Really, Ivanka Trump?

Over the past day and a half we’ve seen a remarkable series of events play out across multiple major media outlets with regard to a controversy involving Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump. It’s been controversial enough that Donald has responded in explosive fashion, making accusations against people left and right. What really stands out here is the response from Ivanka.

This mess started when Vanity Fair published an inside report about Ivanka Trump being worried that her father was self destructing. This was followed by an extraordinarily self destructive move from Donald Trump, when he abruptly announced on Twitter that he was shoving White House Counsel Don McGahn – a man who can destroy him – out the White House back door. Then came a New York Times report that it was Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner who had pushed Donald into making the McGahn move.

This prompted Donald Trump to quickly jump on Twitter and insist that Ivanka and Jared had nothing to do with his decision to dump McGahn. This was pretty startling, considering that Ivanka and Jared are widely considered to be the two most egregious leakers in the White House, and that both the Vanity Fair and NY Times stories were probably sourced back to them. Donald was almost accusing his daughter and son-in-law of planting fake stories about him in the media.

So what was Ivanka Trump’s response to this today? Did she back her father up by retweeting his rant, or by posting her own tweet insisting that this media report was false? Nope. She said nothing at all. We’d expect the silence from Jared Kushner, who almost never speaks regardless of the circumstances. But Ivanka is on Twitter every day, multiple times per day. She could easily have leapt to her father’s defense on this one. Instead she decided to leave him hanging today. What game is she playing here? No one knows – but it sure doesn’t look like she’s playing for her father’s team.