The First Daughter, Ivanka Trump, is having an extraordinary influence on her father—all for the good.
President Trump, who engages his mouth before his brain, desperately needs a cool head to tell him some hard truths about his misguided reign. Ms. Trump is the one.
Officially, her title is assistant to the president. But she is much more.
A page-one story in the New York Times describes how she “lays it all on the line” to her father.
Ivanka told him she focuses on gender equality in the U.S. and abroad. She urges a global fund for women entrepreneurs. She calls him dad, not Mr. President. She reads books and researches issues. Now she’s reading Eleanor Roosevelt’s autobiography.
More Ivanka opposing her foolhardy father:
• She rightly complains his team is mostly men.
• She wants for women a paid maternity leave, affordable health care, more pay and flexible working hours.
• She wants a play pen at the office while women are working so their youngsters can have crayons, toys and other playthings.
• She denounces scathing remarks her father made about “Mexico sending rapists across the border.”
• She says climate control is not a myth as he insists.
• She declares his plan to deport youth–who have lived all their lives in America–because their parents are undocumented is wrong. (So is his proposal to deny Muslims emigration to the U.S.)
• She tells him higher education should be supported by the federal government for the poor and minorities, not just the privileged in society.
• She supports the right to abortions and urges more women’s health-care services. She backs the Affordable Care Act that he proposed abolishing.
• She wants to allow more Syrian refugees to live in America. Her father is opposed.
Ivanka Trump, 35, is a former model with intelligence. (Her beautiful face and lovely blonde hair adorned the front page of the Times, three columns wide and six inches deep.)
‘MADAM PRESIDENT’
Ms. Trump should be president. For more on “Madam President” read her book, “Women Who Work.”
Other indictments of President Trump are plentiful.
His tax plan is skewed to the wealthy and Big Business, what the Times in an editorial called “a laughable stunt by a gang of plutocrats.” The plan would shift trillions of dollars to the wealthiest, hurt the poorest.
Trump voided federal funding of Planned Parenthood and other groups and clinics endorsing abortion. He stupidly cuts funding for the humanities and art.
He signed an executive order to repeal President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Another order decreed drilling, mining and logging in some national monuments. Trump’s flurry of Facebook and Tweeter orders would demolish 23 other environmental protections. He wants to undo many national monument designations.
Trump nominated Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, reversing the liberal tendency of the court.
Lost among the flurry of absurd Trump proposals are a few good plans.
Namely, raising the federal gas tax, now at 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 for diesel fuel. Ending the terrible wait times for vets to enter veteran’s hospitals and clinics throughout the nation. A desire to re-examine worldwide trade pacts
And, his willingness to meet the world’s dictators like Kim Jong On of North Korea, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt and Xi Jinping of China.
CHECKS ON TRUMP NONSENSE
Fortunately, three powerful roadblocks to Trump absurdities exist: the federal courts, Congress and Trump himself.
A federal judge ruled that Trump cannot coerce sanctuary cities like San Francisco to cooperate with immigration officers by threatening to withdraw federal funding. Another federal judge nullified the Trump travel-ban edict. His subsequent revision was also struck down in Honolulu.
His attorney general, Jeff Sessions, fumed: “A judge sitting on an island in the Pacific (Hawaii) issued a ruling that applies to the whole nation.”
Still another check: Trump himself. He’s adapting to realities, realizing that many zany proposals and decrees do not work. That’s why he has backtracked on many edicts.
OBAMA’S GROSS HYPOCRISY
Barack Obama hauled into his rich coffers an obscene $400,000 for a mere speech to a Wall Street firm. Meanwhile, he and his wife Michelle have signed a publishing deal for separate books worth at least $65 million.
So much for the “unreasonable burdens” on former presidents that President Obama cited.
And, yes, the Obamas vacation with billionaires now and while he was president.
The vulgarity of dining with the wealthy has been done by every president in the past half-century. But that hardly makes “supping with the devil” proper.
Most Americans are commoners. They don’t dine with the rich–nor should former presidents.
Jake Highton is an emeritus journalism professor from the University of Nevada, Reno. (jake.highton.1496@gmail.com)
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