Ivanka Trump recently signed on an (unpaid) federal employee with a rather enormous job title — special assistant to the president — although what she would do (beyond being a high-ranking advisor) in this job has remained a mystery. Now, we’re seeing a taste of Ivanka’s influence on her father as he nears the end of his first 100 days. Per Eric Trump, the middle son, Ivanka was likely the person who convinced him to launch his missile strike on a Syrian air base following Bashar al-Assad’s chemical attack on his own people.
Whether or not Trump was “right” to launch his attack (although a CBS News poll says 57% of Americans think so) isn’t really the issue here. What’s relevant is that this strike — a largely symbolic one — has had an immediate effect on U.S. relations with foreign countries. Russia and Iran have already threatened a “show of force” for future U.S. military action in northern Syria, and Eric is “sure” that Ivanka (who holds no foreign policy experience) is the person who convinced her father to go there:
“Ivanka is a mother of three kids and she has influence. I’m sure she said: ‘Listen, this is horrible stuff.’ My father will act in times like that. And by the way, he was anti doing anything with Syria two years ago. Then a leader gasses their own people, women and children. At some point America is the global leader and the world’s superpower has to come forward and act and they did with a lot of support of our allies and I think that’s a great thing.”
Is Eric simply rambling without realizing what’s really going on behind the White House scenes? That’s entirely possible, or he might truly know what happened to spur his father to act against Assad. If that’s true, then President Trump has a wealth of military strategists at his disposal, and his eldest daughter (who doesn’t understand the word “complicit”) is reportedly the advisor with the real pull. To say the very least, this is unorthodox, yet Eric assured the interviewer that his father is “a great thinker, practical not impulsive.” This claim doesn’t do much to address Donald’s Obama-era history of tweeting that the U.S. should never attack Syria.
Also on the bandwagon on Tuesday morning is Trump’s attorney, Michael “Says Who?” Cohen. In this CNN New Day clip, Cohen tells Chris Cuomo (twice) how “smart” President Trump is, and that everyone — including Sean Spicer and Rex Tillerson — “needs to get on the president’s message.”
Trump’s personal attorney @MichaelCohen212 on Syria policy: “Everyone needs to get on the President’s message” https://t.co/3804JNz4wp
— New Day (@NewDay) April 11, 2017
(Via The Telegraph, CBS News & CNN)