Ivanka Trump’s White House blank check

Ivanka Trump is the eldest daughter of Donald Trump. And a senior adviser in his White House. And, according to her, she could have been the head of the World Bank, too.?

In an interview with the Associated Press in the Ivory Coast (she’s in Africa along with the head of USAID) Ivanka Trump said she talked to her father about the opening but decided against the job – preferring to stay on in her current role, which has a very fuzzy job description but puts her in the mix on virtually every issue that comes across her father’s desk.

Trump himself is effusive when talking about Ivanka. In a recent interview with The Atlantic, Trump says his eldest daughter “would’ve been great at the United Nations” and acknowledged that “I even thought of Ivanka for the World Bank. … She would’ve been great at that because she’s very good with numbers.”

But he didn’t stop there! “If she ever wanted to run for president, I think she’d be very, very hard to beat,” Trump predicted of Ivanka.

That’s not happening. Yet. (Ivanka told the AP that she does not see a run for elected office in her future.) But whatever Ivanka Trump winds up doing in the future when it comes to politics, the fact that her father basically sees her as a perfect fit for every position in government – including his own – is a telling window into a) how much power she has in this White House and b) how little Trump differentiates between his personal life and his day job.

To be clear: There is nothing wrong with being proud of your kids. (I brag on mine all the time.) But being proud of your kids and believing they can do anything they set their minds to is different than being the President of the United States and offering up key posts to one of your kids because “she’s very good with numbers.”?

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This is exactly the reason an anti-nepotism law was passed by Congress in the late 1960s?– after John F. Kennedy had named his brother, Bobby Kennedy, as attorney general. (How did Ivanka get around that law? Because it specifies that any relation can’t work in a federal agency – and the White House is not considered an agency.)

It’s been clear for a very long time that of the very small number of people the President listens to, his eldest daughter is at the top of that list. This latest revelation about her being offered the World Bank job makes clear she can basically do any job she wants to do in the White House – because, at least in part, she is the President’s daughter.

The Point: Related to the President or not, no adviser to the President should have carte blanche. And Ivanka looks like she’s pretty darn close to that status.