Over the weekend, Ivanka Trump accompanied her father, President Donald Trump, to meetings with world leaders at the G20 summit in Osaka.
Why she was there, no one knows, because Ms. Trump does not hold any position of significance in the current administration. What we do know, however, is that Ivanka was not content just to hang on the sidelines and eat catered lunches. Instead, she tried to ingratiate herself with world leaders. And they were just as confused about what's going on as the rest of us.
A video released by the French Presidential Palace (according to journalist Parham Ghobadi) shows Ivanka Trump uncomfortably trying to hold her own in a conversation between Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, British PM Theresa May, French president Emmanuel Macron, and Christine Lagarde, the chairwoman of the International Monetary Fund. Please judge for yourself how well the first daughter (everyone always forgets about Tiffany Trump!) acquits herself when speaking with elected officials.
It's not very good, is it? And it bodes poorly for the American public if — as The Cut points out — Ivanka Trump hopes to one day ascend to the presidency herself. Especially considering how quick everyone was to show Ms. Trump that she wasn't welcome. Some might call this snobbery, but it seems fairly strange that Ivanka Trump would take her father's place in a conversation taking place between a small group of world leaders.
The video was immediately decried by American politicians. "It may be shocking to some, but being someone's daughter actually isn't a career qualification," Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "It hurts our diplomatic standing when the President phones it in & the world moves on."
Congressman Eric Salwell also called out Ms. Trump's behavior: "This is your reminder that @IvankaTrump has no foreign policy or diplomacy experience. The American people deserve to be represented by a qualified diplomat...not the President's daughter," he wrote on social media.
And both father and daughter were called out even further when Ivanka joined the president on his last-minute, unplanned trip to North Korea and sat in on a closed-door meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-Un. Speaking to The New York Times, former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said "Ivanka Trump is not on the National Security Council — she is not an adviser on the issues being discussed. So her presence undermines the professional look of the Trump delegation, both to other countries and to national security professionals in the Trump administration."
If there's one good thing to come out of the rampant nepotism this administration has wrought, it's the fact that the G20 video was immediately and roundly mocked before being turned into June's last powerful meme. Currently #UnwantedIvanka, is sitting at the top of Twitter's trending topics. And the memes, which feature Ivanka Trump photoshopped into other places where she doesn't belong — at the Overlook hotel; helping Marie Curie make scientific discoveries — are a little bit of a balm for the indignities The Trumps continue to visit upon us. We must continue to resist! But in the meantime, enjoy these memes, too.
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