PIERS MORGAN: Ivanka’s smarter, classier and way more qualified to run America than AOC – so the ex-bartender who’d bankrupt the country in months should stop b*tching
A short 19-second video clip of Ivanka Trump went viral on social media yesterday.
It showed her at the G-20 summit, standing in a group with French President Macron, outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde.
The reason it went viral is that people presumed from the footage – released by Macron’s office – it humiliated Ivanka in some way.
The clip, which is not entirely clear in either sound quality or meaning, begins with Macron making a point about social issues.
‘It’s on..’ says Ivanka.
May then responds to Macron by saying: ‘As soon as you talk about the social aspect of it though, a lot of people start listening who wouldn’t otherwise listen.’
To which Ivanka interjects: ‘It’s the same with the defense side, in terms of the whole ecosystem, it’s been very male-dominated..’
At this point, the others, notably Lagarde, appear to respond to Ivanka’s comments in a manner that many have gleefully suggested shows they were irritated by her involvement in the conversation.
I’ll readily concede it certainly looks awkward.
But then most 19-second clips of conversations like that, taken out of any context, would look awkward.
I suspect if you ask every one of those in the clip if they were actually irritated by Ivanka, they’d all be totally bemused even by the question being asked given how many times they have had similar conversations with her in the past.
For Ivanka’s not just some random person trying to muscle her way into a leader chat.
She’s a formal White House Advisor to President Trump, making her one of the most powerful people in his administration.
And as such, it’s neither unusual nor inappropriate for her to engage in such conversations at events like the G-20 summit, just as she has at many similar events since her father was elected President in 2016.
‘But she wasn’t elected!’ screams Twitter.
So what?
President Obama had four Senior Advisors: David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Valerie Jarrett and Dan Pleiffer.
None of them was an elected official, yet this omission from their resume wasn’t used as a stick to beat them.
As for the charge of nepotism, President John Adams appointed his son to be United States minister to Prussia, Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower both appointed their sons to administrative positions, and President John F. Kennedy made his brother Bobby the attorney general.
The latter was widely attacked for his lack of experience, but went on to be both brilliant at the job and beloved.
So spare me all the n-word bullsh*t about Ivanka.
But, of course, none of this matters to the legion of Trump critics; this was just another chance to toss Ivanka onto the social media bonfire once again, and chuckle demonically as she was metaphorically burned alive.
Leading the demented charge was Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young firebrand socialist who seems to lead the demented charge at everyone and everything.
‘It may be shocking to some,’ she tweeted snarkily about the video clip, ‘but being someone’s daughter actually isn’t a career qualification.’
This glib, sneering tone struck me as particularly inappropriate given that Ms Ocasio-Cortez is herself arguably the least ‘qualified’ member of the House of Representatives in US political history.
‘Could be worse,’ I tweeted back, ‘Ivanka could have been a bartender 18 months ago.’
This wasn’t, as some promptly claimed, a dig at bartenders.
I grew up in a pub in Southern England and have worked behind the bar many times myself.
But since Ocasio-Cortez was mocking Ivanka for her lack of experience, I felt it pertinent to point out she herself was still working as a bartender when she won the New York 14th congressional district primary election a year ago.
Of course, Ocasio-Cortez reacted to my jibe by doubling down – just as she did last week when she so shamefully compared Trump’s immigration policy on the southern border to the Holocaust.
‘Actually,’ she retorted back to me, ‘that would make government better – not worse. Imagine if more people in power spent years of their lives actually working for a living?’
Wow. So now she was saying Ivanka isn’t just unqualified to be a White House Advisor, she’s never worked for a living either.
In fact, Ivanka’s worked very hard all her life.
Yes, she was born into vast wealth and privilege.
But that was not her choice, and I don’t see why she should now be castigated for it.
Ivanka enjoyed a successful modelling career before joining her father’s business - working for Versace, Thierry Mugler and Tommy Hiflger, and appearing on myriad magazine covers.
She could have carried on doing that, or chosen to do nothing at all. She had no financial need work at all.
But instead, she devoted herself to becoming a top businesswoman.
