Wait a minute here…Ivanka sat in for Trump at the G20 meeting? This is nuts.
I think all three of my kids are pretty darn great and brilliant and wonderful and thoughtful, but I would never think of taking a day off and inviting one of them to take over teaching my genetics course. If I did, not only would the students be annoyed, but I would be called in to the division head’s and dean’s offices and asked to explain my irresponsibility. But Trump can do this with something that is probably of greater importance to the rest of the world?
I can think of a couple of possible excuses.
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The way Trump manages the presidency makes it so trivial and fungible that they can bring in any bozo off the street to replace him.
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Trump believes the job is bestowed on his bloodline — that he’s American royalty, making his daughter a princess.
He probably thinks both are true. My solutions:
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Fire Trump now, replace him with one of those inflatable bopper clowns.
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We all know what this country should do to kings.
She’s more qualified than he is. But then, I’ve known belly-button lint that is more qualified than he is.
It is tragic but true that Ivanka is probably better able to handle the actual listening-to-other-people part. I’d like to think it would be hard to distinguish oneself on such a basic ability, but no.
As for other abilities… the fact is that in diplomacy the who and the how matter as much as the what. If I replaced Trump at the G20 meeting for a day, even if I only said what I was authorized to say and only offered things I was authorized to offer, I wouldn’t make any progress on any issues at all because no government would believe that I have the power to follow up on anything I said or did in that meeting, and they would be rightly skeptical!
There are enough world governments run nepotistically that maybe this isn’t as severe a problem for Ivanka as it first appears, but it has to be some kind of problem. We have close enough relationships with democratic countries that Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea and the UK must all know that it’s very significant that Ivanka has no official position in the US government, and likely know that US law bars her from accepting a paid position at any high level of government (those laws were a reaction to JFK making his brother RFK the Attorney General, if you didn’t know). Argentina and Brazil are both G20 members. I’m not sure how much US credibility will take a hit with them. Russia and Saudi Arabia are the only countries that I can think of that might not see Ivanka’s substitution as an insult and/or reason to give the US less credibility in g20 discussions. Then again, she’s a woman, so scratch that.
Wow. I wish I could remember which other countries are in the g20, but so far this is looking like an entirely unmitigated disaster. Although, I suppose you could say that’s a 72 at Trump National.
Crip Dyke@
Italy is also in the G20; I’m curious to see how you’d classify it, since my country doesn’t exactly have an upstanding international reputation. By the way, Italian media barely noticed Ivanka, they mostly focused on the Putin/Trump handshaking and the protesters in Hamburg.
Some of the news last night was talking about the Putin/Dump handshake and how “strong” and “in charge” Dump looked.
I wanted to hurl.
BTW, off topic but since FTB migrated to a new host last month has anyone else had a problem with not receiving email updates? I tried reporting it with the tech issues button, but I didn’t get any response from them, either.
The meeting was in regards to
It is a suspicion of mine that the Dumpster would have been fine with just leaving the seat empty but staffers put Ivanka in it (for many of the reasons stated among others)
Throw their tea in the river?
PZM:
If that is indeed his belief, it may not even be too far from the truth. Now there’s a scary thought. If this family keeps getting away with behaving like royals, then for all intents and purposes that is what they are.
BTW even if the US is not a literal monarchy, it certainly looks like an aristocracy. With competing clans and houses striving for power, and the common people without meaningful power no matter who ends up on top.
Of course one may hope the one elected ruler turns out a bit more benevolent than the other. Lovely system. Be a shame if something happened to it ;)
Maybe Macron’s country has a better idea about what to do with royalty.
my personal feeling is that Trump gave it the meeting a pass because he feels that he is not given the proper deference he deserves.
there are 2 things that seem to be his motivators, the regard of others and money. I detect no real political ideology or over arching agenda.
obeisance and wealth
uncle frogy
Either he was doing his usual ‘thumb-his-nose-at-’em-keep-’em-guessing-I’ll-show-’em’ shtick or he wasn’t feeling good. The former is routine, but if the latter, then his staff had to do some quick scrambling…so, put the Princess on. Sure can’t have THAT choice bit get out. They left in a big hurry too.
