the president spoke, after Pompeo ducked out minutes into the event.

Along the way were opportunities for the kind of “branding” Ivanka Trump espouses as a tool for empowering women — a main theme of her work as presidential adviser, some of it captured on her Instagram account.

A video shows Ivanka Trump looking into the camera as she recounts meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Modi and others at the G-20, and touts a program launched by G-20 members to expand access to capital for women in the developing world.

“It’s been a great success; one of the truly great deliverables of the G-20 in Hamburg” two years ago, Ivanka Trump says. “Very excited to talk about the deliverables of this important initiative.”

She also posted a photo in which she and Kushner pose with Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“Today, President Trump held dynamic and productive meetings with many world leaders to discuss key security and economic issues. It is an honor to be a member of the U.S. delegation during an incredible first day of the #G20OsakaSummit,” she wrote.

But the final day of Trump’s trip — with the history-making trip to the DMZ and an address to U.S. forces stationed in South Korea that had at times sounded like a campaign rally — produced the most dramatic images of Ivanka Trump in her hybrid and often inscrutable role.

Trump invited Pompeo onstage at the Osan air base, and gave a nod to traditional diplomacy by saying that a “whole team” would follow up on Trump’s third face-to-face discussion with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Pompeo trotted onto the stage and started toward Trump but hadn’t made it to the lectern when Trump moved on to the big reveal.

“And you know who else I have?” he asked, leaning toward the crowd for dramatic effect.

“Has anybody ever heard of Ivanka? he asked, to whoops from the crowd.

“Come up here,” he commanded, as Ivanka Trump appeared at the rear of the stage.

“She’s going to steal the show,” Trump said, grinning.

As Pompeo fell in beside Ivanka Trump and the two walked toward him, President Trump quipped, “What a beautiful couple,” and the audience howled. “Mike! Beauty and the beast,” Trump went on, as he also acknowledged Harry Harris, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

Pompeo appeared to gesture to Ivanka Trump to go first, but she stepped aside and signaled for him to speak. After Pompeo briefly thanked the troops, there was a roar as Ivanka Trump stepped forward. President Trump and Pompeo flanked her, grinning, as she also thanked the troops and their spouses and families.

“They made the trip with me, and we spent a lot of time, a lot of time,” Trump said.

Ivanka Trump’s presence at the DMZ is particularly troubling, said Jenny Town, a North Korea specialist at the Stimson Center and editor of 38NorthNK, a publication focused on North Korea.

“It was not appropriate for Trump to bring his kids to this meeting,” Town said. “But it was a weird mix of people on the U.S. side to begin with. What’s notable, however, is who wasn’t there: Bolton.”

Trump has sidelined or fired some professional national security advisers and undercut others, including at times Pompeo and Bolton. He has never publicly criticized or contradicted Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner, although he has jokingly teased Kushner at times.

Pompeo spoke to reporters after the DMZ visit, and outlined some of the bureaucratic next steps with North Korea.

Pompeo was asked whether his presence at the DMZ was a signal to North Korea, which has complained about him and reportedly sought to go around him with Trump. Pompeo, who enjoys a close relationship with Trump, did not mention Ivanka Trump in his answer, though her presence Sunday had served to underscore the personal nature of Trump’s direct diplomacy with Kim.

“So far as I know, President Trump has always had me in charge” of negotiations, Pompeo said.

The picture under the spoiler is especially disgusting.

[JMarie]

20 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Treason Barbie went into NK with her daddy. Too bad KJU didn't keep them.

  Hide contents

Few Americans alive today have set foot inside North Korea, the isolated, nuclear-armed dictatorship sometimes called the Hermit Kingdom.

On Sunday, Ivanka Trump became one of them, capping a consequential three-day Asian trip in which the president’s eldest daughter played a very public role that blended family ties with diplomatic work that is usually performed by diplomats.

She pronounced the short walk to the other side of one of the world’s most fortified borders “surreal.”

Previously, at the Group of 20 economic summit in Japan, Ivanka Trump was everywhere — at her father’s side at times when other leaders’ spouses were present (first lady Melania Trump skipped the trip), in meetings where her presence puzzled other participants, and even giving an awkward video “readout” of Trump’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Another video of Ivanka Trump talking with British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde at the G-20 also went viral over the weekend. Lagarde’s impatient side-eye as Ivanka Trump interjects in what appears to have been a back-and-forth between Macron and May suggested irritation at finding herself standing alongside the daughter of the U.S. president — rather than the president himself.

