In a new interview with the Financial Times, Ivanka Trump explained why she’ll never speak out against her father publicly.
‘To voice dissent publicly would mean I’m not part of the team,’ the first daughter and top White House aide told he publication. ‘When you’re part of a team, you’re part of a team.’
In the interview, Ivanka Trump dismissed that she had outsized influence on her father.
First daughter Ivanka Trump told the Financial Times that she would never publicly criticize her father – because that’s not what it means to be part of a team
Ivanka Trump, leaving her Washington home for work at the White House Thursday, told the Financial Times she hasn’t been socially cast out by the liberal New Yorkers she grew up with
Ivanka Trump (right) and Jared Kushner (left) were considered the more moderate forces in the Trump White House, though their clout with the president has been tested in the early months
‘Some people have created unrealistic expectations of what they expect from me,’ she noted. ‘That my presence in in and of itself would carry so much weight with my father that he would abandon his core values … It’s not going to happen.’
‘To those critics, why of turning my father into a liberal, I’d be a failure to them,’ she added.
As President Trump entered office in January, Ivanka Trump, along with her husband Jared Kushner, also a White House aide, and Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, were considered moderating factors who could bring the president to a more central stance on issues, instead of to the far right.
However, some decisions Trump made tested Ivanka Trump’s clout, including his decision in June to pull out of the Paris climate accord.
In the interview with the Financial Times, Ivanka Trump said she hasn’t been socially punished by the liberal New Yorkers she grew up alongside.
Ivanka Trump said she and Jared ‘haven’t felt much of a chill in the liberal New York Circle they ran in before the campaign.’
Among Ivanka Trump’s New York City friends: former first daughter Chelsea Clinton.
According to Axios, who published this portion of the interview in its morning newsletter, Ivanka Trump and Kushner know that friends who might trash them anonymously in the paper won’t do it to their faces.
Axios also cited a source who said that they recalled only one instance which an acquaintance approached Ivanka Trump with ‘a less than positive response.’