Ivanka Trump’s appearance at an international conference where she’ll encourage women to ‘Be the Change’ they want to see in their workplaces is coming under scrutiny.
The president’s 36-year-old daughter is the face of the 350-strong delegation of American business owners in Hyderabad, India this week at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit.
An entrepreneur in her own right, Trump will speak on panels on workforce development and leadership and deliver the summit’s keynote address early Tuesday evening.
Her visit has been complicated, however, by sex harassment allegations against her father, President Donald Trump, and a Republican politician competing for a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Ivanka Trump’s appearance at an international conference where she’ll encourage women to ‘Be the Change’ they want to see in their workplaces is coming under scrutiny
Ivanka is President Donald Trump’s 36-year-old daughter and the face of the 350-strong delegation of American business owners in Hyderabad, India this week
Sangeeta Agarawal, a GES delegate and the developer of the application Helpsy, a California start-up, told DailyMail.com that Ivanka should look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue if she wants help working women.
‘I would have like to see her stand up to her father and manage the message that her father is putting out better,’ said Agarawal, a sex assault survivor who has openly talked about the way she was violently raped by one of her own family members.
Allegations that President Trump assaulted more than a dozen women, including some who worked with him, resurfaced this week after the former reality TV star reportedly questioned the authenticity of a hot mic recording that caught him boasting that he could grab women ‘by the p****’ because he’s famous.
The tape emerged last fall at the height of the presidential election. Donald Trump apologized for his language in the Access Hollywood recording but said it was all ‘locker room’ talk, and he did commit the acts he’d claimed he did.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that Trump ‘hasn’t changed his position’ and ‘addressed this’ last year.
Sanders has deflected numerous questions in briefings over the past month about accusations of misconduct from a host of women, including former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos, who’s suing Trump, in the shadow of sexual harassment allegations against other high-profile figures.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, second left, arrived with Ivanka for the opening of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit
The president’s 36-year-old daughter is the face of the 350-strong delegation of American business owners in Hyderabad
Ivanka, an entrepreneur herself, delivered a speech at the conference
More recently, President Trump’s alleged behavior has come up in the context of Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican who’s been accused of inappropriately touching teenagers when he was in his 30s.
The president has refused to disavow Moore, even as Ivanka, a senior adviser in his White House, said she believed the conservative candidate’s accusers.
Ivanka Trump pointedly said there’s a ‘special place in hell for people who prey on children’ when she was asked about Moore in an interview.
Agarawal said Ivanka’s indirect reference to Moore isn’t enough, though. Her father’s remark to reporters last week that Moore says he did not do it was met with frustration, as well.
‘That’s not the way that we hold people accountable,’ the Indian-born businesswoman and cancer nurse said.
In her conversation with DailyMail.com, Agarawal spoke of a years-long recovery after her extreme assault and the difficulty that women have proving sexual harassment in the workplace.
‘I personally feel quite uncomfortable having to call Donald Trump as my president when he has been accused of these things from so many women, when I know I have been one of those women and those scars still haunt me,’ she said.
Trump’s daughter has emerged as the premiere purveyor of women’s prosperity in her father’s administration. She’s seen here on a billboard near the conference she’s headlining in Hyderabad
The government of Hyderabad pulled out all the stops for Ivanka’s visit, painting the medians and planting ornately decorated trees
Ivanka Trump will attend a dinner this evening with India’s prime minister at Falaknuma Palace, a royal residence-turned-hotel, before she ends her first day in Hyderabad
Kimberly Moore, CEO of GoTogether, a carpooling application for parents, said that Ivanka has to get tough with her father on the topic of sexual assault.
‘She has to talk to him. She has to face that. I feel like everybody makes a decision whether or not they maintain their own integrity or they give it away,’ Moore said. ‘And I think we can’t give it away. She’s gotta do that.’
Delegates hailed Ivanka Trump, a mother of three small children, as a success on Tuesday, with entrepreneur Ramon Ray saying she ‘more than anyone else’ deserved to represent the United States at the conference former U.S. President Barack Obama founded in 2010.
Ray, a New York resident with two businesses to his name, including Smart Hustle magazine, said Trump has earned her place at the head of the conference, having started her own business, in addition to working at the top of the Trump Organization and appearing on ‘The Apprentice.’
‘I think clearly has her own personal brand, her own style and the way she wants to do things,’ Ray told DailyMail.com. ‘She’s in a box. She’s not the president, and I think she has to influence policy as best she can.
‘Which is better than nothing,’ the self-proclaimed independent added.
Mansoor Syed, a creator of the not-yet-released virtual reality shopping application Window Shopper, said Ivanka Trump was ‘the best fit’ within the administration to headline GES, drawing on her business background.
But he also said, ‘There is an aura of responsibility that when you’re coming to the event as the official White House delegate that yes, you will probably have to answer questions on this and you will have to address these issues.’
Syed’s sister Unmamah, creator of a separate company, SIY, See It Yourself, a relocation service, agreed that Trump is ‘absolutely’ responsible for her father’s checkered reputation when it comes to women.
‘She’s coming here representing the White House, so that definitely goes hand in hand,’ the 23-year-old resident of California said.
Chiming in on the subject, Mansoor asserted, ‘The American people do not stand for such things, at least I’d like to hope not, and I do not stand for such things.’
Trump’s daughter has emerged as the premiere purveyor of women’s prosperity in her father’s administration, having made the elevation of working women the top line of her White House portfolio.
GES is the third international gathering this year she has spoken to about women’s empowerment.
In an interview that ran Tuesday in the Times of India, Trump said she wants the conference ‘to be a global celebration’ of women.
Aside from her keynote today at GES, Trump is appearing on a panel titled ‘Be the Change: Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership.’
She’ll attend a dinner this evening with India’s prime minister at a palace-turned-hotel before she ends her first day in Hyderabad.
Tomorrow she’s slated to speak on another panel, ‘We Can Do It! Innovations in Workforce Development and Skills Training,’ before she participates in a cultural event that a local paper has said is a visit to Golconda Fort.
U.S. officials have not said what she is doing Wednesday after she finishes at the conference, only that she would like to explore the area before her flight leaves.