“As soon as you charge them with that economic aspect of it, a lot of people start listening who otherwise wouldn’t listen,” May can be heard saying, as Lagarde nods in agreement.

“And the same with the defense side of it, in terms of the whole business that’s been, sort of, male-dominated,” Ivanka Trump then says, as a startled-looking Lagarde turns toward her, then purses her lips.

The first daughter’s prominence in Japan and South Korea appeared to be by design — a sign of her influence with President Trump and the current absence of influential opponents within the administration.

It’s not clear, however, to what end.

Ivanka Trump shuttered her clothing business after joining the administration, although not right away, and has largely stepped away from her old life as an entrepreneur and social mainstay in New York. She and her husband, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, let it be known last year that they would remain in Washington and in the White House indefinitely.

Her ambitions are unknown — she demurs on any desire for public office. Over time, her work on women’s issues and entre­pre­neur­ship has increasingly resembled that of a State Department envoy. She made a lengthy trip to India in November 2017, and several others since, sometimes with her father and sometimes on her own. On a solo Africa trip in April, Trump said she would campaign for women’s right to own and inherit land in Africa and promote a $50 million U.S. development project in Ethiopia.

The gray area she occupies — family, employee, envoy, advocate — frequently overlaps with the work of career diplomats. But her unfamiliarity with some elements of diplomacy were on display on this trip, including when she pronounced India a”critical ally.” It is a partner in many areas, but U.S. diplomats avoid the higher terminology of ally.

Mostly, her prominence on a major foreign trip sends a message about who other countries should listen to or court, said Christopher R. Hill, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and other nations.

“It looks to the rest of the world like we have a kind of a constitutional monarchy,” said Hill, who oversaw nuclear talks with North Korea at the close of the George W. Bush administration.

“It’s increasingly problematic in terms of our credibility,” Hill said. “It says to our allies, to everyone we do business with, that the only people who matter are Trump and his family members.”

Ivanka Trump had front-row seats at nearly every televised session in Japan and for President Trump’s visit to South Korea, where the trip to the demilitarized zone was the main event. She and Kushner were among the small U.S. delegation at the border, which included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo but not White House national security adviser John Bolton, a longtime skeptic of diplomacy with North Korea. Bolton instead had left to fly to Mongolia.

Ivanka Trump worked the room at a meeting of South Korean business leaders on Saturday, with cameras catching the smiling interactions. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not attend. She remained in the front row at Trump’s news conference in Seoul, nodding in agreement as the president spoke, after Pompeo ducked out minutes into the event.

Along the way were opportunities for the kind of “branding” Ivanka Trump espouses as a tool for empowering women — a main theme of her work as presidential adviser, some of it captured on her Instagram account.

A video shows Ivanka Trump looking into the camera as she recounts meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Modi and others at the G-20, and touts a program launched by G-20 members to expand access to capital for women in the developing world.

“It’s been a great success; one of the truly great deliverables of the G-20 in Hamburg” two years ago, Ivanka Trump says. “Very excited to talk about the deliverables of this important initiative.”

She also posted a photo in which she and Kushner pose with Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“Today, President Trump held dynamic and productive meetings with many world leaders to discuss key security and economic issues. It is an honor to be a member of the U.S. delegation during an incredible first day of the #G20OsakaSummit,” she wrote.

But the final day of Trump’s trip — with the history-making trip to the DMZ and an address to U.S. forces stationed in South Korea that had at times sounded like a campaign rally — produced the most dramatic images of Ivanka Trump in her hybrid and often inscrutable role.

Trump invited Pompeo onstage at the Osan air base, and gave a nod to traditional diplomacy by saying that a “whole team” would follow up on Trump’s third face-to-face discussion with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Pompeo trotted onto the stage and started toward Trump but hadn’t made it to the lectern when Trump moved on to the big reveal.

“And you know who else I have?” he asked, leaning toward the crowd for dramatic effect.

“Has anybody ever heard of Ivanka? he asked, to whoops from the crowd.

