President Donald Trump’s insistence on running the country as if it were a family business continued Saturday when his daughter, Ivanka Trump, took his seat during a meeting of G20 leaders in Hamburg, Germany. When the U.S. president stepped away from a discussion for a bilateral meeting with his Indonesian counterpart, Ivanka Trump took his place. A photo posted on Twitter showed the 35-year-old unpaid adviser to the president sitting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and British Prime Minister Theresa May. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkey’s President Recip Tayyip Erdogan were also nearby.
Svetlana Lukash, the Russian sherpa to the G20, posted the photograph on Twitter showing Ivanka Trump next to the world leaders, which she subsequently deleted. A White House official confirmed Ivanka Trump sat in for her father. “Ivanka was sitting in the back and then briefly joined the main table when the president had to step out,” the official said. “When other leaders stepped out, their seats were also briefly filled by others.”
Yet it doesn’t seem like it was an isolated incident. Ivanka Trump reportedly took her father’s place at the table at least on two separate occasions Saturday, but didn’t speak, reports Bloomberg. A BBC correspondent covering the G20 summit said he could not recall a similar precedent of a family member taking over for a head of state. Even though leaders do have to step away sometimes, their absences are normally covered by high-ranking officials and not family members.
When she was asked about Ivanka Trump’s role, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the president’s daughter sometimes sits in on meetings if they relate to issues that are among her priorities. “She’s got her certain issues that she focuses on, and when those things come up, then that’s where she is and that’s what she likes to focus on,” Haley said in an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation that is scheduled to air on Sunday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was asked about the issue and said there was nothing necessarily strange about having Ivanka Trump sit in next to the world leaders. “The delegations themselves decide, should the president not be present for a meeting, who will then take over and sit in the chair,” Merkel said. “Ivanka Trump was part and parcel of the American delegation so that is something that other delegations also do. It’s very well known that she works at the White House and is also engaged in certain initiatives.”
The First Family pushed back against the outrage regarding Ivanka Trump’s role at the G20 with Donald Trump Jr. seemingly missing the point of the criticism and asking the “outraged left” if they would rather he sat in on the meeting instead.
