Et tu, Ivanka?
The writing has been on the wall for a while now, but it seems Ivanka Trump finally did it: she turned against her daddy. On Thursday we learned that the former White House adviser told the congressional panel investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, that she doesn’t believe her father’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In a video deposition that was shown during the first hearing of the panel, Ivanka states that she accepted the explanations of the then attorney general, Bill Barr, to Donald Trump that there wasn’t any evidence of voter fraud, and he’d lost the election fair and square.
“I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying,” Ivanka said.
I would give up a kidney to have witnessed the meltdown that Trump must have had when his favourite child publicly rejected his big lie. Did he drown his sorrows in Diet Coke? Did he storm through Mar-a-Lago smashing gold trinkets with his golf clubs? Did he call up his lawyer and write Ivanka out of his will?
Who knows. What do we know is that, oh-so-predictably, Trump reached for his phone and started firing off angry rants. On Friday the former president logged on to Truth Social, his disaster of a social media platform, and published a number of posts railing against Bill Barr. He also had some choice words about his daughter. “Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results,” Trump said huffily. “She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!)”
What a family, eh? Thanksgiving this year is going to be quite something.
Apart from the obvious fact that the Trumps are about as dysfunctional a family unit as you can get, what are we to make of the Ivanka/Donald rift? Is Ivanka finally developing a conscience? Not at all. Ivanka’s just doing what Ivanka does best, which is looking out for number one. Ivanka stuck close to her father when he was useful to her but now his star is on the wane she’s backing away quickly. In recent months Trump seems to have lost his kingmaker status and his grip on the GOP: a number of candidates he’s endorsed have been soundly defeated in their races. Last week a conservative group straw poll in Colorado placed Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, above Trump in their preference for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination. DeSantis placed above Trump in a similar poll in Wisconsin. Trump is increasingly old news.
While Trump’s career seems to be on the rocks, things are going swimmingly chez Javanka. Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, made up to $640m in outside income while they were “working” in the White House and are raking in even more cash now. Jared’s new investment fund recently got $2bn from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince, who Jared spent a lot of time cozying up to while Trump was president. I’m not sure exactly what Mr Kushner did to inspire such confidence from the Saudis, but it must have been something big; $2bn is a huge amount of money. It can certainly buy you a lot of bonesaws.
Now that it seems unlikely Trump is going to be able to make any sort of political comeback, now that he is no longer of much use to Jared and Ivanka, expect the Great Javanka Rehabilitation tour of 2022 to come to a media outlet near you very soon. Expect to see a growing amount of favourable coverage about the pair; expect to see stories peppered with anonymous quotes about how Javanka spent the Trump presidency trying to do the right thing; how they desperately tried to stop the former president from disseminating the big lie. Please, whatever happens, let’s not let these people rewrite history. Ivanka and Jared could have chosen to publicly denounce Trump’s claims about the election being stolen in the immediate aftermath of the election. They could have done the right thing right away. They didn’t.
What did they do instead? Well, in the weeks following the 2020 election, Jared checked out. Instead of trying to get Trump to concede defeat he took an online MasterClass from the bestselling thriller writer James Patterson so he could get a few tips for writing his White House memoir. Ivanka, meanwhile, pandered to her father. If Ivanka really had accepted Barr’s statements about the election being stolen why did she tweet about “American Patriots” when the Capitol was being stormed? And, as ex-Trump official Stephanie Grisham said about Ivanka on CNN: “If she was truly that impacted by Bill Barr ... perhaps she could’ve done a little bit more and not stood by [Trump’s] side while he publicly pushed the Big Lie.” Indeed.
Toronto blames woman who was pushed on to subway tracks for ‘travelling alone’
According to Toronto’s public transit agency, the woman “ought to have known” it was unsafe for her to travel on public travel “alone and unassisted”. A truly outstanding example of victim-blaming. Remember, ladies, never leave the house without a male chaperone otherwise you’re asking for bad things to happen.
This week’s cast of ‘disgraced celebrities who are facing legal charges’ includes:
– Harvey Weinstein, who will face two charges of indecent assault allegedly committed against a woman in London in 1996.
– R Kelly, who will face sentencing later this month; in a memo filed on Wednesday, prosecutors said he should get at least 25 years in prison.
– Kevin Spacey, who will face a sexual abuse lawsuit in New York after a US federal judge rejected the actor’s bid to get the suit dismissed.
Did you know that it wasn’t unusual for women in medieval Europe to get paid to breastfeed?
I highly recommend this fascinating piece in JStor Daily about how in the 15th century Kingdom of Aragon people used to recognize the time and energy involved in breastfeeding, by paying mothers to do it.
Larry Nassar victims seek $1bn from FBI for botched investigation
In 2015, FBI agents knew that Nassar (who is now in prison) was accused of assaulting gymnasts, but didn’t do anything. He continued to target young women and girls for more than a year.
Geico could pay $5.2m to a woman who got an STD during car sex
This story may be the best advert for car insurance I have ever seen.
The week in paw-triarchy
You know what they say, you wait for one kitten to come along and then 13 arrive at once. A guy called Robert Brantley was driving along the road in Louisiana on Tuesday when he stopped to rescue a stray kitten. Turns out 12 more were hiding in the bush and ambushed him. “Oh, my gosh, there’s more! We got a kitten problem,” Brantley exclaims in a viral video. “Who would do this? I thought I was saving one. Hot diggity dog.”
• Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order
