Ivanka Trump, first daughter and effective government employee, is kicking off 2019 with a White House initiative aimed toward “women’s global economic empowerment.” Having succeeded in economically empowering every woman in the United States, it makes sense that she would expand her horizons.
In a statement on the initiative, Trump said, “I look forward to continuing to work with the interagency and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to advance women’s access to vocational training, fuel female entrepreneurship and lift legal and social barriers that restrict our full and free economic participation.”
Trump has spent most of her tenure giving Lean In-esque talks to people in business suits and posting pictures of her own smiling children while her father’s administration tear gasses families at the border. Trump, as she embarks on this task of global empowerment, surely realizes that her father’s own policy positions—especially around undocumented people and working poor—are themselves legal and social barriers to “free economic participation” at home in the United States.
The launch of Trump’s global initiative was all originally meant to receive a lot of vapid pomp, with an event that included speeches from women empowerment champs like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton (!!!!), and representatives from women’s empowerment organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Walmart, and Bank of America (!!!!!). But the government shutdown prevented its official launch this week. A pity, really.