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As long as the Trumps had taken over the White House by the end of their convention, they might as well have built a golden escalator from the Truman Balcony to the South Lawn. In that way, Ivanka could have made her power move in true Trumpian style.
In every other way, it did. With her wavy blonde mane, she was completely into Maga, pushing the amplified Don Jr and the fortissimo Kimberly Guilfoyle out of the way and positioning herself as the heir to her father’s political dynasty.
The night was so Borgia that it made sense to end the opera. (Or they could have touched on the main theme of Succession.) The old joke that if Trump became president, he would put his name in the White House almost came true during the egomania jubilee, when fireworks spelled out the name ” Trump. “
Ivanka must now realize that she and Jared will never be able to return to her life as the favorites of New York society. So why not redouble Washington and lay the groundwork for a presidential race of your own? Now that her father has turned the Republican Party into a political machine bearing her last name, she should feel entitled to take the driver’s seat when dad is done.
His Thursday night speech was about him, but it was also deliberately about “me.”
“Four years ago, did I introduce you to a builder?” “Tonight, am I in front of you?” “When Jared and I moved with our three young children to Washington, didn’t we know exactly what to expect?” “I have seen in Washington, is it easy for politicians to survive if they silence their convictions?” “Couldn’t you believe that so many politicians actually prefer to complain?” “Was I surprised to see?” “Am I more confident than ever?” “Have I been with my father?” “Did I sit with him in the Oval Office?” “Was he with my father when?” “I promised you?” “Did I say the Americans needed it?”
“Four years ago, I told them that I would fight alongside my father, and four years later, here I am.”
Yes, there she was, Daddy’s little girl, on her imaginary escalator. The pungent scent of SNL Ivanka perfume, “Complicit”, wafted across the lawn in the warm night. All the dynamics that make the Donald Trump administration and the way he runs the country so chaotic – the backbiting, warring factions, mockery, neglect, power seizures – were echoed in the family portrait that it was shown last week.
Scorching moment
The most dramatic picture of Thursday night was not the president’s sleeping speech, but Ivanka’s scorching moment with Melania in Day-Glo. After her speech, the first daughter passed the first lady to greet her father. Melania, who had first smiled widely at Ivanka, suddenly turned stony.
The exchange was particularly charged given the context: Melania’s former best friend and assistant Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is starting to talk about her new account of the first lady, which includes accounts of conversations in which Melania makes fun of Ivanka.
Melania has been reported to call Ivanka “the princess” – Trump pointed to his favorite daughter in his convention speech – and Ivanka has reportedly called Melania “the portrait.”
After many tug of war, Melania has resigned herself to the fact that Jared and Ivanka run the White House. The basic view in the building is that Ivanka has fought Melania to a draw. Wolkoff writes that Melania was so upset by her stepdaughter’s attempts to, as she saw it, infringe on her role in planning the inauguration that she launched “Operation Ivanka Block.”
Ivanka Trump introduces US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump before her acceptance speech of the Republican Party nomination for re-election on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
“Melania was not thrilled with Ivanka directing the show and she would not allow it,” Wolkoff writes in an excerpt from New York magazine. “He also didn’t like to know that Ivanka insisted on walking in the Pennsylvania Avenue parade with her children.”
The Portrait decided to try to exclude the Princess from the portrait, the “special moment” of the swearing-in. “Yes, Operation Ivanka Block was petty,” Wolkoff writes. “Melania participated in this mission. But in our mind, Ivanka shouldn’t have become the center of attention at her father’s inauguration. “
On Ivanka’s other flank is Don Jr, who was never so favored by his father, but who has gone from being a familiar fool to one of Trumpworld’s most effective battering rams. Junior, as Jason Zengerle writes in the New York Times Magazine, “is betting that by betting on his father’s presidency and the tribal passions it has sparked, he can claim his own lasting place in American politics.”
It has come to represent “the emotional center of the Maga universe,” Jason Miller, a Trump campaign adviser, told Zengerle.
The convention speeches by Trump’s other children, Tiffany and Eric, lacked the kind of warmth and affection seen in the sweet and personal video of Joe Biden’s granddaughters. The speeches of Trump’s children could have been made by anyone, they were so devoid of humanizing anecdotes.
Fat white cats
Worse still, they were trying to sell a version of Donald Trump that was total fiction. The plan, with family and other speakers, was to push the idea that Trump is loving and knowledgeable behind the scenes: “color blind and gender neutral,” as Ivanka put it at the last convention.
As W did at his convention in 2000, Trump offered a panoply of Blacks and Latinos, although some of them have said they did not know they would be part of the Trump convention. With W, you could look at the audience and see the falsity of it, as the audience was full of fat white cats.
The Republicans were fortunate that for the first three nights they did not have an audience of delegates, donors, and apparatchiks to draw the curtain on party hypocrisy; though a front row of fat white men could be seen during Thursday’s speeches at the White House.
With amusing understatements, the family also described the outrageous behavior and demeaning language of the Mouthful Patriarch as simply colorful. “We all know that Donald Trump doesn’t keep secrets about how he feels about things,” Melania said. “Total honesty is what we, as citizens, deserve from our president. Like it or not, you always know what he’s thinking. ”
And that, he said seriously, is because he is “an authentic person.”
Ivanka chimed in: “Dad, people attack you for being unconventional, but I love you for being real.” It was impossible for this to seem true, given that the president’s own sister was overheard describing Trump in secret recordings made by her rebellious niece, Mary Trump, as “a brat” and a liar without “principles.” (Or, as Trump’s sons would say, a totally honest advocate with strong convictions.)
In New Hampshire, on Friday night, the president considered his dynastic possibilities. “I also want to see the first female president,” he said, but said that Kamala Harris “is not competent.” “Everyone says, ‘We want Ivanka,’ ” he said. – New York Times
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