Shortly after the shock election victory of Donald Trump, his eldest daughter, Ivanka, promised to 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl that she would not be joining her father’s administration. “I’m going to be a daughter,” the heiress insisted. By late March she had gone back on her word and, along with her husband Jared Kushner, officially taken a position within the Trump administration, and by late May softball interviews were being published in The New York Times alleging she’d be “a moderating force” on her notoriously unbalanced dad.
There was also a curious piece published in The New York Times in February crediting Ivanka and Jared with blocking President Trump’s proposed plan to roll back Obama-era workplace protections for LGBT people. (Trump repealed Obama’s executive order the following month.) A narrative had been planted in the media (by Ivanka? Jared?): Javanka were allies to the LGBT community, and could potentially thwart the president’s attempts at discrimination.
Well, in the wake of the executive order repeal, Trump’s Department of Justice arguing that LGBT discrimination is allowed under civil rights law, Trump’s nomination of the wildly anti-gay Sam Brownback as America’s ambassador at large for religious freedom, and the recent news that the commander-in-chief would be banning/expelling trans servicepeople from the military, Javanka’s supposed allyship doesn’t seem to be making a dent.
“Ivanka Trump: greatest disappointment so far,” said Bill Maher. “I mean, really, Ivanka? You couldn’t even stop the transgender in the military thing? I thought this was your area. She has no sway over daddy.”
The Real Time host confronted Ivanka—long believed to be her father’s favorite child, and one of the only people with his ear—on his late-night program about all of the anti-LGBT actions of the Trump administration, an administration she and her husband are a part of, as well as the following hypocritical tweet the day of the first total solar eclipse in 38 years:
“Well you know NASA, you mean the group that your father rejects their climate change studies?” offered Maher. “Because the eclipse… here’s the interesting thing about the eclipse: scientists predicted something would happen, and then it happened. They didn’t, like, take a poll, or go to a town hall and ask people if it was a hoax. They predicted it would happen, and it did. Could we apply that to anything else? Hmm…”
The HBO host’s implication was rather clear.