FILE - In this March 17, 2017, file photo, Ivanka Trump arrives for news conference with President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP)
During an exclusive "CBS This Morning" interview, Gayle King asked Ivanka Trump if she was being “complicit” in her father’s administration.
It was a reference to a liberal charge about Ivanka’s role in her father’s White House. It was also the inspiration for an "Saturday Night Live" sketch featuring actress Scarlett Johansen as Ivanka selling a women’s fragrance called “Complicit”.
In response to Gayle King’s loaded question, Ivanka took a long pause and gave an elegant answer: “If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I’m complicit.”
During her father’s tumultuous campaign, and in the two short months of his presidency, Ivanka Trump has had a political crash course in what it’s like to walk in the high heel shoes of Republican women.
During her father’s tumultuous campaign, and in the two short months of his presidency, Ivanka Trump has had a political crash course in what it’s like to walk in the high heel shoes of Republican women.
She now knows what it feels like to have one’s life accomplishments dismissed, and your integrity, and morality questioned for being “complicit” in a conservative agenda because for liberals, to be a Republican is to be anti-woman. And to be pro-Trump, is to be a racist.
The feminist thought police will never forgive, and will therefore malign, any woman who didn’t fall for their election strategy of shaming women into voting for Hillary.
The liberal strategy for taking down the Trump family is the same one used against all Republicans: do not normalize them.
Though a registered Democrat prior to her father’s candidacy, the glamorous and unquestionably successful Ivanka has not been spared. You see, to normalize Donald Trump and his family is to normalize Republicans, and to normalize Republicans is to normalize our conservative ideas and give them a fair platform from which to be debated.
When the debate turns to ideas and results, conservatives often win. That’s why there is severe punishment in the powerful entertainment industry for anyone who even unwittingly normalizes President Trump.
Recall what happened when Jimmy Fallon asked to tousle then candidate Trump’s hair on the "Tonight Show." It was a lighthearted moment that humanized Trump.
His comedic peers, including fellow "SNL" alum, Tina Faye, viciously pounced to make a public lesson out of him, ensuring others do not dare to use their powerful media and cultural platforms to “normalize” Donald Trump.
Being turned into social pariahs must be especially painful for Ivanka who gracefully straddled the Hollywood and New York social scenes.
No one takes fashion cues from Chelsea or Hillary Clinton yet they both graced the cover of Vogue.
Ivanka and First Lady Melania, both towering former international models, have been banished from high end fashion magazine covers and the couture fashion runway world they once inhabited.
Marc Jacobs and other designers brag that they won't dress Melania. Dolce & Gabanna are under fire for having the gall to celebrate the first lady wearing their creations.
Ivanka, a fashion mogul in her own right, endured an embarrassing and unjust boycott of her own fashion empire.
For Ivanka, a role model for socially-conscious entreprenuership, the Nordstrom boycott and the expulsion from the Susan Sandberg/Mika Brzezinski professional women’s “empowerment club” is particularly cruel punishment.
After all, Ivanka took great pains to include the concerns of working women, especially professional working moms, in her fashion brand and corporate message.
On the campaign trail, she tirelessly took her message of female economic empowerment to minority entreprenuers and to the working class rural moms who turned out to see her in between their second shift.
In an interview with Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC, self-appointed feminist leader and founder of the “Women in the World Summit, Tina Brown, said that Ivanka, despite her efforts to prioritize female entreprenuership and put her political weight behind a national child-care policy in the White House, could not be a a credible feminist role-model because her father’s administration wants to cut funding to Planned Parenthood.
That sentiment must be exponentially heightened now that she is “complicit” in the successful nomination of Neil Gorsuch to replace conservative, pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia.
Last week, she was actually slapped down by online feminists for tweeting her support for equal pay for women.
It was an odd, if not revealing, lashing that proves what conservative women have always known about the so-called feminist movement – that it’s not really a women’s movement. It’s an abortion movement that masks as a women’s movement.
Anyone who threatens abortion, or who is “complicit” in challenging its legality or funding will be punished as a traitor to her gender and, if she’s a minority, to her race.
No matter how much good you do for women or their financial empowerment and independence, you will be shamed and exiled from the feminist club.
The question Republican women have is what will Ivanka do now that she knows what it’s like to walk in our shoes?
Will her ideas and politics evolve now that she is part of a Republican administration?
Will she use her powerful platform to win back the love of the elite, intolerant feminist mean girls who are hell-bent on destroying her father’s presidency? If she does, I predict that will be a fruitless endeavor.
Or will she choose to align herself more closely with the conservative red-state sisterhood that put her father in the Oval Office? These are women who truly admire Ivanka’s work ethic, business focus and commitment to her faith and family.
Conservative women have been quietly shaping their own brand of feminism, one that gives women more freedom to chart their course and define happiness and success on their own terms.
It’s a feminism that respects the consequential role of men and the dignity of women and their children, including those still growing in their mother's womb.
Though ignored and put down by the media and cultural elites, this is a powerful constituency, one in need of a voice and a champion.
Republicans once embraced and followed a former Democrat named Ronald Reagan.
Could the smart, polished and articulate Ivanka be the leader Republican women have been waiting for?
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