Hey, Trump Told, 'Get Your Daughter the F$%k Out of State Meetings!'

Published on
Friday, November 18, 2016
by
Common Dreams

Hey, Trump Told, 'Get Your Daughter the F$%k Out of State Meetings!'

It was unusual, to say the least, that President-elect's daughter Ivanka, now slated to run his business empire, attended the president-elect's first meeting with a head of state

by
Andrea Germanos, staff writer
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Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, at Trump Tower in Manhattan. (Photo: New York Cabinet Public Relations Office/Reuters)

Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump sat in Thursday on the president-elect's first meeting with a head of state, raising ethical questions and eyebrows again over the future administration's conflicts of interest.

The meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took place at "Trump's gilded Manhattan penthouse."

U.S. News & World Report writes that "Ivanka Trump's presence at the meeting was only made public when the Japanese government released photos, as the Trump team has continued to bar journalists from witnessing all but the most superficial aspects of the transition."

CBS News describes her presence, along with that of her husband, Jared Kushner, as "a reminder of potential conflicts of interest between Donald Trump's businesses and the White House" as well as his adult children's future roles in the White House.

Ivanka and Kushner are on the Trump transition team's executive committee.

"Their involvement raises a host of ethical questions," Emily Jane Fox writes at Vanity Fair, as "it appears to violate the 1967 nepotism law put in place after John Kennedy installed his kid brother Bobby as attorney general." There's also the fact that Ivanka, along with her two brothers, will reportedly run the real estate mogul's business empire in a "blind trust."

"Which, as you hardly need to be sharp-eyed to point out, makes it a bit odd that she's sitting in on presidential state business," Marine Hyde writes at the Guardian.

Hyde added, "Before you could say ‘conflict of interests’, America’s most dysfunctional family have already begun blurring the lines between politics and business"

Asked by host Andrea Mitchell about the transition and about Ivanka sitting in on the Abe meeting, New York Times journalist Mark Landler, appearing on MSNBC on Friday afternoon, said: "I mean, everything about the first week in terms of foreign policy flew in the face of all diplomatic protocol."

Abe, for his part, emerged from the meeting saying he is "convinced Mr. Trump is a leader in whom I can have great confidence."

Meanwhile, on Twitter, many were taking note of how just inappropriate and troubling the decision was:

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