I suspect that even most Republicans agree that Donald Trump hasn’t been served very well by those who speak on his behalf, but it is also true that he’s given them an impossible task. People like Kellyanne “alternative facts” Conway and others like Sean Spicer have been rightly ridiculed.
So it’s interesting that this morning the president sent out his daughter to represent him on Fox and Friends in the wake of the devastation inflicted on his presidency by the testimony of James Comey last week. No one pulls off the “we’re so sincere” routine better than Ivanka.
“There is a level of viciousness that I was not expecting…but this isn’t supposed to be easy.” –@IvankaTrump pic.twitter.com/viiMQ2ij1d
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) June 12, 2017
Yes, she actually said this:
It is hard. And there is a level of viciousness that I was not expecting. I was not expecting the intensity of this experience…So, I didn’t expect it to be easy. I think some of the distractions and some of the ferocity was — I was a little blindsided by on a personal level.
Anyone who has actually been paying attention over the last couple of years can only respond with, “Puhleeze! You’re kidding, right?” She should win an academy award for that performance.
Just to be clear, Ivanka wants us to believe that she was surprised by the reaction to a guy who grabbed the public spotlight by questioning the citizenship of our first African American president, launched his campaign by calling Mexicans drug dealers and rapists, questioned the legitimacy of a judge based on his Mexican heritage, attacked a Gold Star family, went after a Senator for being a prisoner of war, bragged about his ability to commit sexual assault and threatened to jail his presidential opponent if elected. He went on to call the press “the enemy,” said “so-called judges” would be responsible if there was a terrorist attack and accused his predecessor of spying on him. Those are just the highlights. But in light of all that, Ivanka wants us to believe that she was blindsided by viciousness?
Even if you’re ensconced within the epistemically enclosed bubble on the right and think that Trump was justified in saying all of those things, Ivanka’s father is the one who built his reputation on being someone who viciously attacks anyone he sees as an opponent. That has been his modus operandi all of his life. He even summed it up in a tweet back in 2015.
It is clear that Ivanka is way too smart to have missed how her father plays the game. This was simply her way of fighting back brutally…by pretending to be a victim and clutching her pearls about it all rather sanctimoniously. In doing so, Ivanka makes herself out to be every bit the liar that her father has shown himself to be. Using her “sweet” feminine persona to play that game is as ugly as it gets.
