She’s ‘most powerful Jewish woman in US’ — but brand Ivanka is under threat

Pity Ivanka Trump for one moment. During her father’s recent Middle East trip she was described by the American news network CNN as “America’s most powerful Jewish woman” — a statement which may have come as a surprise to Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen and Facebook boss Sheryl Sandberg.

Barely 10 days later, however, the channel’s political analyst, Chris Cillizza, awarded the First Daughter — who Mr Trump appointed as an unpaid Assistant to the President in March — its “Worst Week in Washington” epithet. Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate change agreement, he opined, demonstrated Ms Trump’s “inability to deliver results”.

As part of her attempt to paint herself as the White House’s liberal conscience (a role for which there is precious little competition), Ms Trump has made great play of her concern about climate change. Even before Mr Trump’s inauguration, she engineered a number of media-friendly photo-ops. Former Vice President Al Gore, a long-standing environmentalist, met the president-elect and his daughter at Trump Tower. The pair also met Leonard DiCaprio and the actor presented Ms Trump with a copy of his documentary on global warming, Before The Flood. Over recent weeks, a series of well-placed leaks had Ms Trump placing “intense” pressure on the president to abandon his campaign pledge and stick with the Paris agreement.

All of this, however, proved to no avail. Last week, the president announced that it was the citizens of Pittsburgh not Paris who had elected him. In a camera shot at the Rose Garden ceremony was a beaming chief strategist Steve Bannon. Conspicuous by their absence, Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner, were conveniently at home celebrating Shavuot. For all their supposed moderating influence, “Javanka” have been repeatedly outmanoeuvred by Mr Bannon.