“Come up here,” he commanded, as Ivanka Trump appeared at the rear of the stage.

“She’s going to steal the show,” Trump said, grinning.

As Pompeo fell in beside Ivanka Trump and the two walked toward him, President Trump quipped, “What a beautiful couple,” and the audience howled. “Mike! Beauty and the beast,” Trump went on, as he also acknowledged Harry Harris, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

Pompeo appeared to gesture to Ivanka Trump to go first, but she stepped aside and signaled for him to speak. After Pompeo briefly thanked the troops, there was a roar as Ivanka Trump stepped forward. President Trump and Pompeo flanked her, grinning, as she also thanked the troops and their spouses and families.

“They made the trip with me, and we spent a lot of time, a lot of time,” Trump said.

Ivanka Trump’s presence at the DMZ is particularly troubling, said Jenny Town, a North Korea specialist at the Stimson Center and editor of 38NorthNK, a publication focused on North Korea.

“It was not appropriate for Trump to bring his kids to this meeting,” Town said. “But it was a weird mix of people on the U.S. side to begin with. What’s notable, however, is who wasn’t there: Bolton.”

Trump has sidelined or fired some professional national security advisers and undercut others, including at times Pompeo and Bolton. He has never publicly criticized or contradicted Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner, although he has jokingly teased Kushner at times.

Pompeo spoke to reporters after the DMZ visit, and outlined some of the bureaucratic next steps with North Korea.

Pompeo was asked whether his presence at the DMZ was a signal to North Korea, which has complained about him and reportedly sought to go around him with Trump. Pompeo, who enjoys a close relationship with Trump, did not mention Ivanka Trump in his answer, though her presence Sunday had served to underscore the personal nature of Trump’s direct diplomacy with Kim.

“So far as I know, President Trump has always had me in charge” of negotiations, Pompeo said.

The picture under the spoiler is especially disgusting.

I wonder if she was wearing one of "her" dresses.

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, JMarie said:

I wonder if she was wearing one of "her" dresses.

I don't know, but it's a fugly dress that looks totally inappropriate for a global leadership conference. Of course, that fits, since it's inappropriate for her to be at a global leadership conference.

[GreyhoundFan]

This author makes some good points: "Ivanka Trump wants power, and laughing at her expense won’t stop her"

Spoiler

This past weekend, left-wing Twitter was enthralled by a short clip of Ivanka Trump attempting to insert herself into a conversation among French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Theresa May, International Monetary Fund president Christine Lagarde and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while at the annual Group of 20 summit in Japan. The group appeared to be patiently tolerating Trump — at least, until the moment it became clear Lagarde could no longer contain her disdain for America’s first daughter. For a split second, viewers caught a look of utter contempt on Lagarde’s face. Her mouth quirked and she gave Trump a side-long glance, before she resumed a blank expression.

It was an incident straight out of a Victorian ballroom, a dowager putting the young, presumptuous and nouveau-riche upstart in her place. If the scene had taken place in an Edith Wharton novel, Trump’s reputation would never recover. In a William Makepeace Thackeray tome, her glad-handing would be just another bit of comical overreach on a path to ultimate success.

What it ultimately means for the real Ivanka Trump is still to be determined.

There seems to be little question that the first daughter wants something. As soon as Donald Trump was elected president, she began to insert herself into her father’s political orbit, joining in meetings with a world leaders such as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Argentinian President Mauricio Macri during the transition. While her brothers — Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. — remained in their roles with the family business, within a few months, Ivanka Trump instead took on a position as an unpaid special adviser to her father, joining husband Jared Kushner in the White House. Over the past 2½ years, despite having no discernible political qualifications, the younger Trump has taken meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, sat in for her father during a meeting of world leaders at the Group of 20 summit in 2017, and lobbied for and publicly promoted the Trump administration’s tax overhaul.

Many observers — including myself — quickly came to think of this as so much banana republic corruption. After all, almost immediately after her meeting with Xi, Ivanka Trump’s company received a number of trademarks from the Chinese government. She spent no small amount of time talking up a particular aspect of the tax reform, a real estate development tax break known as Opportunity Zones, one that, just coincidentally, benefited her husband, Kushner.

