Ivanka and Jared: There Is No Hiding

Photo by Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress

President Donald Trump's outrageous and dangerous support of the Unite the Right rally that brought white supremacists and neo-Nazis together in Charlottesville, Virginia will help enrich his standing with the alt-right, while he secures his position as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. He has burdened our country with his betrayal of morality.

When chants of "Jews will not replace us" came out of the mouths of marching extremists who were carrying flaming torches and wearing swastikas and any other form of Nazi look-alike paraphernalia, shivers went down the spines of Jewish people across the country. Another group of armed neo-Nazis stood across the street from a synagogue chanting “Sieg Heil” as members of the Jewish community prayed inside during their Sabbath service. The President of the congregation, Alan Zimmerman, published a blog post recounting the fears and threats posed to those inside. The congregation had hired an armed security guard after Charlottesville police reportedly refused to provide the synagogue with a guard during the protests.

The August 12th rally tragically turned deadly when a man ran his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19 others. President Trump condemned the violence but refused to call out the white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups. His response was unconscionable:

“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

President Trump lived and built his business in the largest Jewish city in the world, New York City. The Trump-Kushner family are Jews. Ivanka went through a well publicized Orthodox conversion to Judaism before the couple married. The president’s grandchildren are Jewish.

But Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were silent as anti-Semitism and racism reared its ugly head in Charlottesville. They went away for the weekend. They hid, choosing to spend the time in a Vermont get-away. What would make them think that going away was the right thing to do when they knew what had been scheduled in Virginia? They had an opportunity to speak out strongly against what took place, but instead took the cowardly approach. 

I believe that Ivanka has probably learned to compartmentalize her life for the sake of parental love during a troubled childhood and her parent’s very public divorce. Over the years, no matter what, no matter how disgusting her father's behavior or remarks have been, Ivanka has stood at his side. And she did it once again after Charlottesville.

The ignorance of a father need not be reaped upon the daughter - unless the daughter so choses.

By Sunday morning August 13th, Ivanka tweeted, “There should be no place in society for racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazis.”

On Monday, Ivanka Trump went back to work as an aide to her father. Jared Kushner went back to work as an aide to his father-in-law.

A few hundred miles away another father - and mother mourned the death of their daughter, Heather Heyer, the young woman killed by an alleged neo-Nazi protester during the Charlottesville rally. Heather died standing up for what she believed.

Trump and Vacation Stress

Translation: Trump: six months of tumult for few results

I went on vacation to try and get away from it all, relax and refresh. It's something we all like to do, when possible, that's become a mixture of tradition and sometimes near necessity to break the daily stresses of life. I committed to not reading or sending emails on my phone while away with the decided form of communication being text to my son. I bought a good novel to read on the trip, with a plan to drift into another place for a couple of weeks. I think it's called escape. But my best efforts to do so were not foolproof. Arriving at the hotel in Paris, the second thing I saw after checking in at the front desk were newspapers and magazines graciously laid out for guests. Most of those publications had what appears below as a theme and variation:

The miles I flew may have been great, but nothing it seems could get me away from seeing Donald Trump on front pages. Or hearing continued talk of disbelief and concern at his behavior among people not just from France, but from too many other parts of the world. 

I returned home to find more Trump news involving North Korea threatening the U.S. and President Trump threatening North Korea. 

Which brings us to judgement. Can we trust our President's judgement? This is certainly a time when the world is watching and we would like to do so, but Trump lacks any kind of firm knowledge base of international affairs let alone diplomacy. What he does know how to do is bully anyone who attacks him while carelessly throwing around the weight of his words. Unfortunately for all of us, he's taken that behavior into the ring with North Korea leader Kim Jong-un. The North Korean leader is well known for using his own bully power whenever it suits him, even if that means killing off members of his own family, which he has repeatedly done. 

Hair trigger personalities and knee jerk reactions are the last thing the world needs when nuclear weapons are involved, and that's exactly where we appear to be right now. 

Kim Jong-un on Thursday said a plan is being prepared to fire four missiles near the US Pacific territory of Guam. Hours later President Trump responded at a news conference, doing nothing to calm the nerves of everybody watching: 

"If Kim Jong Un does something in Guam, it will be an event the likes of which nobody has seen before."

Threats and more threats. Somehow Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's comment one day ago telling Americans they "should sleep well at night" struck me as a weak Churchillian response to a concern that is keeping a lot of people awake at night.