Daddy’s Little Girl

Posted on by

Mike Allen reports at Axios:

Ivanka Trump told me yesterday from Berlin that she has begun building a massive fund that will benefit female entrepreneurs around the globe. Both countries and companies will contribute to create a pool of capital to economically empower women. …

Under the radar: Canadians, Germans and a few Middle Eastern countries have already made quiet commitments, as have several corporations, a source said.

Allegra Kirkland at TPM:

A spokesman for the World Bank confirmed to TPM that Kim and Ivanka Trump are currently in talks about how to finance it.  …

… But what exactly Ivanka Trump’s fund will look like and how it will operate remains a giant question mark. Ethics experts told TPM that Axios’ description leaves it unclear if the fund will be a private, for-profit endeavor or if it will be run through a federal government agency.

Jennifer Rubin … seriously, Jennifer Rubin … wrote of the foreign donations,

If true, this is egregious and potentially illegal, according to multiple ethics and legal experts. “If the donation would be a quid pro quo bribe, then asking for it is certainly solicitation of a bribe, which is every bit as criminal as the bribe itself,” Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe tells me via email. “But I started that sentence with ‘if’ because I don’t have enough facts about the donation request to opine on the ultimate bribe issue.” Nevertheless, he says:

At the very least, though, a donation is a “present,” which – if made by a foreign government or an agent of such a government or an entity controlled by it – is expressly banned by the text of the Foreign Emoluments Clause with respect to anyone holding “any Office of Profit or Trust” under the United States. Whether it counts as an “emolument” becomes irrelevant if it’s a “present,” which any donation would at least be.

Tribe explains, “Even if the First Daughter and Assistant to the President somehow manages to create formal distance between herself and that version of the Clinton Foundation, which of course her father denounced endlessly during the campaign, the hypocrisy of the move is jaw-dropping.” He adds, “Such contributions would surely constitute a financial benefit to … her brand, and her family’s brand even if she is unable to spend a penny of the contributions themselves. As such, soliciting such contributions violates at least the spirit of the Foreign Emoluments Clause.”

Many have pointed out that what Ivanka appears to be planning would amount to pretty much the same thing her father was slamming Hillary Clinton for doing last year.

12 thoughts on “Daddy’s Little Girl”

  2. The Trump Family has always hustled for the money. The Trump ‘brand’ is an elaborate hustle and the TV show was a ploy to burnish the ‘brand’ – which is completely an illusion. There is no product or service, simply the aura of stinkin’ filthy rich – a lifestyle many worship even though they can never attain. So they will buy crappy costume jewelry with the Trump ‘brand’ so they can pretend to be rich. It’s the same mental device that motivates people to buy lottery tickets – they can pretend for a couple of days that they might rise to a ‘Trump’ level of affluence. Then the drawing happens.

    The thing is, Trump and his adult offspring have mastered this scam. Call it, “Don’t you wish you were me?”. This was the entire appeal of the Trump University swindle. It’s inconceivable that he or any of his kids will honor the letter or spirit of the law. Mr. Trump in constitutional violation now – more than any president alive. And he thinks he can cash in big in the White House, too.

  4. “Many have pointed out that what Ivanka appears to be planning would amount to pretty much the same thing her father was slamming Hillary Clinton for doing last year.”

    Well, they do seem to learn from their betters.

  7. The family that grifts together, stays together!

    Until someone gets a subpoena, has to testify, and can’t ‘plead the fifth,’ ’cause the case on that person is too strong to use the fifth – in which case, all bets are off! .
    And then, “save-your-ass” trumps the t-RUMP family grifting bond.

    And I’d be glad to pay to see THAT!!!
    “t-RUMP v. t-RUMPkids” on PPV!