But Ivanka Trump’s clothing line is now defunct, likely a victim of falling sales as her father’s unpopularity made her business — based, as it was, in the “value” of the Trump family name and the perception that she was a tasteful exemplar of female ambition — increasingly unsustainable. Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s income decreased significantly from 2017 to 2018. The Trump Organization is experiencing its own financial woes, with bookings down at premier properties. The Trump name has seemingly become so toxic, in fact, it’s been taken off buildings in places from Panama to New York. As a business venture, the Trump presidency, if not quite a bust, is certainly not as promising as observers might have expected.

But as a means to amassing power — well, that’s another matter entirely. Here, the Trump family, once such a tabloid joke that HuffPost initially planned to cover the Trump presidential campaign as entertainment instead of politics, found amazing success, and not just in the sense that the patriarch captured the presidency. Donald Trump has so thoroughly conquered the party that congressional Republicans offer no check on the president, excusing everything from the Mueller report to more garden-variety corruption. Trump stands a decent chance of being elected to another term in 2020, and he is comfortable enough that he makes not-very-funny jokes about sticking around for more than eight years with increasing and disturbing frequency.

And whatever you may think of Ivanka Trump’s complicity in her father’s administration, or the amoral nature of her ambition, it would be a mistake to look only at her clothing line and write off her time as first daughter as a political failure. She has been careful not to overstep in ways that would leave her perilously exposed. Earlier this year, when her father openly floated naming her to the presidency of the World Bank, Ivanka Trump herself shot down the idea, while still telling reporters that she’d played a key role in the selection process. However ludicrous her claims in this regard may seem, she continues to portray herself as a champion of women, a lodestar for female entrepreneurs and other women who want to get ahead — causes with which few can quibble. And unlike her perpetually aggrieved brothers, the G-20 snubs didn’t deter Ivanka Trump one bit. She promptly accompanied her father to his historic meeting with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone, attending meetings and crossing briefly into North Korea. She even spoke to troops at a U.S. air base in South Korea.

While many portray Ivanka Trump’s White House service as a part of her psychodrama with her father, there is another way to look at it. President Trump claimed earlier this year that if his older daughter “ever wanted to run for president, I think she’d be very, very hard to beat.” In his bestselling 2018 book “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff claimed that Ivanka wanted to run for president one day, as did Emily Jane Fox in “Born Trump” and Vicky Ward in “Kushner, Inc.”

We need to take what is being reported about Ivanka Trump’s presidential ambitions seriously. I dare say that if there were multiple reports of a Trump son musing about a presidential run, we would have long since done just that. It’s easy to ridicule the first daughter, but Ivanka Trump appears to be an all-but-unstoppable force, impervious to snubs, ridicule and setbacks — all traits that are mighty helpful for a presidential run. That’s the thing about social comedies: It’s the smug dowagers who end up answering to the upstarts.

 

[47of74]

Unwantedivanka is now a thing on twitter

Quote

Social media users are editing White House adviser and President Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump into iconic photos using the hashtag “#UnwantedIvanka” after she was seen in a viral video trying to make conversation with leaders at the Group of 20 (G-20) meeting last weekend.

The clip, released by the French presidential palace, appeared to show Ivanka Trump jumping into a conversation involving French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Theresa May and International Monetary Fund Chairwoman Christine Lagarde.

After the moment was described by many as awkward, social media users began editing pictures to add the businesswoman to historic and iconic moments including the D-Day invasion, the Beatles crossing Abbey Road and the first moon landing.

Here's one of the better ones...

And I've made a few contributions....

 

Spoiler

 

 

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

On 6/30/2019 at 12:45 AM, fraurosena said:

Blond bimbo without any credentials is at the G20 for some reason and none of the adults in the room want to know. 

 

Christine Lagarde is my new Spirit Animal. That look she gives YouDontEvenGoHere Barbie is EVERYTHING!

Edited July 2, 2019 by PreciousPantsofDoom
Me no type good

[GreyhoundFan]

 

Hmm, sorry, don't know how I posted this in the wrong thread...Getting old is rough.

Edited July 2, 2019 by GreyhoundFan

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@47of74 -- thought you'd like this one too, at least she's wearing a red shirt...

 

[JMarie]

On 6/30/2019 at 6:27 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

Treason Barbie went into NK with her daddy. Too bad KJU didn't keep them.

