This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.
“It’s the world’s loneliest position, the enormity of the decisions you’re making on a daily basis, how transactional everyone is with you. So it’s a very lonely perch.” —Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald Trump, on the seriousness of being president
Funny stuff here, in an interview Ivanka Trump did with a podcast affiliated with a lifestyle brand called “Skinny Confidential” (problematic?) to discuss how she views the presidency and why she is allegedly staying out of politics during her father’s second term:
“It’s the world’s loneliest position, the enormity of the decisions you’re making on a daily basis, how transactional everyone is with you,” she added. “So it’s a very lonely perch.”
She made it clear she will have no formal role in the second Trump administration.
“I went through years of craziness,” she said of her first tenure in the White House.
That write-up is via the Daily Mail. More:
“I hate politics,” she confessed.
She noted that she “loves policy” and pointed with pride to her work on the child tax credit during her time in the White House. Ivanka got the tax credit doubled as it went through the legislative process.
But, she said, she couldn’t stand the “darkness” of the political world.
Ivanka Trump’s role in her father’s first White House was a job called “First Daughter and Advisor to the President.” (Must have been tough to beat out all the other applicants.) She led something called the “Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship,” which was created by the Trump administration and appears to no longer be active. Relatedly, she took a series of trips abroad to promote “women’s empowerment,” including one to Dubai during which she praised Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their work helping women become “free to succeed.” Last year, Saudi Arabian authorities reportedly sentenced a woman to 11 years in prison (after they allegedly broke her leg) for crimes that included posting pictures of herself at the mall.
In February 2019, Trump also launched something called the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative; per a Washington Post column published in late 2020, the so-called W-GDP program “was administered with the help of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).” A subsequent General Accountability Office report, citing inadequate recordkeeping, could not determine whether USAID had allocated related funding in a way that benefited women. Per the Post, efforts to make the W-GDP initiative permanent ended in December 2020 after Ivanka failed in an effort to circumvent negotiations with Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a previous supporter of the effort.
So, a bit of “My job here is done”/”But you didn’t do anything” going on, as far as Ivanka’s time in public service.
On the subject of the presidency itself, and the burdensome toll its responsibilities take on statesmen like her father, our position is: LOL. Recall that during his first tenure, the White House stopped sending around Donald Trump’s daily schedule because so much of it consisted of undefined “executive time,” a term which his staff used as “shorthand for the hours Mr. Trump spends watching television and responding on Twitter to the coverage.” In 2018, a Fox News segment about surveillance startled Trump so much that he tweeted an attack on a bill his administration actually supported, an incident that took place just two days after he had accidentally announced his support for an immigration bill his administration opposed. At one point during the high-stakes early days of the COVID crisis, Trump held a 45-minute meeting with the actor Dean Cain because Cain was starring in a right-wing play about Trump’s enemies at the FBI.
In any case, should you be interested, Ivanka Trump’s 110-minute appearance on the Skinny Confidential Him & Her podcast has been divided—evidently by some sort of generative-A.I. summary nightmare tool—into 35 chapters with names like “Navigating Confidence and Motivation Amid Expectations,” “Navigating Personal Growth and Public Service,” “Exploring Amino Acids and Workout Supplements,” “Achievements in Public Service and Personal Growth,” “Navigating Ethics and Transitioning from Business to Government,” “Navigating Public Service Challenges,” and “Passion for Skincare and Sun Protection.” And with that it might be time for us to “navigate” an entire bottle of whiskey in one sitting, ha ha, goodbye!
