"Why would you tell me to read a book about poor people?"

November 18, 2020 9:10 AM

Ivanka Trump was my Best Friend. (SLVanity Fair)
posted by box (76 comments total)

Honestly, I just never want to see, hear, or think about any of these awful people ever again, unless it's about them going to jail. I'm so tired of these monsters invading my life.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:16 AM on November 18, 2020 [174 favorites]

One of the earliest memories I have of Ivanka from before we were friends is when she blamed a fart on a classmate.

I love this, not just because it's funny but because it's probably the only thing in this article that would actually embarrass Ivanka.

I don't know why the writer talks about "guilt." I can't imagine anybody thinking they had influence over a childhood best friend they hadn't seen in years. No doubt this lady is an unreliable narrator in her own way, but nobody who has been so close to a Trump and hasn't been completely used up and discarded can have been a perfect person.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:22 AM on November 18, 2020 [12 favorites]

"[Donald] described one as a young Cindy Crawford, while the other he said had a great figure."

'The other' being another 13 year old girl. I'm... going to pause this.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:26 AM on November 18, 2020 [24 favorites]

(I wonder if Melania is happy that she got her former-best-friend book before Ivanka.)
posted by box at 9:28 AM on November 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'm currently making my way through Gossip Girl and am suddenly realizing the show might as well be a documentary.
posted by thebots at 9:29 AM on November 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

I mean, this is vacuous shite, right?

Some boring memories from a former friend in an article which screams (nay, practically admits): I was always scared it would harm me if I talked about our friendship while her dad was president so I didn't do it then, but now he's on his way out I might as well try and milk it. Also now the wind's changing, I want to tell the world I don't really like her, just in case people decide I'm a wrong'un like them.
posted by penguin pie at 9:35 AM on November 18, 2020 [70 favorites]

Yeah, this 'expose' wasn't nearly interesting enough to make up for its lack of substance. Yawn.
posted by MiraK at 9:50 AM on November 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

I think that's a bit uncharitable, penguin pie. Even if they were shits to you, it can take a long time for you to process a betrayal from a friend from when you were in junior high, especially if you were young enough and naive enough to consider them your "best friend". The emotional baggage to unpack can be kind of considerable and you spend a while blaming yourself for things sometimes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:54 AM on November 18, 2020 [18 favorites]

I found it fascinating, in the way that it admits complicity but also exclusion. It's so WASPy in its approach, in its silent condemnation and circling away. You can practically see the Puritanism still in play. The literal, foundational Puritanism that led to this point, to this article, about this person. The revelations about I. Trump may be pedestrian, but the exposure of the class around her is fascinating. This is literally white drama writ large: Ivanka can't sit with us anymore.
posted by headspace at 9:54 AM on November 18, 2020 [31 favorites]

I kinda dug the Great Gatsby-esque vibe.
posted by valkane at 10:02 AM on November 18, 2020 [11 favorites]

This sort of article really serves Ivanka's agenda more than it harms it. It's the beginning of switching the public's focus from the old man to his kids. It doesn't matter that it's (sort of) negative. It still paints a picture of a tough, glamorous, ruthless, rich girl. I'm sure she takes the same attitude as her dad that there's no such thing as bad publicity. I'm sure when Vanity Fair's editors contacted her to vet the story she feigned outrage and then gave her "begrudged" blessing. Vanity Fair is always going to be an easy mark for people like Ivanka, because they like money and glamour and promoting a rarefied view of the upper class. It's perpetuating the bullshit that got us in this mess and it's frustrating.
posted by wabbittwax at 10:02 AM on November 18, 2020 [36 favorites]

Lysandra... See, you and T used to get along. But you're just as lame as she is. And yet, I can't get enough uninteresting hit pieces on the Trumps. Bring 'em on, thick and fast. Just, stay out of public office, thanks.
posted by Chickenring at 10:04 AM on November 18, 2020

I brushed up against folks like this very briefly in high school. They still make me want to light shit on fire.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:11 AM on November 18, 2020 [12 favorites]

I was always scared it would harm me if I talked about our friendship while her dad was president so I didn't do it then, but now he's on his way out I might as well try and milk it. Also now the wind's changing, I want to tell the world I don't really like her, just in case people decide I'm a wrong'un like them.