  Hide contents

Few Americans alive today have set foot inside North Korea, the isolated, nuclear-armed dictatorship sometimes called the Hermit Kingdom.

On Sunday, Ivanka Trump became one of them, capping a consequential three-day Asian trip in which the president’s eldest daughter played a very public role that blended family ties with diplomatic work that is usually performed by diplomats.

She pronounced the short walk to the other side of one of the world’s most fortified borders “surreal.”

Previously, at the Group of 20 economic summit in Japan, Ivanka Trump was everywhere — at her father’s side at times when other leaders’ spouses were present (first lady Melania Trump skipped the trip), in meetings where her presence puzzled other participants, and even giving an awkward video “readout” of Trump’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Another video of Ivanka Trump talking with British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde at the G-20 also went viral over the weekend. Lagarde’s impatient side-eye as Ivanka Trump interjects in what appears to have been a back-and-forth between Macron and May suggested irritation at finding herself standing alongside the daughter of the U.S. president — rather than the president himself.

“As soon as you charge them with that economic aspect of it, a lot of people start listening who otherwise wouldn’t listen,” May can be heard saying, as Lagarde nods in agreement.

“And the same with the defense side of it, in terms of the whole business that’s been, sort of, male-dominated,” Ivanka Trump then says, as a startled-looking Lagarde turns toward her, then purses her lips.

The first daughter’s prominence in Japan and South Korea appeared to be by design — a sign of her influence with President Trump and the current absence of influential opponents within the administration.

It’s not clear, however, to what end.

Ivanka Trump shuttered her clothing business after joining the administration, although not right away, and has largely stepped away from her old life as an entrepreneur and social mainstay in New York. She and her husband, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, let it be known last year that they would remain in Washington and in the White House indefinitely.

Her ambitions are unknown — she demurs on any desire for public office. Over time, her work on women’s issues and entre­pre­neur­ship has increasingly resembled that of a State Department envoy. She made a lengthy trip to India in November 2017, and several others since, sometimes with her father and sometimes on her own. On a solo Africa trip in April, Trump said she would campaign for women’s right to own and inherit land in Africa and promote a $50 million U.S. development project in Ethiopia.

The gray area she occupies — family, employee, envoy, advocate — frequently overlaps with the work of career diplomats. But her unfamiliarity with some elements of diplomacy were on display on this trip, including when she pronounced India a”critical ally.” It is a partner in many areas, but U.S. diplomats avoid the higher terminology of ally.

Mostly, her prominence on a major foreign trip sends a message about who other countries should listen to or court, said Christopher R. Hill, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and other nations.

“It looks to the rest of the world like we have a kind of a constitutional monarchy,” said Hill, who oversaw nuclear talks with North Korea at the close of the George W. Bush administration.

“It’s increasingly problematic in terms of our credibility,” Hill said. “It says to our allies, to everyone we do business with, that the only people who matter are Trump and his family members.”

Ivanka Trump had front-row seats at nearly every televised session in Japan and for President Trump’s visit to South Korea, where the trip to the demilitarized zone was the main event. She and Kushner were among the small U.S. delegation at the border, which included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo but not White House national security adviser John Bolton, a longtime skeptic of diplomacy with North Korea. Bolton instead had left to fly to Mongolia.

Ivanka Trump worked the room at a meeting of South Korean business leaders on Saturday, with cameras catching the smiling interactions. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not attend. She remained in the front row at Trump’s news conference in Seoul, nodding in agreement as the president spoke, after Pompeo ducked out minutes into the event.

Along the way were opportunities for the kind of “branding” Ivanka Trump espouses as a tool for empowering women — a main theme of her work as presidential adviser, some of it captured on her Instagram account.

A video shows Ivanka Trump looking into the camera as she recounts meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Modi and others at the G-20, and touts a program launched by G-20 members to expand access to capital for women in the developing world.

“It’s been a great success; one of the truly great deliverables of the G-20 in Hamburg” two years ago, Ivanka Trump says. “Very excited to talk about the deliverables of this important initiative.”

She also posted a photo in which she and Kushner pose with Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“Today, President Trump held dynamic and productive meetings with many world leaders to discuss key security and economic issues. It is an honor to be a member of the U.S. delegation during an incredible first day of the #G20OsakaSummit,” she wrote.

