Ivanka Trump distances herself from controversial policies in interview
Ivanka Trump continued to try to distance herself from her father’s more controversial policies on Tuesday, implying in an interview with CBS News that she expresses her disagreement in private.
The comments come amid questions about her role in the White House and after she said last week that she would be an unpaid, unofficial adviser.
“I would say not to conflate lack of public denouncement with silence,” the president’s daughter said in an excerpt of an interview with CBS’s Gayle King to be aired in full on Wednesday morning. She added: “I think there are multiple ways to have your voice heard.”
She told King about her conversations with her father, saying: “Where I disagree with my father, he knows it and I express myself with total candor. Where I agree, I fully lean in and support the agenda.”
She did not specify any issues where she disagreed with her father. In another clip, she was asked about whether she and her husband, Jared Kushner, were “complicit” in the Trump White House. Ivanka Trump replied: “If being complicit is wanting ... to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I’m complicit ... I hope time will prove that I have done a good job, and, much more importantly, that my father’s administration is the success that I know it will be.”
The question about whether she was “complicit” comes after a Saturday Night Live parody starring Scarlett Johansson used that phrase.
Ivanka’s role has been in the spotlight since as far back as November, when she sat in on then president-elect Trump’s first meeting with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe. She was also involved in February’s state visit with Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau. She has been painted in several stories based on friendly leaks in the press as having a moderating influence on her father’s administration on issues such as the environment and gay rights. However, the Trump administration is still taking steps to revoke Obama-era guidance on the use of bathrooms by transgender people and rolling back efforts to combat climate change.
Kushner’s expanding role has also been under scrutiny. He has a wide-ranging portfolio at the White House on issues ranging from Middle East peace to the opioid epidemic to addressing US government reform and relations with countries such as Mexico and China.