This person is almost certainly getting threats against her life as we are typing this, and two years ago some of those threats might have been coming from the Executive Branch of the United States Federal Government. "I was always scared it would harm me" indeed.
posted by sideshow at 10:15 AM on November 18, 2020 [22 favorites]

something something white moderate something something "order" over justice something something negative peace
posted by deadaluspark at 10:16 AM on November 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Nice of her to wait until after Ivanka lost power to decide to write something. It seems sincere enough and has some interesting detail, but it just comes four years too late.
posted by Nelson at 10:21 AM on November 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

It still paints a picture of a tough, glamorous, ruthless, rich girl.

Is it depressing about humans in general or depressing about the United States in particular that these are qualities to be admired? All those people are horrible and the only thing they have that's worthwhile is secure access to housing, education and medical care - which would be provided to everyone in a just society. Everything else they have is not worth the having and in particular not worth the getting.

Ugh, reading about these people makes me want to sell up and go into a monastery.
posted by Frowner at 10:21 AM on November 18, 2020 [27 favorites]

This person is almost certainly getting threats against her life as we are typing this, and two years ago some of those threats might have been coming from the Executive Branch of the United States Federal Government. "I was always scared it would harm me" indeed.

She’s a journalist. I’m pretty sure journalists failing to call out the Trumps’ shit while they were in power has been one of the biggest issues of recent years. I mean, not that recalling Ivanka farting was going to bring down the president, but it seems pretty reflective of a wider problem with media coverage of Trump & Co during his presidency.
posted by penguin pie at 10:32 AM on November 18, 2020 [17 favorites]

I just want to point out that the Sassy magazine Ivanka was featured in was the zombie Sassy that lasted like a year after the real Sassy died. Ivanka Trump would not have been cool enough to be featured in the real Sassy.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 10:35 AM on November 18, 2020 [71 favorites]

(Meant to add, but not to abuse edit window...)

The stuff about how her conscience wouldn’t let her stay quiet... well, that’s great, but if you think you have important stuff to say that can make a difference, how about saying it before the election? Saying it now and painting it as a blow for truth is kind of *shrugs*.
posted by penguin pie at 10:39 AM on November 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

Ugh, this does nothing but elevates Ivanka as a "cool girl," and the writer also seems to be trying to bask in what little reflective glow she can, now that the Trumps are relatively toothless.

If the writer had done some real self-reflection, this could have been an interesting article! But she didn't, so the whole thing ended up as shallow as Ivanka seems to be.
posted by rue72 at 10:51 AM on November 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

A much tougher-minded than I am friend watched hours and hours of the Republican National Convention.

She tells me that whenever Ivanka was introduced, which was apparently many more times than there was any good reason for, she was without exception referred to as "the Honorable Ivanka Trump."

Because they couldn't quite bring themselves to say 'her Royal Highness, Princess Ivanka Trump', probably -- but there's no doubt the Trumpublicicans have Big Plans for her.
posted by jamjam at 10:52 AM on November 18, 2020 [19 favorites]

Some of us even went to Sheep Meadow to “dye our hair green,” which was the code used by the entire classroom in reference to a certain forbidden activity.

Aren't you glad she didn't say orange?
posted by hal9k at 10:53 AM on November 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

Ugh, this does nothing but elevates Ivanka as a "cool girl".

Really? I thought the parts about the "poor people" book and the Arabic necklace are pretty revealing of Ivanka's true ugliness. While, it's no surprise to any of us, I think that's the kind of stuff she prefers to keep hidden.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 10:56 AM on November 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

Clearly this article does not pass some sort of purity test for some commenters: not brave enough, not soon enough, not the hard-hitting expose we should all expect from Vanity Fair. And boy are we gonna let you know what we think.
posted by elkevelvet at 11:01 AM on November 18, 2020 [12 favorites]

I'm glad she wrote this.

I agree about the complicity here, she outs herself as part of the WASPy culture that helped Ivanka build her reputation in the first place.