But the final day of Trump’s trip — with the history-making trip to the DMZ and an address to U.S. forces stationed in South Korea that had at times sounded like a campaign rally — produced the most dramatic images of Ivanka Trump in her hybrid and often inscrutable role.

Trump invited Pompeo onstage at the Osan air base, and gave a nod to traditional diplomacy by saying that a “whole team” would follow up on Trump’s third face-to-face discussion with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Pompeo trotted onto the stage and started toward Trump but hadn’t made it to the lectern when Trump moved on to the big reveal.

“And you know who else I have?” he asked, leaning toward the crowd for dramatic effect.

“Has anybody ever heard of Ivanka? he asked, to whoops from the crowd.

“Come up here,” he commanded, as Ivanka Trump appeared at the rear of the stage.

“She’s going to steal the show,” Trump said, grinning.

As Pompeo fell in beside Ivanka Trump and the two walked toward him, President Trump quipped, “What a beautiful couple,” and the audience howled. “Mike! Beauty and the beast,” Trump went on, as he also acknowledged Harry Harris, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

Pompeo appeared to gesture to Ivanka Trump to go first, but she stepped aside and signaled for him to speak. After Pompeo briefly thanked the troops, there was a roar as Ivanka Trump stepped forward. President Trump and Pompeo flanked her, grinning, as she also thanked the troops and their spouses and families.

“They made the trip with me, and we spent a lot of time, a lot of time,” Trump said.

Ivanka Trump’s presence at the DMZ is particularly troubling, said Jenny Town, a North Korea specialist at the Stimson Center and editor of 38NorthNK, a publication focused on North Korea.

“It was not appropriate for Trump to bring his kids to this meeting,” Town said. “But it was a weird mix of people on the U.S. side to begin with. What’s notable, however, is who wasn’t there: Bolton.”

Trump has sidelined or fired some professional national security advisers and undercut others, including at times Pompeo and Bolton. He has never publicly criticized or contradicted Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner, although he has jokingly teased Kushner at times.

Pompeo spoke to reporters after the DMZ visit, and outlined some of the bureaucratic next steps with North Korea.

Pompeo was asked whether his presence at the DMZ was a signal to North Korea, which has complained about him and reportedly sought to go around him with Trump. Pompeo, who enjoys a close relationship with Trump, did not mention Ivanka Trump in his answer, though her presence Sunday had served to underscore the personal nature of Trump’s direct diplomacy with Kim.

“So far as I know, President Trump has always had me in charge” of negotiations, Pompeo said.

The picture under the spoiler is especially disgusting.

I just realized something about the photo. She's there with her dad. Two Americans, but probably one person from each of the other countries represented. Hmmm.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why Ivanka Trump didn’t belong anywhere near the DMZ or the G-20 summit"

Spoiler

Since President Trump took office, the White House has been pushing the boundaries of what the American public will tolerate in terms of family involvement in presidential decision-making, intermingling of official government business with Trump’s private businesses and development of foreign policy strategy. (After all, the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, just released a Middle East peace plan.) But even by Trump’s low standards, this past week broke new ground.

The president put forth his daughter Ivanka as a stand-in for actual diplomats and government officials at several high-level meetings and interactions with world leaders at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, and at meetings in South Korea and the demilitarized zone on the North Korea-South Korea border. Ivanka Trump was by the president’s side for his visit to the DMZ, while his national security adviser, John Bolton, was dispatched to Mongolia. A video showed her apparently trying to join a conversation among French President Emmanuel Macron, outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde in an encounter that looked as though she thought she was at a Hamptons cocktail party. The first daughter was later introduced alongside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a visit with U.S. troops in South Korea.

This ascension of family-directed foreign affairs is an unhealthy development for our democracy. And Ivanka Trump ought to back off: Americans didn’t elect her, we don’t have any way of holding her accountable and we don’t support her playacting at government.