Anchor #11:
This is of course a plausible possibility. Didn’t something like that also happen during his recent Middle Eastern tour as well? Perhaps his energy and stamina isn’t what he said they would be.
I do not have a children to put on this thread in my place (my people breed by purely bureaucratic means, and I’m rubbish at admin). I do have a cat though, which is better. She turns four this month.
So for the rest of this thread Sunshine will be handling my commenting duties. She doesn’t understand much about international politics, and will be very distracted if a moth flies in or nap time happens, but otherwise she’s basically the same as me.
My own theory is that DT had Ivanka take his place because she’s more mentally agile than he is, and more capable of understanding complicated issues than he is. So she acts as a sort of interpreter for him. That may also explain why DT has sometimes had Ivanka around during various meetings.
@ 14 lpetrich
Not a bad theory. Ivanka certainly is likely to be more competent than Trump and probably has a better grasp of the issues and much better concentration.
Given a choice of Trump or Ivanka at the table the rest of the G20 leaders were probably relieved to have someone who would understand some of the issues
and might even be able to explain them with simple words and pictures to Trump.
P.Z’s analogy of having his children teach his classes is not valid unless we assume PZ really does not know anything about biology, got his Ph.D. in a corn flakes box and has been hoaxing the Uni and his students for years.
Regardless of the reason, it just underlines that Trump doesn’t understand — or deliberately ignores — the fact that he is now supposed to be responsible for America. He wanted the power without any of the responsibility, and when there’s responsibility without power, he weasels out — can’t even be bothered to show up, tell a bunch of lies and empty platitudes, and then pretend afterwards that he never said anything, which is pretty much what has happened in the past. I’m not sure whether this is a bad thing because it makes us look even worse than usual, or whether it’s a positive thing because it makes people notice that America can’t be trusted, but it’s certainly embarrassing to watch.
So, many people think it’s improper but no-one seems to think it’s unlawful and that’s what’s awful.
“My naem Killer I luv my Daddy hungry feed me luv Daddy rub rub….”
You’re right, cartomancer…more coherent than tRump, for sure.
@#17, John Morales
When you get right down to it, most of the stuff wrong with the U.S. government in the last decade or so can be summed up as “this horrible behavior was long considered unspeakably awful, but remained legal because we were always told that our politicians would either be too genteel or too scared of a public backlash to employ them, and we didn’t want to abandon the idea of freedom in the abstract so we accepted that there shouldn’t be any restrictive laws to stop it, but now it has been normalized and there’s no penalty which can be exacted when people actually do it.”
She would have done better to escort him to the washroom so as to make sure he didn’t wander off again.
@14 Ipetrich
Eh, I don’t buy it. That would indicate that Donny acknowledges his mental deficiencies and would be willing to let someone assist him. That seems wholly out of character for him. This reeks of either him delegating to her because he doesn’t want to do it or his team putting someone he’ll maybe listen to in the seat because he blew it off.
Re 21
I think she TRUMPED him. Stepped in and distracted him to read some planted Tweets from her secret bits praising his handshake an back slap of Lord Putin. All so she could step in as a stellar showpiece increasing the sales of her shoes and fashions.
“Bots” not ” bits”
Slithey #23, you almost had me worried with the secret bits… ;)
Personally I don’t think it is out of the question that Trump really does listen to his daughter, and trusts her to do jobs that are too complicated (“boring”) for him and subsequently to form his opinions for him. In fact she may be the only person in the world who has that status with him. Of course he still wouldn’t recognise her as an independent person, but rather as something he made.
I don’t think the relationship between Donald and Ivanka is literally incestuous, but it is certainly problematic and unhealthy. Ivanka is not an innocent partner in this and not really a moderating influence either. She is totally loyal to her father, helping him out, enabling him wherever and whenever she can.
Well, at least he hasn’t made his horse a senator yet.
Athough he has appointed plenty of horse’s asses so far.
Oh, I think we can all agree with that one…