But I think that's part of the point -- she sort of humanizes Ivanka, by showing that Ivanka had noble (or at least noble-ish) aspirations that she tried to balance against the relentless terribleness of her father, but this is also damning because it means it really was a choice to follow him in the end.

The author knows that balancing act, and is trying to make the other choice herself. I think that's totally a message worth saying.
posted by bjrubble at 11:10 AM on November 18, 2020 [11 favorites]

She's the one
She likes all our pretty songs
And she likes to sing along
But she don't know what it means
posted by riverlife at 11:11 AM on November 18, 2020 [24 favorites]

Metafilter: boy are we gonna let you know what we think.
posted by Nelson at 11:24 AM on November 18, 2020 [9 favorites]

Fuck her and the limo she rode in on.
And fuck her brothers.
And her dad.
Fuck the lot of 'em.
(here I mumble something intelligent to temper my vitriol with reasoned, rational assessment, but the truth is - these are shallow, stupid people who somehow lack the good grace to keep their money and their mediocrity to themselves. Go away, family Trump. Go away and live your respectable lives in Florida.)
posted by From Bklyn at 11:35 AM on November 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Much, much too late for respectable lives.
posted by blue shadows at 11:46 AM on November 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

Actually, I think the timing of this article is brilliant. Let's be real, if it had come out before the election, it wouldn't have had any measurable effect on it. But now that Ivanka's gonna be looking for a new gig, this dings her reputation as a more palatable Trump and could make it harder for her to get hired anywhere reputable as corporations are currently very invested in pretending they don't hate poor people and minorities.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 11:57 AM on November 18, 2020 [16 favorites]

Eh, I can easily some evil investment firm like Neuberger Berman that normally fall over themselves to hire someone like her decide not to do it in view of the optics around it in relation to their supposed "commitment to equity, inclusion and diversity".
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 12:26 PM on November 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don't even find the "book about poor people" really that offensive. This is a teenager pushing boundaries and trying to be edgy. That's stupid things teenagers say because that's what they do.

All I read was a bunch of privileged teenagers and a dad who is being kinda creepy which out of the context of Trump is actually super boring. This isn't Kids this is like upper-middle class mediocrity.
posted by geoff. at 12:31 PM on November 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

I can't help but wonder if rich people should even be allowed to have children, especially since rich people shouldn't even be allowed to Be.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:31 PM on November 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

She wasn't a teenager when she said that, though. She was an adult.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 12:33 PM on November 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

Actually, I think the timing of this article is brilliant.

Exactly, there's currently a pretty high-profile effort to keep Ivanka from sliding back into that world of privilege that's clearly so important to her.

My biggest critique of this piece is that it seems to be more going after Ivanka's class aspirations - and how she falls short of them (she eats McDonald's cheeseburgers!) - than her moral failings, but I think that too is pretty strategic. The people this piece is aimed at might not care about her moral failings but they do care that she's "not our kind, darling."
posted by lunasol at 12:34 PM on November 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

The Northern Pikes said it 30 years ago, much more succinctly than this article: She ain't pretty, she just looks that way.
posted by nubs at 12:38 PM on November 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

My biggest critique of this piece is that it seems to be more going after Ivanka's class aspirations - and how she falls short of them (she eats McDonald's cheeseburgers!) - than her moral failings, but I think that too is pretty strategic

Yeah so this is the insidious thing. I'm guessing Ivanka and Sofia Coppola are roughly the same age and grew up in similar prestige. Watch On the Rocks or any of Sofia Coppola's films about wealth and fame. Why do we hate Trump's display of wealth? Among other things, the garish 80s gold plated everything, cheeseburgers, the de classe way he comports himself. Yet the media, or even we, fawn over the Sofia Coppola's lost writer in Manhattan with a Strand bookbag and a $20k Chanel purse because she's the right kind of wealthy.

I find Sofia Coppola's version more insidious in that it gives the idea of royalty not wealth, as if her characters could lose their wealth and still be better than us. Trump would just be a failed landlord from Queens. I want it to all burn! All burn! 🔥
posted by geoff. at 12:40 PM on November 18, 2020 [23 favorites]

This person is almost certainly getting threats against her life as we are typing this, and two years ago some of those threats might have been coming from the Executive Branch of the United States Federal Government. "I was always scared it would harm me" indeed.

