OPINION:
Some of the Democrats trying to come to terms with their new home in the wilderness have chosen Ivanka, the president’s accomplished daughter, as their “lifeline” to the past. They see her as the only vestige of light in an otherwise dark, alt-right Trump administration. The London Guardian says she’s a “moral compass” for her father, who “might be able to rein in some of the more extreme policies of the administration.”
The New York Times calls Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, an official adviser to the president, “the two most influential social liberals in President Trump’s inner circle.” The New York Times, which is obsessed with the transgendered, credits the Kushners with persuading Mr. Trump not to scrap the rights of those of the sexually confused persuasion. Politico speculates that Ivanka will take the first lady’s lectern “to champion liberal causes,” particularly climate change.
Conservatives shuddered when Ivanka told them at the Republican National Convention last July that she doesn’t consider herself either Republican or Democrat, but “more than party affiliation, I vote based on what I believe is right, for my family and for my country.” Conservatives raised a skeptical eyebrow at her equal-pay and government child-care proposals, and were puzzled when she entertained Al Gore at Trump Tower to discuss the environment.
Will she really try to put a liberal cast on a Republican administration? Will she and could she, as the Canadian fashion magazine Marie Claire asked last summer, try to stop her father from delivering on his campaign promises? The available evidence says no.
The president has tried again to bar prospective immigrants from terror-exporting countries in the Middle East, and his budget, set off the usual fierce debates over what stays in it and what does not, nevertheless eliminates all spending on climate change, which his budget chief calls “a waste of your [the taxpayers] money.” Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, says “we’re not spending money on that any more. We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.”
Spending for the Environmental Protection Agency would be cut by 31 percent — the biggest cut of any federal agency — and eliminates 3,200 EPA employees, 19 percent of the EPA bureaucracy. Mr. Trump’s budget eliminates the Global Climate Change Initiative, and redeems the president’s pledge to discontinue contributions to the United Nations’ climate-change schemes by eliminating U.S. funding to the Green Climate Fund and two earlier climate investment initiatives.
“If there was any doubt over President Trump’s view on climate change,” National Public Radio laments, “those doubts evaporated with the unveiling of his federal budget on Thursday.” Indeed, if Ivanka is to be her father’s climate czar, she won’t be presiding over much of a kingdom. The Barack Obama executive order creating transgender bathroom rights, so called, was rolled back; the wall on the U.S.-Mexican border will be funded, immigration agents have been emboldened to enforce the law, sanctuary cities have been put on notice, and more border patrol and customs agents are to be hired soon.
Reuters, the British international news agency, credits Ivanka as “a key advocate for the more measured, less combative tone” Mr. Trump demonstrated in his address to Congress, and for that she has the thanks of all who want the president to succeed. She is by all accounts a loyal and supportive daughter, with elegance and grace in every interview. If the Democrats of the insurrection are looking for someone to betray the new Trump revolution, they should look elsewhere.
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