Disloyal: Ivanka Trump Partied with Trump-Haters Prior to Inauguration

Introduction

Some have suggested that President Trump has elevated his daughter Ivanka Trump to a position of power inside the White House because of her “loyalty” to him, but based on the people she chose to surround herself with just prior to Trump taking office, her loyalty to her father seems suspect.

Multiple news sources reported that in January, shortly before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President, Ivanka Trump had a “secret dinner party” that was organized by her advisor Dina Powell. The guest list seems to not include a single person who supported her father during the election. Instead the list included people who didn’t merely support her father’s opponent Hillary Clinton during the election, but who actively and publicly insulted, demeaned, criticized and attacked her father both before and after his election.

Given Ivanka’s role in what The Populist has referred to as The Coup against the ideas that Donald Trump promised his supporters he believed and Ivanka’s role setting policy in the administration, it’s disturbing. Ivanka used the occasion not merely to have dinner with but to seek advice from the Trump haters. It also helps explain headlines like “Ivanka Trump influenced my father to launch Syria strikes, reveals brother Eric.”

Why would Ivanka Trump surround herself with a group of people who clearly loathe her father, the ideas he ran on and his supporters? Why seek counsel from those who worked to defeat and humiliate Donald Trump? As the Los Angeles Time reported:

It looks like Ivanka is trying to regain the respect of the Democrats and independents with whom she socialized for much of her adult life. People working with her and her husband have leaked reports about how they are persuading the president not to revoke protection for the LGBT community or to completely defund Planned Parenthood.

During the transition, she helped bring former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore to Trump Tower to brief her father, a skeptic about climate change, and floated the idea of becoming a climate czar within the administration. She is now focused on child care and maternity leave, an issue historically championed by Democrats.

“She is very well-versed in the issues, thoughtful and sincere,” said Sheila Marcelo, the chief executive of Care.com, who attended a dinner party in January at the home of Wendi Deng at which Ivanka Trump solicited ideas from business executives, many of whom had been fundraising for Hillary Clinton during the campaign.

First, we’ll look at the stories about party and then go through the attendees and what they’ve said about Donald Trump and the ideas he espoused during the election.

Donald Trump is known to prize loyalty, but this trait does not seem to have been passed on to either his daughter nor her close advisor Dina Powell, who has risen quickly in the administration and put together the event. Powell was made deputy defense advisor shortly before Donald Trump ordered a missile strike on Syria.

It’s hard to grasp why she or Ivanka surround Ivanka with people so hostile to the agenda that got her father elected…until you look at the details about Dina Powell, her Goldman Sachs colleague Gary Cohn or The Coup they’ve undertaken.

The Stories

Ivanka Trump dines with female media personalities and executives ahead of move to Washington

The private gathering was organized by Dina Powell, a longtime Goldman Sachs executive who has been advising Ivanka Trump and this week announced she would be leaving the financial firm to take a job in the White House as an assistant to the president and senior counselor for economic initiatives. Ivanka Trump was instrumental in recruiting her to the new administration, an aide said.

The group, according to one attendee, included Tina Brown, the longtime journalist and magazine editor; Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”; Tory Burch, the fashion designer behind the eponymous brand; model Christy Turlington Burns; Ursula Burns, chair of Xerox; Cathy Engelbert, chief executive of Deloitte; Nancy Gibbs, managing editor of Time magazine; Cindi Leive, editor of Glamour; Dana Perino, former White House press secretary; Ginni Rometty, head of IBM; and Pattie Sellers, executive director of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summits.

Two men — Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans, and Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation — also attended. Morial and Rometty seemed to have the seats of honor, on either side of Ivanka Trump.

Ivanka Trump Threw a Secret Dinner Party at Wendi Murdoch’s Apartment

the guest list was comprised of “IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Deloitte CEO Cathy Engelbert, Xerox chairman Ursula Burns, Tory Burch, Mika Brzezinski, Tina Brown, Christy Turlington Burns, Time editor Nancy Gibbs, Ford Foundation president Darren Walker, National Urban League CEO Marc Morial, and Goldman Sachs partner Dina Powell.” Powell has been lured away from her gig at Goldman Sachs to work as an assistant to Donald Trump, as well as a “senior counselor for economic initiatives.”

Sellers added, “Trump explained that she wanted to learn from the efforts of leaders in their fields. We talked about entrepreneurship, equal pay, paid leave, and a lot about where the Donald Trump Administration may have the most opportunity: education.”

Ivanka Trump lays groundwork for policy role in Washington

On Thursday, she attended a dinner with female executives at the home of her friend Wendi Deng, ex-wife of media executive Rubert Murdoch. The dinner was put together by Dina Powell, a Goldman Sachs partner who is joining the Trump administration as an assistant to the president and senior counselor for economic initiatives. Powell has been advising Ivanka Trump and is expected to continue working closely with her.

Other guests included MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, model Christy Turlington Burns, former White House press secretary Dana Perino, Xerox Chairperson Ursula Burns, Deloitte CEO Cathy Engelbert, Glamour Editor-in-Chief Cynthia Leive and Time Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs. Another attendee, Pattie Sellers, executive director of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summits, wrote on Fortune.com that Ivanka Trump “explained that she wanted to learn from the efforts of leaders in their fields.”

Also there was Sheila Marcelo, founder of www.care.com, a website that connects families with caregivers, said an attendee who spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a private dinner. Marcelo spoke about the high cost of caregiving, both for children and adult family members.

Disloyal: Ivanka Trump Partied with Trump-Haters Prior to Inauguration