First Daughter, Special Advisor to the President, Ivanka Trump

Seems like she deserves her own thread now.

Her new book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, just came out and the Voice of America website and Twitter account has been promoting it.

https://thinkprogress.org/voice-of-america-promotes-ivanka-trump-book-2440300988ab

But the article and VOA’s promotion of it serve as publicity in and of itself. The article also doesn’t say which charity Ivanka plans to donate her book proceeds to, or how people will be able to verify she actually did so.

NPR just published a pretty scathing review of it:

“[P]assion,” she writes elsewhere, “combined with perseverance, is a great equalizer, more important than education or experience in achieving your version of success.” If only the poor were more passionate.

Trump’s lack of awareness, plus a habit of skimming from her sources, often results in spectacularly misapplied quotations — like one from Toni Morrison’s Beloved about the brutal psychological scars of slavery. “Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another,” is positioned in cute faux-handwritten capitals (and tagged #itwisewords) before a chapter on “working smarter.” In it, she asks: “Are you a slave to your time or the master of it? Despite your best intentions, it’s easy to be reactive and get caught up in returning calls, attending meetings, answering e-mails …”
[,]
In a section called “Staking Your Claim,” she writes, “Simply put, staking your claim means declaring something your own. Early in our country’s history, as new territories were acquired or opened — particularly during the gold rush — a citizen could literally put a stake in the ground and call the land theirs. The land itself, and everything on it, legally became that person’s property.” Over and over again, Trump’s message is: Take whatever you can get, and then print your name on it.

Many of the inspiring quotations Trump stakes a claim to here seem to have been culled from apocryphal inspiration memes. For instance, on the subject of asking for a raise, she quotes another black women writing on racism, Maya Angelou: “Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.”

But the real, very different line is from Angelou’s memoir The Heart of a Woman, and it is a piece of advice about living in a racist world. “Ask for what you want,” Angelou’s mother tells her, “and be prepared to pay for what you get.”

I see the internet is full of the former platitude attributed to Maya (“Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.”), but this is the only place I see the latter quote from her mother.

Raw Story: ‘Don’t use my story’: Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani blisters ‘complicit’ Ivanka Trump over father’s agenda

Full article:

Reshma Saujani, CEO and Founder of the ‘Girls Who Code’ nonprofit for women in tech, told Ivanka Trump “don’t use my story” in a recent tweet following news that the first daughter used Saujani’s inspiring success story in her new book, “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules of Success,” as reported by the Washington Post

Following news that Trump mentioned her in her new book, Saujani tweeted to Trump, telling her “don’t use my story in #WomenWhoWork unless you are going to stop being #complicit”.

In “Women Who Work“, Trump mentioned Saujani and said the tech philanthropist “personally witnessed the gender gap in computing classes and set out to do something about it”.

In her tweet, Saujani referenced criticisms that Trump is “complicit” in her father’s agenda. The complicit comments went so viral that Scarlett Johannson posed as Trump in an ad for a perfume called “Complicit” on Saturday Night Live.

Saujani isn’t the only woman mentioned in Trump’s new book that’s spoken out about her inclusion. Famed primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall said she hopes Trump takes her quote, “what you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make,” at its full value.

“I sincerely hope she will take the full import of my words to heart. She is in a position to do much good or terrible harm,” Goodall said. “I hope that Ms. Trump will stand with us to value and cherish our natural world and protect this planet for future generations.”

The notion that Ivanka’s reticence on political issues conceals an innate goodness and a sort of strategic genius that can only be deployed behind the scenes has been crumbling since November. As I wrote last year in a piece about her previous book, Ivanka possesses a type of beauty that often passes as moral uprightness; she speaks carefully, making some portion of her audience believe that she must act carefully, too. But “Women Who Work” should put an end to the idea that Ivanka is particularly self-aware. In the book’s third paragraph, she assesses her father’s Presidential run by saying, “I have grown tremendously as a person.” Later, she laments not “treating myself to a massage or making much time for self-care” during the campaign. She warns the reader of the dangers of one’s inner circle turning into an echo chamber.

In 2013, Sheryl Sandberg was rightly criticized for ignoring structural obstacles to women’s flourishing. But the blindness to systemic forces that plagued Lean In manifests here not as an oversight but as a kind of cruel joke. Surely Ivanka Trump is aware that, with her dad in office, women’s self-perceptions and lack of basic organizational skills are hardly the problem. There’s a creepy magic to how Trump has disguised her self-glorification project as an homage to some women (Maya Angelou?) and a how-to for others (Lara Trump?). Millions of Americans are enchanted by the same sleight of hand on a bigger scale—they are desperate to believe that she and her father wish to help them.

After the House passed the AHCA bill Thursday, I stood up and walked outside. I took Women Who Work with me. It was when the sunlight hit the cover of the book at a certain angle, causing Ivanka’s pale skin to sparkle, that I realized who she reminded me of. That dewy parasitism, like Dracula after a meal—America’s first daughter belongs to the Twilight phenomenon, to the pop culture vogue for attractive vampires. The core fantasy of the series was that creatures born to prey on us might come to love and protect us instead. That a glamorous and sophisticated child of darkness, decked in ancestral riches, could float down from the tower and, seeing our potential, remake us in her image. Some blood might be spilled (ours, even!), but would that not be a small price to pay for “architecting a life you love—a full, multidimensional life”?

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the fabled Ivanka voter hails from the same demographic—white, middle class, female—that devours romance novels in general and snapped up Stephenie Meyer’s in particular. Or perhaps this administration has rewritten so many rules and unraveled so many norms that I’m mistaking fiction for truth. The Trumps are right about one thing, though: We can occasionally be authoring our destinies even when we believe ourselves to be fortune’s fools. After all, we invited them in.

Oops, again

That will certainly send a message to all those Trump voters who visit that one Barnes and Noble!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvkSYcUtmj8&app=desktop

Holy Jumpin George, the illustration in this one!

The Cut: The People’s Princess. Ivanka Trump is hard at work in Washington — but for whom?

Rosie the Riveter, she ain’t.

Deng Guilian, Haifeng’s wife, told the Post her husband is being held in a cell with about 20 inmates who have been instructed not to speak to him.

“He sleeps near the toilet,” she said, “which is very painful and uncomfortable.”

Guilian has called on Trump to help secure his release. “For her, it’s just a matter of a few words, but those few words would save the entire family.” She added, “I beg her, on behalf of my families too, to be kind and let my husband to come home as soon as possible.”
[…]
The White House, when asked about the detained activists, pointed reporters to the State Department. Asked about the issue, State Department spokesperson and former Fox News anchor Heather Nauert said, “We are urging China to release them immediately and otherwise afford them judicial and fair trial protections to which they are entitled.”

But neither Donald Trump nor his daughter have not used their considerable public megaphones to reinforce or amplify the State Department’s message — even as a desperate woman begs for their help to bring her husband safely home.

Neither nor have not? Nggggggg…

Ditto. That was a pain to read

Mediaite: Mark Your Calendars: Fox & Friends Will Interview Ivanka Trump Live Tomorrow

The White House adviser and daughter to President Trump will speak with Fox & Friends in order to discuss her father’s plans for infrastructure reform and workforce development. The first daughter is also expected to give her reaction to James Comey‘s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

She missed Infrastructure Week. Sad.

Infrastructure Week is like Shark Week. You can have a whole bunch of them in any given time period.

-Tom