Everybody’s in a flap over Ivanka. Donald Trump’s daughter stepped out of line, the bleaters say, at the Group of 20 summit. How dare she talk to some of the heads of state? She’s in over her head, as is her husband Jared Kushner.
The squawkers fear that Mr. Trump is grooming Ivanka to succeed him. He’s elevating the Trumps to the status of royal family. He’s running the place like it’s a monarchy. Wasn’t it two-and-a-half centuries ago that American rebels rejected a king?
In Osaka at the G20, Mr. Trump announced to one and all that precious Ivanka would “steal the show.” He had her front and centre. When she nudged her way in to a chat with some of the leaders, cameras recorded International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde looking irritated. How dare she talk to us?
But Ms. Lagarde would have done well to confer with the first daughter. She could have learned something. Ivanka Trump knows more about the zany workings of the President’s mind than Ms. Lagarde ever will.
The critics, though, do have a valid point about the role of the Ivanka and her husband. This is nepotism run amok. Next to the President, they’ve become, by virtue of familial ties, arguably the two most powerful people at the White House. With no diplomatic experience, Jared was handed the entire Middle East file, among others.
That said, given a choice between the couple’s moderate ways and their tempering effect on the President and others on the Trump team such as warmonger John Bolton or tariff addict Peter Navarro, maybe we should raise a cheer for nepotism.
When Mr. Trump took Jared and Ivanka across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) line for talks with Kim Jong-un, who ranks very prominently on this President’s long list of favoured dictators, all kinds of bureaucratic noses were out of joint. Only experienced professionals, the moaners claimed, should be in on the talks. But would they really have preferred loose bolt Mr. Bolton who clamoured for the invasion of Iraq, advocated military strikes against North Korea and appears to want war with Iran?
Jared may have lacked diplomatic experience, but as Canadian ambassador David MacNaughton attests, he played a key brokerage role in the renegotiation of the North American free-trade agreement.
The couple are unelected but, outside of the President and the Vice-President Mike Pence, everybody at the White House, cabinet secretaries included, are unelected.
More worrisome than the extent of their power is Mr. Trump’s kinglike presumptions, his monarchical tendencies.
On account of the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Clintons, dynasties have become a concern in U.S. politics. Mr. Trump, with his brash ego, appears set on outdoing them all. Given his nature, his obsession with self-glorification, the notion that he wants to wear a crown makes sense. That he wants to groom his daughter for the presidency makes sense. That he acts like he is above the law fits right in.
The Fourth of July Independence Day celebrations are Thursday and Mr. Trump’s ego will be on parade. Presidents’ roles are usually modest and non-partisan on these occasions, but he will deliver a politically-charged speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous oration. He will have military hardware – including tanks – on display to show off the country’s might.
In his most recent foreign ventures, Mr. Trump furthered his authoritarian image by speaking highly of Mr. Kim and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi regime’s killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been set aside. The Saudis spend billions on military equipment from the United States. That is more important than human-rights concerns.
Mr. Trump sees, as kings might, his justice department to be totally submissive. He has asserted that he has an “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.”
“It looks to the rest of the world like we have a kind of constitutional monarchy,” Christopher Hill, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, told The Washington Post. “It’s increasingly problematic in terms of our credibility.”
If Mr. Trump wins re-election, it will be more so. Ivanka, Jared and other family members will attain greater heights. Ivanka, not Mr. Pence, will be the one to watch. For a country founded as a counterpoint to a British royalist regime, fancy that.
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