Indeed, we should show more respect for the courage it took to expose herself to harassment on social media for the sake of these 5 minutes of vacuous notoriety.
posted by Reyturner at 1:00 PM on November 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Donald (and Ivanka by extension) Trump is new money. So is Sofia, but people like her dad. Also, read up on all the shit the Clintons got when they moved to DC. I'm under the impression that even as a Presidential family they were not exactly welcomed.

I think Ivanka will be able to get Rolodex jobs (uses her friends and network) from the people this article is aimed at, but not public facing ones (personality and image). Deutsche Bank vs. Revlon.
posted by rhizome at 1:00 PM on November 18, 2020

I couldn't finish this. After 5 years of hearing about nothing but these horrible people, I've reached my limit.
posted by tommasz at 1:03 PM on November 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

I couldn't finish this. After 5 years of hearing about nothing but these horrible people, I've reached my limit.

On the contrary, I remained to make sure the toilet was flushed completely.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 1:13 PM on November 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

okay so i'm not the first to mention the clintons so i'll go ahead and mention the clintons:

until 2016, chelsea clinton and ivanka trump were friends.

this is not a "both sides are bad" hot take. i mean, not entirely. it is a "we must reflexively distrust anyone with inherited wealth" hot take. if you are on the side that's against inherited wealth, if you're for a 100% inheritance tax or whatever, you are on the good side. if you're someone who grew up with inherited wealth, who grew up with connections, and who didn't give away the money and renounce the shit out of the connections as quickly as possible, if you ever considered befriending an ivanka trump, you are not on the good side and will never be on the good side.

the republicans are, stem to stern, top to bottom, soup to nuts on the bad side, because each and every one of them respects the authority of the wealthy. but the democratic party leadership is also shot through with people on the bad side, is in large part controlled by people on the bad side, is run by folks who want to keep their wealth and connections and who want to use their wealth and connections and who at least unconsciously think of people without their wealth and connections as not entirely human, as (at best) "the help." because that is who you are if you befriend an ivanka trump — and there are many ivanka trumps out there, many donald juniors, many mediocre erics, many jareds.

we have to convert our idle "flames! flames on the side of my face!" complaining about the fuckers into some sort of concerted political action against them. we have to take them down. we have to ruin them, and we have to ruin them so hard that others of their class immediately act to divest themselves of their wealth and turn their backs on their connections, act to acknowledge us as the bosses and their previous friends as both unimportant and noxious, as people who it is not safe or wise to associate with.

hi, rich people reading metafilter. i see you out there. i see you trying to blend into the background, trying to be tasteful about your wealth instead of giving it away.

you need to give it away. you need to give it away immediately. you need to ghost all the connections you made through your family and your frat and your consulting gigs. to be fair: you can give your justifications for not giving it away, for not renouncing your rich friends — in fact, i encourage you to do so, since you'll thereby be outing yourself — but i assure you those justifications will be ignored.

"my life will be hard if i do that," you say. your life will not be especially hard — or at least, your life will be no harder than our lives are. if you pretend to yourself or to others, even for a second, that you could not bear to live lives like ours, not in a class tourist way but in a legitimate way, in a way where you'll never be able to call your dad and stop it all, you are thereby clinging to the notion that you are better than us and deserve better than us.

okay, now i'm addressing the rest of us again:

we must disabuse those people of that notion. we must not pretend that they are acceptable people. we must make them total social pariahs, we must strip them of their ability to function at all in society until they renounce their wealth and their connections, and we must make them glad that that's all we're doing to them.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 1:33 PM on November 18, 2020 [44 favorites]

The Ivanka I knew spent her career developing and embodying a more polished and intellectual offshoot of the Trump brand, which blended the language and look of white millennial feminism with the mythical narrative of the business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit

Elizabeth Holmes tried that. It didn't work out too well.
posted by Garm at 1:33 PM on November 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I think Ivanka will be able to get Rolodex jobs (uses her friends and network) from the people this article is aimed at, but not public facing ones (personality and image). Deutsche Bank vs. Revlon.

