Ivanka Trump, self-proclaimed advocate for women, is fine with Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, report says

Oct. 05--CLICK HERE if you are having a problem viewing the photos on a mobile device

After Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination was suddenly imperiled by a Bay Area professor's accusation that he sexually assaulted her, Ivanka Trump jumped into White House personnel manager mode and urged her father to "cut bait" and withdraw support for the judge, Vanity Fair reported in September.

Ivanka Trump's recommendation didn't come from a principled position but from political expediency and concern about Republican chances in the mid-term elections, the story said.

In any case, that was two weeks ago. More recently, Ivanka Trump has settled into being fine with Kavanaugh's confirmation to the high court, according to a new Vanity Fair report Thursday.

In fact, Ivanka Trump has come around to aligning herself with the position of President Trump and with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. The position is that Palo Alto University professor Christine Blasey Ford deserved to be heard in her Senate testimony last week. But ultimately, Kavanaugh is a "good man" who deserves to be on the court, two people familiar with Ivanka Trump's thinking have told Vanity Fair writer Emily Jane Fox.

Ivanka Trump also was pleased with her father's initially "measured response" to Ford's allegations, Fox reported.

Of course, days after calling Ford "a every credible witness" and a "very fine woman," Trump used a Mississippi campaign rally this week to mock her -- an attack that drew rebukes from members of his own party. It's not known whether Ivanka Trump scolded her father for mocking a sexual assault survivor, but Fox reported that the White House senior advisor told him she thought his decision to order a supplemental FBI investigation into Ford's claims was "well-received."

Of course, Ivanka Trump hasn't said any of this publicly, either in an interview or on social media. She hasn't said anything at all about the whole Kavanaugh controversy.

To the outside world, Donald Trump's beloved daughter, who came to the White House touting her advocacy for women's empowerment, appeared to be oblivious to the controversy over a Supreme Court nominee who holds socially conservative views that could threaten women's reproductive rights.

Ivanka Trump said nothing as feminists and survivors of sexual assault expressed anger at the way Trump and GOP senators circled the wagons around Kavanaugh and suggested that the allegations against him, along with growing questions about his credibility and judicial temperament, represented attacks on the integrity of all American men.

Ivanka Trump's older brother Donald Trump Jr. said Ford's allegations and the #MeToo movement made him fear for his sons. Meanwhile, on Friday, Trump called two sexual assault survivors who confronted Sen. Jeff Flake last week "elevator screamers" and "paid professionals."

Amid all this strife, Ivanka Trump enjoyed a series of photo ops over the past two weeks that she perhaps hopes wlll help position her for some kind of prestigious career, even in politics, after she leaves the White House, Fox reported.

The former real estate executive and fashion brand entrepreneur tweeted out photos of herself sitting for a series of panels and meetings at the United Nations, with the likes of British Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands.

Ivanka Trump also popped down to North Carolina to meet with first responders who helped communities hit by Hurricane Florence and to hear about technical and vocational education at the Nascar-sponsored Universal Technical Institute.

Meanwhile, her husband Jared Kushner appeared to be similarly oblivious to the Kavanaugh controversy. Kushner, also a White House senior advisor, held a meeting on prison reform, met with Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, and took in notes from Canadian officials for a renegotiated version of NAFTA, Fox reported.

Fox explained that the silence by Ivanka Trump and her husband on the Kavanaugh controversy signals how they have learned that the American public doesn't want to think they have a hand in a wide range of White House policy decisions. Both came to Washington D.C. with no government experience and have faced ongoing criticism that they only have their jobs because they're related to the president.

"When President Trump first took office, in the initial period of chaos and warring factions, Ivanka and Kushner felt the need to be involved in an outsized number of decisions and meetings," Fox wrote.

But with John Kelly stepping in to serve as chief of staff and reportedly bringing some discipline to the White House, Ivanka Trump and Kushner felt they could step back and focus on their chosen initiatives, Fox said.

However, that doesn't mean they haven't been advising the president privately on personnel matters and on the "optics" of certain issues, including Trump's much-criticized child-separation policy or the Kavanaugh controversy, Fox said. They've just learned to keep quiet as quiet as possible about what they're telling the president, Fox added.

"Press reports containing their private advice to the president only provokes more criticism, and often from both sides of the aisle," Fox wrote. "Trump, too, has recognized that invoking Ivanka doesn't help either of them."

A source told Fox that the way things work now, "no one really knows what they're telling the president."

Fox said the couple are employing this "survival strategy" as a way to ensure they have good jobs waiting for them when they leave the White House. Unfortunately, they're in a holding pattern, with their futures depending on what happens with the economy, with the mid-term elections and with the special counsel and other investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and into Trump's business dealings.

"It's still possible they could end up OK," Fox wrote. "Trump, after all, has demonstrated an uncanny ability to escape political doom without a scratch, only to amass more power in the process. Whether that is hereditary or transferable by marriage will be Ivanka and Jared's proposition to test."

------

* Report an error

* Policies and Standards

* Contact Us

___

(c)2018 the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.)

Visit the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.) at www.eastbaytimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.