Surprise: Ivanka Trump Was Responsible for Her Father’s Disastrous COVID Address

As the old saying goes, behind every great man is a great woman, though for the Trump era, the more appropriate adage would be, “behind every presidential fuckup is a first daughter and son-in-law who have no idea what they’re doing but nevertheless think they should be advising the leader of the free world.” That’s not at all to say that Donald Trump wasn’t perfectly capable of destroying the country himself, just that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner clearly helped things along. Take COVID-19, for instance. Despite being neither a public health expert nor a doctor, and arguably a barely functioning adult, Kushner played a key role in the government’s pandemic response, which included reportedly telling Trump in March 2020 that the virus wasn’t a “health reality,” and responding, “that’s their problem,” when informed New York didn’t have adequate PPE supplies. Meanwhile, according to a new report, Princess Purses was the one who demanded her father deliver an address to the nation on a moment’s notice, the one which resulted in him telling millions of people, “The risk [of this virus] is very, very low.”

According to an excerpt from former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham’s new book, on March 11, 2020, a meeting was held in the Oval Office so the members of the Coronavirus Task Force could brief Trump on the latest information regarding COVID. In attendance were Anthony Fauci, M.D., Deborah Birx, M.D., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Robert Redfield, vice president Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and, for some reason, Jared and Ivanka, who, unsurprisingly, didn’t have anything helpful to contribute:

In the middle of all the discussion, Ivanka kept chiming in, “But I think there should probably be an address to the nation tonight.” I let that pass because in my mind there was no way we could pull one off with no speech prepared, no communications strategy, no consensus on anything we had just started discussing, and only a few hours’ notice. We did a lot of random things in Trump World, but that just seemed too crazy even for us.

As the discussion continued, Mnuchin kept raising the potential impact on the economy. He felt that the recommendation to shut down the borders was far too severe and the financial impact to our country and the world would be something we would not recover from for years. The discussion got quite heated, especially between the secretary and national security adviser O’Brien, who at one point said to Mnuchin, “You are going to be the reason this pandemic never goes away.” Hope Hicks continued to chime in with questions and ideas that had been discussed weeks before. And Ivanka, the women’s rights / small-business / crisis communications / and now COVID expert, just kept repeating, “There should be an address from the Oval.”

Finally, Ivanka turned to her most powerful ally besides her father. “Jared, don’t you agree?” Any guesses as to what Jared replied? … At one point I called Ivanka out on her plan with what seemed an obvious question. “What is it we’d be saying?” Because if she had a message she wanted her father to deliver, it was still a mystery to me. She just looked at me, seemingly confused.… Ivanka was also doing her “my father” wants this and “my father” thinks that routine, making it impossible for staff members to argue a contrary view. At some point I think Birx decided she’d ridden on the crazy train long enough and excused herself to get back to work. I used that opportunity to leave as well.

After the meeting broke up, there were just hours left to write a speech, the duties for which, incredibly, fell to Jared Kushner. Which might have explained why it was a total joke:

After he wrote the speech, there was no time for fact-checking, vetting, or notifying friends and allies on the Hill or abroad. There was hardly any time for the president to read it and make changes to it. It was a total clusterfuck from start to finish because Ivanka and her crew wanted her father to be on TV. And of course the speech that night contained a number of misstatements and sloppy wording—some caused by the president stumbling over a few phrases—that sowed confusion about such things as which countries would be affected by the new travel restrictions and if international trade would be banned. News outlets all over the world picked up on the discrepancies in the speech. People from various federal agencies started to call and ask us how to explain or clean up some of the things that had been said. Once again a line of reporters formed outside my office. Of course, it was our problem, not Jared’s or Ivanka’s or Hope’s. No, they were in the dining room off of the Oval Office, Trump’s usual hangout, congratulating themselves and telling the president how awesome he was.

Oh, well. It’s not like things got precipitously worse from there!

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Trump credits his fast-food diet with his supposedly exceptionally high IQ

According to Grisham, he refused to eat a vegetable for fear of losing brain cells. Per Politico:

On another occasion around the new year, a young boy started publicly challenging Trump to go vegan in TV ads and on highway billboards. If the president agreed, the boy said, the charity he represented would donate $1 million to veterans. I was communications director at the time and I playfully asked the president if he would ever consider doing that, since the challenge would raise a lot of money for a good cause. I knew he loved his steaks and cheeseburgers, but one month didn’t seem that long. Trump’s response was swift, and his tone was suddenly very serious.

“No, no. It messes with your body chemistry, your brain,” he said, offering his views on vegetarian diets. “And if I lose even one brain cell, we’re fucked.”

Imagine that.

You’ll never believe it but the Kochs are behind the anti-mask-mandate movement

The dark money largely responsible for the downfall of society? Who could have seen that coming! Per The Washington Post:

The letter sounds passionate and personal. It is motivated, the author explains, by a desire to “speak up for what is best for my kids.” And it fervently conveys the author’s feelings to school leaders: “I do not believe little kids should be forced to wear masks, and I urge you to adopt a policy that allows parental choice on this matter for the upcoming school year.” But the heartfelt appeal is not the product of a grass roots groundswell. Rather, it is a template drafted and circulated this week within a conservative network built on the scaffolding of the Koch fortune and the largesse of other GOP megadonors.

That makes the document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, the latest salvo in an inflamed debate over mask requirements in schools, which have become the epicenter of partisan battles over everything from gender identity to critical race theory.… The letter was made available on Tuesday to paying members of the Independent Women’s Network, a project of the Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Voice that markets itself as a “members-only platform that is free from censorship and cancellation.” Both are nonprofits once touted by their board chairman and CEO, Heather Higgins, as part of a unique tool in the “Republican conservative arsenal” because, “Being branded as neutral but actually having the people who know, know that you’re actually conservative puts us in a unique position.”

As a nonprofit, Independent Women’s Forum is exempt from disclosing its donors and paying federal income taxes. But the group, which reported revenue of nearly $3.8 million in 2019, has drawn financial and institutional support from organizations endowed by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and his late brother, David, according to private promotional materials as well as tax records and other public statements.