Ivanka doesn't need a job. She'll go to ground for a few years and, after her father dies (and possibly after Don Jr implodes), she'll start making tactical appearances, agreeing to strategic tell-all interviews and gauzy photo shoots, and launch her rehabilitation tour.
posted by carmicha at 1:44 PM on November 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

and anyone who helps her with that rehabilitation tour needs to become precisely as socially radioactive as she herself currently is
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 1:48 PM on November 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

(Btw, just to add - when I said "I mean, this is vacuous shite, right?" that was aimed at the article's author, not the OP!)
posted by penguin pie at 2:12 PM on November 18, 2020

On the one hand I love some tea; on the other hand these people spilling are obviously terrible and it’s unclear who is worse the Trump’s or these former best friends. In my ideal world no one would ever talk about the Trump family again. We would unperson them like in the old Soviet states. Let’s airbrush them out of existence and pretend the last 4 years didn’t happen.
posted by interogative mood at 2:54 PM on November 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Okay, now I see what the author’s family meant about the article not landing like she’d want.

I have my own much less dramatic or high-profile version of the “grade school friendship with the rich kid in class turned ugly” story, and if that kid had grown into eager complicity in a palpable threat to the future of the world while trying to disguise the raging case of affluenza I knew he’d been nursing since childhood, I would definitely feel the same conflicted sense of needing to say something, and it wouldn’t be a bit about trying to cash in, enhance my own image or kick somebody while they’re down.

Maybe I’m mistaken and the author’s motives are exactly the cynical ones being ascribed to her, but I can see how maybe they wouldn’t be.
posted by gelfin at 2:55 PM on November 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

> In my ideal world no one would ever talk about the Trump family again. We would unperson them like in the old Soviet states.

okay but if we’re going soviet let’s also abolish private property. that’s more important than adopting damnatio memoriae.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:59 PM on November 18, 2020 [6 favorites]

Even more revealing are the stories Ivanka tells about herself. In her 2009 "self-help" book The Trump Card she writes about her natural business instincts using the example of her lemonade stand.

She says her lemonade stand hardship was that she lived in her exclusive palace at the top of the Trump Tower. "We had no such advantages" of other children she says regarding having no place to set up their lemonade stand.

So she waited until they went to their summer home in Greenwich to set up her stand. But they were on a very large estate in an affluent neighborhood so there was no foot traffic.

"As good fortune would have it, we had a bodyguard that summer," she writes. She persuaded her bodyguard to buy lemonade, and then her driver, and then the maids, who "dug deep for their spare change." The lesson, she says, is that she "made the best of a bad situation."

Now, a normal person might tell this as a self-deprecating story about recognition of their ignorance of privilege as small children. But no, Ivanka tells it as a full grown-ass adult to brag about her business acumen in shaking down her own servants for money.

In another business story she and her brothers made fake Native American arrowheads, buried them in the woods, dug them up while playing with their friends, and sold the arrowheads to their friends for five dollars each. She brags about this. Grifters from the beginning.

Serious question. Are children like the Trumps born with the grifter gene as some sort of bad seed or do they learn it in the nursery as their parents teach them how to get the most toys from the other children.

From the HuffPo
posted by JackFlash at 3:16 PM on November 18, 2020 [42 favorites]

The Trumps are the Ferengi among us.
posted by Nelson at 3:26 PM on November 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

the ferengi are a species of extraterrestrials from a goofball late 80s/early 90s sci-fi show. their depiction is at turns silly and low-key antisemitic.

the trumps, on the other hand, are shits. as are their enablers.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 3:28 PM on November 18, 2020 [7 favorites]

christ, that read like american psycho, but with less taste and self-awareness.
posted by 20 year lurk at 3:35 PM on November 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

- But now that Ivanka's gonna be looking for a new gig, this dings her reputation
- There's no world where the kind of person who would hire Ivanka Trump is going to be put off by this article
- I think Ivanka will be able to get Rolodex jobs (uses her friends and network)
- Ivanka doesn't need a job

