After many noticed their silence amid the calamitous events of the past several days, Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, confirmed on Wednesday that they have been enjoying a late-summer vacation in a moral vacuum.
In a brief interview with reporters, Trump said that she and Kushner were “just loving” their time in the moral vacuum, calling it “our very favorite place to be.”
“It’s heaven,” she said. “We get up in the morning and never give a thought to our responsibility as Jews, Americans, or moral actors whose decisions have consequences for other people.”
She said that spending time in a moral vacuum had done her husband a world of good. “This is Jared’s favorite thing to do, besides meeting with Russians,” she said.
Ivanka and Jared, move back to New York
Long before their father’s election, the Trump children enjoyed a stellar reputation among most Manhattan influencers for being hard-working and well raised. They possessed few of the flaws too easily recognizable in other wealthy and well-connected kids.
Often, conversations that centered on the boorish behavior of Trump himself would end with someone citing his children as a mitigating factor against whatever severe judgments were being handed down.
.. In a recent tweet, she declared that she would be “serving alongside John Kelly,” just as the retired four-star Marine general let it be known that all access to the Oval Office would go through him. The real estate heiress not only appeared to be claiming the West Wing as her territory, but she also betrayed a troubling sense of entitlement that one might expect from other billionaires’ daughters but not this one.
.. Though Donald Trump might be loath to admit it, Kushner did much to elect his father-in-law. By quietly building a successful online fundraising and targeting operation far beyond his candidate’s comprehension, Kushner gave Trump a fighting chance to keep the 2016 presidential race close, in the hope that lightning would strike at the right time. It did. And that’s when Kushner’s problems began.
.. Trump’s shocking victory led his son-in-law to believe he could reinvent government like Al Gore, micromanage the White House like James Baker and restructure the Middle East like Moses.
.. Vice presidents, not daughters, should sit in G-20 summits. And a secretary of state should broker Middle East peace. Not an inexperienced 36-year-old son-in-law.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Optics of Relatable Style
But in a West Wing vocally obsessed by image and appearance, the mien is the message. Or something like that. Recall President Trump’s lauding of his generals as straight out of “central casting”; his reported early scolding of Mr. Spicer for his rumpled appearance; the rumor that he had declared that the women on his staff should “dress like women”; the fact that one of the first things he said to Brigitte Macron during his Bastille Day visit was: “You’re in such good shape. She’s in such good physical shape. Beautiful.”
This is true especially in a visual age, and for an administration schooled in the crucible of reality television, where what you wear and how you look play a leading role. Especially when Ms. Sanders is only the third woman to ever hold the post of press secretary and, as she often mentions in her briefings, the first mother. Especially when she is charged with representing an administration in which the attitude toward gender has been, let us say, a somewhat contentious and much discussed issue.
.. Dana Perino, President George W. Bush’s last press secretary and now a Fox host, once told Elle magazine: “When I got the job as the press secretary, one of my first thoughts was, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to wear?’ People really focus on that.” Externally and, apparently, internally.
.. That may not seem like a big thing, but abandoning the jacket, even in 2017, is a striking choice on a professional podium, one that aligns Ms. Sanders more with the sartorial camp of Ivanka Trump and Kellyanne Conway than with her predecessors: Dee Dee Myers, a press secretary during the Clinton administration who was known for her miniskirts and bright jackets, and Ms. Perino, who tended toward Chanel-esque suiting
.. The net effect is femininity that hasn’t been stiletto-weaponized or armored up as much as turned into an access point: No matter her words, they are framed by a style steeped in cheerful Hallmark history. That is bound to inform how they are received. If much of the administration still channels Wall Street (the Oliver Stone version), Ms. Sanders offers visual reference points of Main Street (the Fox version).
Reince Scapegoated for not Keeping Bannon-Kushner, Ivanka-Pence, Cohn-Miller from Fighting
Priebus certainly couldn’t keep the “Team of Mortal Enemies Rivals” from fighting amongst themselves, but who could? How much do you think the worldview of Steve Bannon overlaps with that of Jared Kushner? How much do you think Ivanka Trump and Mike Pence really agree on? How much does the economic perspective of Gary Cohn and Stephen Miller overlap? How much does Anthony Scaramucci get along with anyone except the president? Everyone wants to be the last …