After graduating cum laude from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Ivanka briefly worked as a real estate project manager for Forest City Enterprises before joining the Trump family business in 2005.
In 2007, she launched Trump Fine Jewelry and the brand sold throughout the US and Canada, as well as the Middle East.
She then launched her own expansive fashion line that sold in major US department stores.
She was also, until she accepted the job at the White House, the Executive Vice President of Development and Acquisitions at The Trump Organisation, and served on the board of 100 Women in Hedge Funds, an industry organisation that provides support to women professionals in finance.
And when she wasn’t doing all this, she appeared as one of her father’s regular boardroom advisors on hit TV shows The Apprentice and then Celebrity Apprentice.
It was while filming the first season of the latter that I first met Ivanka and I have spent a lot of time with her over the years.
She is one of the most impressive people I know: whip smart, charming, warm, generous and gracious.
She’s also a proven skilled negotiator and when she needs to be in business, as steely and hard-nosed as they come.
Like her father, she has a very thick skin that enables her to soak up all the relentless and often disgusting abuse and mockery. It’s been a brutal experience that would have destroyed most young women if it happened to them.
Yet throughout it all, Ivanka’s calmly and diligently gone about her job, giving service to her country for zero compensation (she’s an unpaid advisor).
And unlike her father, she doesn’t engage in unedifying public spats or indeed seemingly engage in any kind unedifying behavior.
In short, Ivanka’s the kind of person who any major company in America would love to have on its top executive team.
And I’m glad she’s in the White House, because from my personal experience, there are few people for whom Donald Trump has more respect, or from whom he is prepared to take forthright advice.
As for ‘Angel’ Alexandria, I bow to nobody in my admiration for the way she pulled off one of the US political sensations of this Millennium.
But when she tries to take the high moral ground with Ivanka, I cry ‘Whoa there, my little firebrand…’
For example, Ocasio-Cortez constantly boasts about being a working class ‘girl from the Bronx’ – one of New York’s roughest, toughest neighborhoods.
Yet what this blue-collar champion of the people isn’t so keen to boast about is that when she was just five, her architect father Sergio moved the family from the Bronx to a nice home in Yorktown Heights, in Westchester County – one of New York’s wealthiest suburbs.
He did this so his children could go to better schools than they would in the Bronx.
In other words, like Donald Trump only on a far smaller scale, he used his comparative wealth to give his kids an advantage in life.
Ocasio-Cortez also portrays herself a feminist icon, making endless pronouncements about the need to respect women.
‘The reason women are critiqued for being too loud, or too meek, too big or too small, too smart to be attractive or too attractive to be smart,’ she declared recently, ‘is to belittle women out of standing up publicly. The goal is to ‘critique’ into submission.’
Fine words.
But how do they now sit with Ocasio-Cortez launching a vicious and deliberately belittling ‘critique’ on Ivanka Trump, mocking her for never having properly worked, and for only getting a job because of her Daddy?
It’s hard to imagine a more degrading insult for a woman who has in fact worked hard all her life, both during her education and during her adult career. Or a more hypocritical one, coming from someone with miniscule political experience whose own father gave HER a head start too.
There’s also the small matter of Ocasio-Cortez’s political opinions, with many experts saying her policies on issues like healthcare, tuition fees and climate change would swiftly bankrupt America.
Ivanka, as she invariably does, maintained a dignified silence over Ocasio-Cortez’s nasty attacks.
But she did tweet this: ‘The United States is the only country in the G20 with an entirely female negotiating team representing President Trump and advancing his policies.’
That is an extraordinary fact, and one you might assume a radical feminist like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would applaud?
But no, she was so wrapped up in her poisonous mockery of Ivanka’s fitness to serve her country that she never stopped to consider the incredibly powerful statement the US negotiating team is making.
The irony of all this is that the 2024 US election could possibly be fought between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ivanka Trump.
And if it is, I can confidently predict that not only would Ivanka win, she’d make a damn sight better president than a hypocritical former bartender with a constantly bitching jealousy chip on both shoulders.
