Oh how the anti-Trump media licks its lips at news that Ivanka, the precious First Daughter, may have breached federal rules by using her private email for government work. It seems a perfect rebuke to the President, who has made such a fuss about Hillary Clinton doing exactly the same thing. As endless Twitter bores pointed out last night, Trump still obsesses over Clinton’s server issues in his tweets and encourages his crowds to chant ‘Lock her up!’ What’s he going to say now?
That media schadenfreude file is so huge it could overload your inbox. But the Washington Post’s latest Ivanka scoop should come as no great surprise. It is known that the White House has been conducting an investigation into Trump family emails, following a report by Newsweek last year that she had used her personal email to communicate with government officials after her father took office. The difference now is that reports suggest she was still emailing people from a private Microsoft server after she took up official duties in the White House.
Still, it’s no shock — because, the more you think about it, the more you realize that Ivanka Trump is the new Hillary Clinton.
She is, like Mrs C, a ruthlessly ambitious member of the elite who will do anything to be in power. Both women reached the top in politics through family connections, yet still lecture other women about making their own way. Both women are married to men whom people seem to like, despite the fact that they seem quite shady.
Ivanka, like Hillary, is a professional feminist and an instinctive centrist, obsessed with her own story and her personal, global brand.
Ivanka, like Hillary, is politically correct to a fault. She’s endlessly promoting right-on causes such as women entrepreneurship or dignity for incarcerated women. She never goes off brand, even if it means distancing herself from daddy: as she did recently when she suggested that she wasn’t comfortable with his ‘enemy of the people’ line about the fourth estate.
Ivanka, like Hillary, is evasive on sensitive political issues. Both women seem to have been on both sides of the abortion issue, depending on what was convenient for their careers.
Ivanka, like Hillary, is most comfortable on stage at those high-powered women conferences where rich ladies gab on about how successful they are. Unlike her father, she always plays it PR safe. She speaks in Clintonesque platitudes and motivational memes. On her ‘Fashion, Family & Lifestyle’ website, she offered not just yoga tips but life-enhancing epigrams such as ‘Success doesn’t come to you: you go to it’, ‘Work smarter not harder’ and, my favorite, ‘Fill the Void.’
Before Donald Trump got involved in politics Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner seem to have been classic rich-kid Democrats, and it’s highly likely that Ivanka, had her father not been in the race, would have voted for Hillary in 2016. Never mind ‘I’m with her’. Ivanka Trump is her.