Ivanka Trump has never worked for a non-family business. When she modeled for Elite in her teens, the agency had ties to the Trump organization. Moreover, in autumn 2018, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC, bringing to 34 the total number of marks China has greenlighted this year, according to the office’s online database. The new approvals cover Ivanka-branded fashion gear including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. 2018 was the same year Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made as much as $135m (ikely more than that). This article can't hurt her prospects, because she's never needed to prospect.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:09 PM on November 18, 2020 [9 favorites]

Guys? "Mediocre" doesn't mean what a lot of you seem to think it means. Mediocre is average, not great or terrible. By any measure, the Trump family falls well short of mediocrity. (Well, any measure except for awfulness. The Trumps excel at that.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:15 PM on November 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

if you ever considered befriending an ivanka trump, you are not on the good side and will never be on the good side.

If you were ever a lonely, fat, nerdy fifteen year old girl on a huge amount of financial aid at a school for rich kids and you didn't consider trying to get in with an Ivanka* (or a Lysandra, for that matter) even for a moment, you are a far, far better person** than I am.


* I didn't.
**Not entirely because of my moral fiber but because they wouldn't have me. I can pat myself on the back for this now for my righteously angry teenaged journal entries and "Look at me! I know who my true friends were (uh, mostly imaginary at that point), " but if the Ivankas had even given me a chance to go do fancy spring break trips or use their connections to get me an alumnus interview at Yale or even just deigned to be nice to me for a minute between classes, there is just shy of no way I would have rejected the offer.
posted by thivaia at 4:21 PM on November 18, 2020 [26 favorites]

White privilege, WASP privilege is getting paid thousands to "confess" the shit normal people have to talk about to maintain a community.
posted by eustatic at 5:07 PM on November 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm interested that she thinks Ivanka will go hang around rich people in Palm Beach, because I'm convinced Jared and Ivanka are the only members of that family smart enough to move abroad ASAP to Switzerland (no extradition treaty), and can afford to do it with Jared's family's money. Which I'm willing to bet the Kushners are offshoring as fast as they can because the coming round of investigations isn't going to spare the Kushners' shady real estate businesses, and Kushner père has already been to prison once.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:21 PM on November 18, 2020 [9 favorites]

I think it would really strain US relations with Switzerland if they were just to hop skip over there. There's a lot of ways the US and even Switzerland could turn the screws on someone like Ivanka and Jared, even if they didn't directly extradite them. It would all matter who Jared and Ivanka owed money to and what kind of money they owed ... like what form their financial instruments are in. The closest equivalent to someone avoiding justice would be Roman Polanski and his request for extradition was ultimately denied by Switzerland but not was far more complex: he argued he already served his time.
posted by geoff. at 6:39 PM on November 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Do y'all honestly think Ivanka and Jared will face any consequences worse than being snubbed during brunch on Martha's Vineyard?
posted by Reyturner at 6:56 PM on November 18, 2020 [12 favorites]

Hope springs eternal.
posted by rhizome at 7:23 PM on November 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

There's a lot of ways the US and even Switzerland could turn the screws on someone like Ivanka and Jared, even if they didn't directly extradite them.

Eh, a fancy crook and possible traitor named Marc Rich alp-horn'ed his way around Switzburg (and beyond) without trouble, on the lam for 15 years before Clinton pardoned him.
posted by rhizome at 7:32 PM on November 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

Do y'all honestly think Ivanka and Jared will face any consequences worse than being snubbed during brunch on Martha's Vineyard?

I hope so. Ivanka is implicated in a lot of the fraud that the NY prosecutors seem very interested in prosecuting. 🤞🤞
posted by rue72 at 8:03 PM on November 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Do y'all honestly think Ivanka and Jared will face any consequences worse than being snubbed during brunch on Martha's Vineyard?

Definitely not. The kind of stuff they're up is bad but it's not the type of bad that sends rich, highly connected people to jail. The idea that anyone from the Trump family is going to jail is just people wishing for something and not based on reality.
posted by chaz at 8:42 PM on November 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Maybe not jail, but the Kushner and Trump financial "empires" are built on quicksand. Jared can't keep up his payments on that Times Square atrocity and tenants are defaulting because of...wait for it...COVID. Ah, sweet irony. The sweetheart loans and deals with the sheiks and the Russki, those are going to end on January 19. This family is no longer of any use to them.

