Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, an unpaid White House adviser to the American president, says she has her father’s ear and can disagree with him with “total candor.”
In an interview broadcast Wednesday on “CBS This Morning,” Ivanka Trump said she will continue the advocacy work she was doing in the private sector, which includes pushing for the economic empowerment of women and on issues involving education.
“I’m still my father’s daughter,” she told CBS. “But I’ll weigh in with my father on the issues I feel strongly about.”
In late March, the White House announced that the 35-year-old First Daughter would be working in the White House along with her husband Jared Kushner, an unpaid senior adviser to the president. Neither has any experience in elected office or public policy.
Ivanka Trump was present when her father received Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in January, and in March took part in a round-table discussion with the president and Chancellor Angela Merkel during the German leader’s visit to the White House.
The president’s daughter urged critics “not to conflate lack of public denouncement with silence.
“I think there are multiple ways to have your voice heard,” she told CBS. “In some cases, it’s through protest and it’s through going on the nightly news and talking about or denouncing every issue on which you disagree with. Other times it is quietly and directly and candidly.
“So where I disagree with my father, he knows it. And I express myself with total candor.”
She added: “I speak up frequently. And my father agrees with me on so many issues. And where he doesn’t, he knows where I stand.”
When pressed she declined to give any examples.
“This isn’t about promoting my viewpoints,” she told CBS. “I wasn’t elected by the American people to be president.”
“Where I agree, I fully lean in and support the agenda” and hope to “make a positive impact. But I respect the fact that he always listens.”
Ivanka Trump was part of her father’s business empire and ran an eponymous fashion line, but said she has “no involvement” any more in the brand’s “management, in this oversight and its strategic decision making.”
The president has come under furious criticism for concentrating power in the hands of relatives and for refusing to divest fully from his multibillion-dollar international conglomerate, The Trump Organization.
And the Kushner couple have also come under greater scrutiny since documents disclosed that they have held onto investments worth up to $740 million, inflaming fears about possible conflicts of interest.
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