Impeachment

Listen, Ivanka Trump Has Her Suspicions About the Whistle-Blower

The first daughter is concerned about the whistle-blower’s “motivation.”

November 8, 2019

Since news broke that a federal employee filed a whistle-blower complaint against Donald Trump for leaning on Ukraine to investigate both his political rivals and insane conspiracy theories, the president and his allies have engaged in an all-out smear campaign against the anonymous individual. That effort has ramped up considerably over the last few weeks, as testimonies from various government officials have made the president look pretty unambiguously guilty! Trump’s pals on Capitol Hill have called for the whistle-blower to be unmasked, and on Wednesday, Don Jr. just went ahead and tweeted the alleged individual’s name.

Thus far, Ivanka has remained mostly silent on the impeachment front, offering a single cringeworthy Thomas Jefferson quote about enemies that she presumably found by Googling “smart quotes about politics.” But on Friday she joined the family effort, telling the Associated Press that it’s important to determine what the whistle-blower’s “motivation behind all of this was,” which is the first daughter’s genteel way of claiming, as her father and his surrogates have on numerous occasions, that the complaint-filer can’t be trusted because perhaps he or she has ties to Democrats. Ivanka also repeated her father’s favorite argument: that the whistle-blower “did not have firsthand information,” despite the fact that the details of the complaint largely mirrored the rough transcript—released by the White House!—of the infamous July 25 phone call, while testimonies by people who were on the call have also confirmed many of the details of the complaint, like that it was moved to a top secret server typically reserved for matters of national security.

Rounding out President Daddy and the GOP’s talking points, Ivanka added that the impeachment inquiry is not about investigating whether her father committed an impeachable offense, but “overturning the results of the 2016 election.” “Basically since the election this has been the experience that our administration and our family has been having,” she said of the entirely warranted criticism of her father and his grift-happy brood. “Rather than wait, under a year, until the people can decide for themselves based on his record and based on his accomplishments, this new effort has commenced,” she lamented. “But to us, it’s really been like this from the beginning.”

And speaking of families, don’t get Princess Purses—who won trademark approvals from China amidst trade-war talks and made millions last year from the Washington hotel where people looking to kiss the presidential ring know to stay—started on families who have the audacity to make money off of their roles in government.

She rejected any suggestion that her own family has been profiting off the presidency even as President Trump and his allies have criticized the involvement of [Joe] Biden’s son with a Ukrainian oil venture when Biden was vice president.... Ivanka Trump said the Bidens had “created wealth as a derivative” of public service while her family had made its money in business before her father became president.

Bottom line? The first daughter-presidential adviser is not at all worried about impeachment because (1) “Americans are prospering like never before,” and (2) Other great presidents have come under siege before. “Abraham Lincoln was famously, even within his own Cabinet, surrounded by people who were former political adversaries,” she said.

Listen, Ivanka Trump Has Her Suspicions About the Whistle-Blower

Bess Levin

Politics Correspondent