Ivanka Trump, what is wrong with you?
When it comes to Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, I get it. In their defense, they’re idiots. One thinks he’s smart and the other seems to know he’s dumb, but they’re each the same bozo with different clown hair. So it’s understandable that they’ve stood blindly by their father as he’s destroyed himself in the name of destroying America; they can’t possibly be expected to know any better. But then there’s Ivanka.
Whatever you think of Ivanka Trump, she’s not an idiot. She’s demonstrated that she has more IQ points than her two adult brothers put together. She also seems keenly aware of the need to insulate her own personal brand from her father’s increasingly toxic personal brand. So she knows full well that Donald Trump is just about finished in life. She knows his “presidency” is being etched into the history books as a cautionary tale as we speak. She knows his porcelain fragile business empire won’t survive this. She knows that the longer he insists on staying in office, the greater his odds of ending up in prison. And she’s surely observant enough to see that her father is literally going insane.
Yet Ivanka does nothing. We all know that she’s the only one with real influence over her father. She could stop all of this if she chose to. If she wanted to help him succeed, she could be running his White House. And if she wanted this to be over with, she could find a way to convince him to resign. But she’s done neither. Instead she spends all her time on vacation, acting as if the destruction of her country and the self-destruction of her father aren’t happening.
Is she in denial about just how bad this has all gotten for Donald and for America? Does she resent her father so much that she’s willing to sit back and let this play out badly, just to punish him for his lifetime of misdeeds? Does she think that if he goes to prison, she’ll somehow end up in control of the family empire? None of those are tenable positions. Ivanka Trump isn’t dumb enough to be handling this situation this dumbly, and yet she is. We know what’s wrong with her father. What’s wrong with her?
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report