Samantha Bee turned her attention to the woman she dubbed the “nicest, smartest, best-smelling Trump” on Wednesday, in a segment that must have been devastating to Tiffany Trump. That’s right: Ivanka Trump, having gone from heiress to businesswoman to ersatz first lady, has earned a place right next to Anita Bryant in Bee’s “Great Feminists in Feminism Herstory Hall of Lady Fame.” Using Adam Davidson’s New Yorker article about the Trump family’s shady dealings in Azerbaijan as a jumping off point, Bee makes the case that, regardless of the overtures she makes to feminists or environmentalists, Ivanka Trump is her father’s daughter.
Which raises the question of why so many mostly reasonable people still hold out hope that she’s secretly leading the resistance from inside her father’s Death Star. This is easy enough to refute simply by looking at Trump’s record: His policies couldn’t possibly be any worse, which means it’s impossible that Ivanka made them any better. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s followed empowerment feminism, a philosophy whose alliance with capitalism means its support of women stops the second rich people start getting uncomfortable. Or as Bee puts it, Ivanka “pushes #WomenWhoWork, but not in, like, a pushy, cunty way that would alienate social conservatives.” It seems like pretty good preparation for her current job, which, as Bee ably documents, is pushing Donald Trump’s punishingly racist, sexist, and anti-poor policies, but not in, like, a badly dressed, Southern accent way that would alienate social liberals. Nice work, if you can get it.