Maybe a news channel will generate some income but it's damn hard to get the funding to launch something like that. Then there's the problem of trying to get cable outlets or smart TVs to link up to them. You think Amazon is going to stream Trump TV on your Firestick?
posted by Ber at 8:54 PM on November 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Trump's temper tantrum is ensuring his whole clan will be able to coast on a president in exile scam for the rest of his life. And there will always be rubes to grift and oligarchs and gangsters to launder money for. As long as they don't pull a Shkreli and forget who they're allowed to fleece, they'll be fine.
posted by Reyturner at 9:33 PM on November 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

I read the first couple paragraphs of TFA and threw up a little in my mouth.

This weekend I was thinking about my dad - I watched a video of him from 30 years ago speaking at a ceremony honoring him at the high point of his career. I haven't seen his face or heard his voice in 23 years and he was amazingly empathic and a person I'm proud to look up to, to this day.

It got me thinking about the adult kids of the Drumpf. How do you grow up and gain self-awareness and perspective on the world around you and still see that person as "dignified"? Is he your role model? Do you look up to him? They're all assholes but I think they were raised that way and I have to feel just a titch sorry for them.
posted by bendy at 11:43 PM on November 18, 2020

I have to feel just a titch sorry for them

Understanding why somebody carries on like a complete arsehole doesn't change the fact that they do carry on like a complete arsehole. It also doesn't make carrying on like a complete arsehole in any way acceptable or even forgivable.

We need all the negative social consequences for carrying on like a complete arsehole that we can possibly muster, purely because it's otherwise a winning social strategy; and as the last four years clearly demonstrate, being relentlessly flooded with shit is just a miserable way to live.

Therefore: fuck this rotten, corrupt, worthless, parasitic family. Dump them back into the abyss of obscurity that they clearly fear beyond all else. Very few people in this world of nearly eight billion have shown themselves to be less worthy of your sympathy.
posted by flabdablet at 2:26 AM on November 19, 2020 [22 favorites]

She called me to pose in a photo spread for Sassy magazine because none of her usual group was available.

Sassy justice!
posted by flabdablet at 8:45 AM on November 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

i understand the feelings of everyone saying that we should ignore the trumps and forget them, but:

a) they're not going away--they've already metastasized
b) they are only the latest outbreak
c) how are we supposed to forget them, in the face of everything that has happened in the last four years? is that wise? is it the right thing to do?
posted by what does it eat, light? at 9:15 AM on November 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm not so much for the ignoring and the forgetting as the deliberate shunning.
posted by flabdablet at 9:29 AM on November 19, 2020 [5 favorites]

We ignored the Bush's and the worst we got is Jenna and Hoda in the morning.
posted by geoff. at 9:50 AM on November 19, 2020

I'll raise your deliberate shunning with actively destroying them (in court, in the public sphere, just wherever they try to insinuate themselves)
posted by wabbittwax at 9:54 AM on November 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

Ivanka is getting sucked into the investigation over Trump's taxes and she does not like it one bit.

Ivanka: "This is harassment pure and simple. This ‘inquiry’ by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage."

Donald is suspected of illegally transferring $747,622 in "consulting fees" to Ivanka at the same time she was also a direct employee of the Trump Organization. This could be similar to the illegal scheme that Donald's father Fred used to transfer wealth to his children to avoid gift and estate taxes.

The irony of it all is the only reason we know about this transfer because of the nepotism in which Ivanka got a job at the White House which required a financial disclosure. The New York Times had Donald's tax records which showed an anonymous consulting fee which is untraceable. But it turns out that Ivanka disclosed as income that exact same number. The transaction would have been untraceable if not for her job at the White House. Dumbass grifters.
posted by JackFlash at 10:58 AM on November 20, 2020 [9 favorites]

One time Ivanka Trump punched me in the face and it was awesome
posted by Jacen at 1:19 PM on November 20, 2020 [1 favorite]