Ivanka Trump says she opposes the Alexandria Ocasio Cortez-spearheaded Green New Deal because she feels, deep down, that people prefer to earn money rather than having it given to them. At a certain point, one has to wonder if she’s doing this on purpose, or if she’s really so far up her own ass that she’s tasting her Skinny Vanilla Lattes twice.
The First Daughter’s comments came during an interview with Fox News’ Steve Hilton, which will air in its entirety on Sunday. Trump believes that the Green New Deal will fail because people don’t want a higher minimum wage or a jobs guarantee. “I don’t think Americans, in their heart, want to be given something,” she whisper-sang at Hilton.
Ivanka, why do you keep making me do this? I’m tired, Ivanka.
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Ivanka Trump hasn’t earned a thing in her life except a permanent ban from the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, and maybe by the end of her father’s term, lifetime VIP status at Cracker Barrel.
If I had to venture a guess, I’d say Ivanka’s targeting of AOC and the Green New Deal is part of a broader Republican strategy to seize upon the “socialist” part of the New York representative’s democratic socialist ties. Socialist policies—universal healthcare, a higher minimum wage, universal childcare, subsidized green infrastructure projects—work just fine in plenty of other places and are more popular stateside now than they’ve been in decades, but if we try anything that even hints at wealth redistribution, the reasoning goes, we’re proposing that old ladies stand in a line to wait for bread and children eat rats. We so much as agree that we are collectively responsible for each other’s well-being and we’re basically Venezuela. It’s kindergarten-level political apples-and-oranges, but right now, it’s all they’ve got.
What’s puzzling to me is why Ivanka would think “people prefer to earn their own money” is her way to make a smooth landing on this bullshit-slick of a talking point. Ivanka is the poster child for why wealth should be redistributed in this country. The legacy rich did not earn the means that enable them to oppress and take from those who actually work. Ivanka, like her father and siblings, was born on third base and thinks she invented baseball.
Ivanka Trump, heiress to millions of dollars whose own father was handed millions of dollars, who rose through Washington, D.C. buoyed by the unearned power of nepotism, believes other people, in their hearts, want to earn their own money. Ivanka Trump, whose own book is filled with page-filling quotes attributed to other people, thinks the rest of us ought to be makers, not takers. Ivanka Trump, beneficiary of sweatshop labor, believes hard work should be rewarded. Ivanka Trump, a high-level White House advisor who whines and ducks behind her status as a child of her boss when journalists ask her tough questions. Ivanka Fucking Trump, who graduated from Penn despite being incapable of correctly using the word “otherwise,” with some wise words on the value of labor and merit.
If I am to take Ivanka Trump’s latest ejaculation of blithe stupidity seriously—and for the purposes of this column, sure, why not?—then I can only conclude that she is troubled by her unearned status, and that she plans to donate her entire inheritance to Americans whose labor was stolen from them. Perhaps a reparations fund for descendants of the slaves who built this country. Maybe something more modern, like restitution for women who were paid less than their male counterparts for performing the same jobs. (Ivanka loves women, right? That’s her whole thing!)
How about the legal bills for undocumented people formerly employed by her family’s country club, who now find themselves at the mercy of the immigration system? Since she prefers earning her own money, deep in her heart, she could also consider donating her unearned fortune back to her father, who could use his also-unearned fortune to pay the many contractors he stiffed on construction projects.
I’m sure there are plenty more people whose uncompensated labor has benefited Ivanka Trump who would really enjoy being paid.
Tapping a person whose entire life was built on work she didn’t do to serve as the spokeswoman for the heart of the American worker is rabidly idiotic. But whatever backlash the White House experiences from this, at least they’ve earned it.