  8. Well, it’s good to see that Ivanka decided to follow established scamming procedures. Unlike her two inbred idiot brothers, Uday and Qusay. Those morons were so eager to pull off a major score on their newfound circumstances of access to the presidency, and wanting to show themselves approved for thinking outside the box that they held an auction for access to the president. I mean, really! The same kind of logic that a rodent uses.
    True story…Years ago I had a nest of fruit rats that took up residency in my attic. I went out and bought a big ole Victory rat trap in an attempt to get them. I loaded the trap with a big wad of peanut butter smeared all over the trip lever and set the trap just inside the attic where access was available. Within minutes I heard the trap snap shut. When I went to retrieve the trap there were two rats who got whacked in one shot. I loaded them into the garbage pail and reset the trap.There was blood still on the trap from the first two rats when I reset the trap and put it back. Within five minutes the trap sounded again and when I went to check it, there was another two rats in the same circumstances as the first two. I marveled at how unusual it was to get a double double header and at the fact that the blood spilled on the trap from their siblings didn’t seem to be a deterrent to their desire to get some of that peanut butter.
    But the story doesn’t end there..I reset the trap for the third time, and again within minutes it tripped again. On the third time there was another pair of rats. I thought that’s incredible. Six rats within the time span of 15 minutes. My assumption was that aside from the first two,the other rats must have born witness to the deaths of those who preceded them and yet their desire for peanut butter overcame their logic causing their eventual demise.
    I see a similar component in the thinking of the Trump boys. Just like those rats their desire for money and their father’s validation ….they’ll make a misstep that will snare them. It’s just a matter of time.

  9. Swami, the trap has been set and primed with what is most attractive to this family of cheap hustling cretins the most — money. Just a matter of time before one of ’em springs it.

  10. OT, great article, Why Poverty is Like a Disease: Emerging Science is Putting the Lie to American Meritocracy

    On paper alone you would never guess that I grew up poor and hungry.

    My most recent annual salary was over $700,000. I am a Truman National Security Fellow and a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. My publisher has just released my latest book series on quantitative finance in worldwide distribution.

    None of it feels like enough though. I feel as though I am wired for a permanent state of fight or flight, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or the metaphorical week when I don’t eat. I’ve chosen not to have children, partly because—despite any success—I still don’t feel I have a safety net. I have a huge minimum checking account balance in mind before I would ever consider having children. If you knew me personally, you might get glimpses of stress, self-doubt, anxiety, and depression. And you might hear about Tennessee…..

    ….Why do so few make it out of poverty? I can tell you from experience it is not because some have more merit than others. It is because being poor is a high-risk gamble. The asymmetry of outcomes for the poor is so enormous because it is so expensive to be poor. Imagine losing a job because your phone was cut off, or blowing off an exam because you spent the day in the ER dealing with something that preventative care would have avoided completely. Something as simple as that can spark a spiral of adversity almost impossible to recover from. The reality is that when you’re poor, if you make one mistake, you’re done. Everything becomes a sudden-death gamble.

    Now imagine that, on top of that, your brain is wired to multiply the subjective experience of stress by 10. The result is a profound focus on short-term thinking. To those outsiders who, by fortune of birth, have never known the calculus of poverty, the poor seem to make sub-optimal decisions time and time again. But the choices made by the poor are supremely rational choices under the circumstances. Pondering optimal, long-term decisions is a liability when you have 48 hours of food left. Stress takes on a whole new meaning—and try as you might, it’s hard to shake.

    The standard American myth of meritocracy misinterprets personal narratives like mine. The accumulated social capital of American institutions—stable transfer of power, rule of law, and entrepreneurship—certainly create economic miracles every day. But these institutions are far more suited to exponentially growing capital where it already exists, rather than creating new capital where society needs it….

  11. I don’t know why anyone mentions “hypocrisy” when discussing Republicans these days. It would be more appropriate to say “This is far worse than the behavior Trump denounced about the Clinton Foundation, but we all know they’ll say this is somehow ‘different’ because it’s a Republican supporter, not a Democrat. And, of course, Republicans will profess to believe it’s different, and even develop some smooth talking points to that effect.

  12. I think Bannon got it right when he called Kushner a cuck. Because Kushner knows that Ivanka is daddy’s little girl. Kushner’s only skill is hanging onto Ivanka’s coattails.

    Common sense tells you that you don’t bite the hand of the one who crafts your image.

Comments are closed.