Pity, if you can, poor Ivanka Trump. She is not literally poor, of course. No, the born-rich socialite-turned-international-ambassador and daughter of the living embodiment of late capitalism is poor only in social currency. Once hailed as a possible stabilizing influence on her father, a racist man whose brain is broken, she is now reduced to merely giving vague, conflicting statements, like her support of Oprah’s anti-Trump Golden Globes speech, and appearing in carefully staged video and photo ops, 100 percent of which look like generic stock photos.
To wit:
Yesterday Trump took a tour of an educational facility as an ostensible representative of her father’s infrastructure initiatives. In the above photo, she is not in fact cosplaying as her favorite playable character from the board game Pandemic, but instead measuring the nicotine levels in vape juice. This is funny in and of itself, because vaping is funny, but moreover the image of Trump now pretending to be a scientist in a pretty transparently staged photo-op only adds to the ridiculousness of her slate of duties as unelected “special advisor” to the president.