Ivanka Trump’s self-placement at the table with global heads of state is not an example of the ascension of a professional woman: She has, after all, not one merit-based qualification to be participating in the diplomatic meetings she is attending. There are professional women inside the executive branch and outside government who have spent a lifetime becoming expert in their fields, whether that’s economics, international relations, trade, international law or diplomacy. If the Trump administration’s goal is to give a woman a seat at the table, there is no shortage of women who have the requisite experience and training who have earned their seat. Indeed, there are, as Mitt Romney once quipped, binders (and, now, websites) full of them.

One interpretation of Ivanka Trump’s actions since her father took office has it that she is simply not self-aware of how these appearances come off. Don’t buy this. Videos she released purporting to be readout briefs of the president’s meetings, as well as the president’s introductions of her, appear orchestrated to present her as a credible participant in international affairs. Her participation, her photo placement, her video releases are not accidental byproducts of an inept White House adviser; they are part of her image-building. These activities should not merely be brushed off as the desires and encouragement of Donald Trump, her father and the president. She is not a child. She shoulders full responsibility for abusing her position of access.

And which image is she building? Ivanka Trump did not fully divest from her personal business interests upon taking a White House role as presidential adviser, though she did give up daily oversight of her clothing line, which has since folded. She and Kushner made at least $29 million in outside income last year, down from at least $82 million in 2017, including $3.9 million each year from Ivanka’s stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington. She does not take a U.S. government salary, so she is not, quite literally, working for us. That dynamic sets up a continual question for citizens when Trump family members participate in meetings with global leaders: Whose interests are they acting in? Given that Ivanka Trump has no substantive expertise or skills to contribute to diplomatic conversations, which interests are served by her doing so?

One possibility is that she harbors political ambitions of her own. If that’s true, then she is using her status as the president’s daughter in a way that no prior adult child of a president has during that parent’s presidency. There is no question, for example, that the Bush name assisted George W.'s and later Jeb’s political name recognition, but neither of them appeared at meetings with world leaders when their father was president. There is no modern historical precedent of an adult child participating in the business of the U.S. government during their parent’s presidency. The other possibility is that she is using these diplomatic engagements for the express purpose of cultivating business opportunities, either present or future.

Neither option bears any relation to furthering the interests of the United States or its citizens. When it comes to foreign policy and national security, foreign leaders and countries need to know that they are dealing with representatives of the American people, not the Trumps in their personal capacities.

At times when female advisers in the Trump White House have been criticized, they have been quick to deflect the criticism as either sexism or somehow in violation of a women-shall-not-criticize-other women code. In keeping with that theme, a White House spokeswoman, Jessica Ditto, said Monday that it was “sad but not shocking that the haters choose to attack Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to the president, when she is promoting U.S. efforts to empower women through strategic partnerships with world leaders.”

So let’s dispense with such nonsense now: I’ve worked in national security in Washington for the better part of 20 years. I’ve consistently and enthusiastically supported, staffed, mentored and championed women in my profession. But I will not stifle my criticism of Ivanka Trump’s abuse of her father’s position for personal advancement simply because she’s a woman.

President Trump, of course, has discarded many other norms; it’s tempting to wonder why we should spend time focusing on the activities of his daughter, which might seem benign, if embarrassing for our country. The reason is because those activities are not benign. They are part of the president and his administration’s deliberate effort to concentrate control of the executive branch within the White House and within his family, diluting important institutional mechanisms that provide accountability. The president has fired or prematurely forced out Senate-confirmed Cabinet officials (such as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis or Secretary of State Rex Tillerson) who exercised a shred of independence or offered a counterbalance for his impetuous and reckless national security and foreign policy decision-making. The president has openly acknowledged his preference for acting Cabinet officials, as demonstrated by the lengthy periods of time the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security have gone without Senate-confirmed heads. The result is that executive branch officials are not accountable to Congress, nor, therefore, to the American people.

So the president’s boosterism of his daughter on major diplomatic efforts should not be viewed as an isolated act of incompetence or even public relations. Instead, it is part of his preference to concentrate power among a few advisers, especially those related to him, advisers who are beyond the reach of our institutional checks and balances. This is not the way the presidency or our government is supposed to work. And it is not a development that Americans should accept without objecting, loudly.

 

[47of74]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@47of74 -- thought you'd like this one too, at least she's wearing a red shirt...

 

LOL thanks.  Yeah I saw that.  And ol' Jimmy T. Kirk looks like he doesn't want any of that action.