Even post-Charlottesville, Ivanka Trump looks…
Even post-Charlottesville, Ivanka Trump looks triumphant with Steve Bannon gone
Ivanka Trump at the U.S. State Department in June. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
By Martha Ross | mross@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: August 21, 2017 at 12:04 pm | UPDATED: August 21, 2017 at 12:21 pm
Ivanka Trump kept herself out of sight on vacation last week as she angered a lot of people who accused her and her husband Jared Kushner of continuing to support her father, President Donald Trump, even after he defended white supremacists and neo-Nazis who rallied in Charlottesville, Va.
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But the news that leading White House enemy Steve Bannon had been ousted from her father's administration on Friday seemed to have brought the first daughter out of hiding — at least on social media and in the form of media leaks that portrayed her as being instrumental in the chief strategist's ouster.
In fact, over the weekend, the first daughter seemed determined to act like everything in the universe is fine, publicly oblivious to criticism of her father's widely reviled reaction to the deadly white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville.
She also seemed fine ignoring the fact that Bannon has returned to head Breitbart News, with the avowed aim to go thermonuclear against "globalists" like Ivanka and Jared, who he believes are ruining the Trump administration.
In fact, by Monday Ivanka appeared to be back at the White House, where she posed for a photo of herself, posted on Twitter, of her donning special sunglasses to watch the solar eclipse.
Excited for #Eclipse2017? Remember to wear your glasses 👓 #NASA #STEM pic.twitter.com/FzujQai4G3
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 21, 2017
But as with Ivanka's previous solar eclipse-related tweets over the weekend, most users seized on the occasion to talk about her father's Charlottesville responses and her possible enabling of Trump's worse impulses — not her astronomy tutorial.
Daddy's presidential term will STILL be the darkest days in our nations history
— David Brady (@Snorbalp) August 21, 2017
Ivanka further outraged people for two tweets Saturday, praising peaceful marches that took place in Boston and other cities to denounce "bigotry, racism and anti-semitism."
That would be a perfectly fine thing to say if she were any other public figure. But Ivanka is not any other public figure. Last week, Ivanka, who converted to Jared's Jewish faith in 2009, even had the rabbi at her New York synagogue denouncing her father's defense of racist and ant-semitic white supremacists.
Both of Ivanka's Boston march-related tweets, including the second which asked people to "come together, united as Americans," had users saying that her father enabled "the hate" the marchers were protesting.
A woman was killed by Nazis on the streets of the United States and your father defended THE NAZIS.
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) August 20, 2017
Meanwhile, a report Saturday emerged in the Daily Mail that gave Ivanka credit for forcing Bannon out of the White House because of his association with extreme right-wing view points that have included vilifying Jews and Muslims.
Many blamed Bannon for Trump's failure last week to forcefully condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis for holding that rallies in Charlottesville at which a 32-year-old woman was killed and dozens of counter-protesters were injured.
Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Steve Bannon at the White House in February. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
The report cited "a source close to Ivanka" as saying that Bannon had to go "to save the presidency."
Could the source be Ivanka herself? She's previously been suspected of using leaks to news organizations to put forward stories that make her seem like a moderating force in the White House, and therefore appealing to people outside the president's base of supporters.
In any case, this "source close to Ivanka" said that Bannon's leaving "changes everything."
It's probably no wonder then that Ivanka looked in "high spirits" Sunday as she boarded Air Force One with her children, ahead of the president, to fly back to Washington D.C., the Daily Mail said.
After vacationing in Vermont amid the Charlottesville fall-out, she and her family had stopped off to visit the president at his golf resort in Bedminister, New Jersey.
Later Sunday, Ivanka returned to one of her chief social media preoccupations — posting cute photos of her kids on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, with the aim of winning points among her father's supporters and to distract attention from any ongoing controversies.
In this case, she posted a photo of one-year-old Theodore, asleep in his crib, and her fans typically praised her for being such a devoted mom and for sharing these intimate family moments with the public.
Celebrity Politics
Martha Ross
Martha Ross is a features writer who covers everything and anything related to popular culture, society, health, women's issues and families. A native of the East Bay and a graduate of Northwestern University and Mills College, she's also a former hard-news and investigative reporter, covering crime and local politics.
Follow Martha Ross	@marthajross
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