Ivanka, daughter of US President Donald Trump, is in India as head of the country’s delegation to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad.
New Delhi: Ivanka Trump’s visit to India has attracted a lot of attention – on conventional as well as social media. US President Donald Trump’s daughter is on a two-day visit to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad as leader of the country’s delegation, and has virtually been received like a state guest, meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
But Lydia Polgreen, Editor-in-Chief of the HuffingtonPost, called Ivanka “a real sphinx”.
Speaking to journalists at ThePrint office Tuesday, Polgreen said Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner had become outcasts since being given plum White House responsibilities when Trump Sr became President.
“If you read the stories in Politico and the New York Times and elsewhere, it seems that Ivanka and Jared are pretty miserable in Washington, because they find themselves cast out of the social circles that they used to enjoy,” Polgreen said.
She added that the Trumps’ “alignment with figures like Jeff Sessions, who is very anti-immigrant, anti-gay”, is something that disturbed people, which led to their being cast out of social circles.
Drawing a parallel with the political dynasties of the Indian subcontinent, Polgreen, the former editorial director of New York Times Global, said: “I am not a deeply partisan person, but it is breathtaking – the extent to which President Trump has inserted members of his family into these positions of extraordinary power. In the US, we have our own dynastic (politics) – but usually you have to earn it at the ballot box. It’s not like you’d get to just appoint your son or daughter into a position at the White House.”
She added: “On one level, she puts herself out there as this icon of a businesswoman who also has three young children, a major role in a large company (her father’s), and also started a business of her own. They (Ivanka and Jared) enjoyed access to the crème-de-la-crème of New York society when they lived there, and I understand that she and her husband were very friendly with Chelsea Clinton and her husband before the elections, and they moved in the same circles.”
Ivanka Trump delivered the keynote speech at the summit in Hyderabad Tuesday, and congratulated all the women entrepreneurs present. She noted that they would strive to ensure “women entrepreneurs have access to capital, access to networks and mentors, and access to equitable laws”. She also praised Modi, calling his rise from tea-seller to prime minister an “inspiration”.