The president-elect and his daughter Ivanka met with Al Gore today:
President-elect Donald Trump met on Monday with Al Gore -- one of the most vocal advocates of fighting climate change.
Before the meeting, Trump spokesman Jason Miller told reporters on a daily briefing call that Gore would meet with Ivanka Trump, the President-elect's daughter, about climate issues, but he did not know what specifically was on the agenda. He had also said the former Democratic vice president would not meet with Trump himself.
But Gore told reporters after the meeting that he met with Trump himself after seeing Ivanka.
"I had a lengthy and very productive session with the President-elect," Gore said, according to the pool report. "It was a sincere search for areas of common ground. I had a meeting beforehand with Ivanka Trump. The bulk of the time was with the President-elect, Donald Trump. I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and I'm just going to leave it at that."
Allahpundit at the right-wing site Hot Air finds this curious:
It’s not surprising that young urban liberal Ivanka Trump would want to pick Al Gore’s brain on his and the left’s pet issue. What’s surprising is that the transition team would announce it publicly. Why do that? Why didn’t she just call Gore? A showy meeting with him will only annoy right-wingers, and Trump himself usually doesn’t seem to care much about impressing the left, to his credit.
He comes to essentially the same conclusion I did:
The announcement feels less like something done at Trump’s behest than done at Ivanka’s behest, to signal to her political and social circles that she may be part of Team Trump but she’s not wavering in her own views.... The Trumps are all about branding. Ivanka’s making sure her brand remains somewhat distinct from her father’s.
I'd say she's trying to ensure that she remains in the good graces of her customers -- both the merchants who carry her products and the ultimate purchasers, many of whom don't like her father. And she has some reasons to worry. A boycott of her products began last month:
... technology-and-media-marketing specialist Shannon Coulter created the hashtag #GrabYourWallet to encourage consumers to boycott businesses that carry Ivanka Trump’s clothing and accessories lines....
An updated spreadsheet has been circulating on Twitter listing the retailers that do business with the Trump family, along with contact information their customer-relations departments. These include major retailers like Amazon, Macy’s, Marshalls, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, and Lord and Taylor, all of which carry the Ivanka Trump collection....
#GrabYourWallet saw its first victory a few days ago, when Shoes.com became the first retailer to dump Trump products as a result of the boycott.
You can see the spreadsheet at grabyourwallet.org. Coulter (@shannoncoulter) has 28,000 followers on Twitter.
And over the weekend the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times reported on how Ivanka is navigating the process of being the daughter of sexist wingnut bigot president-elect. It's not all going smoothly:
Last month, artists like Dan Colen and Nate Lowman, both of whose works Ms. Trump has collected, lent their names in support of a “Dear Ivanka” open letter, one that included statements like “I’m black and I’m afraid of Jeff Sessions” and “My mom is going to be deported,” but that also said, “We wanted to appeal to your rationality and your commitment to protecting the rights of all Americans, especially women and children.” The two were among the 200 or so attendees Monday night at a protest outside the Puck Building, which Mr. Kushner owns and where the couple has an apartment....
“I think it’s delusional to believe there’s any difference between Mr. Trump and his children on any of his extreme positions,” [Barry] Diller, a Clinton donor in the 2016 campaign, wrote in a recent email. “They’ve had every opportunity to publicly modify them and have not done so.” ...
In Aspen, Colo., at the annual Weekend With Charlie Rose conference in September, Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner, her husband, joined the likes of Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Ari Emanuel and Jeffrey Katzenberg at a dinner in the dining room of the Hotel Jerome.
Hasan Minhaj, 31, the popular “Daily Show” comedian, was the entertainer at a Thursday night dinner and gently ribbed some of the more exalted guests about their wealth and power.
But his digs went deeper when Mr. Minhaj, whose parents emigrated from India to the United States shortly before he was born, turned to Ms. Trump.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked, his tone suggesting others in the room were asking the same question. Listing Mr. Trump’s attacks on Muslims, like suggesting that they should be barred from entering the country, Mr. Minhaj implored Ms. Trump to stop abetting her father, and then closed with a sharp-edged joke.
“At the end of the day, your dad wants to deport my dad,” he said.
Ms. Trump sat there, Mr. Minhaj said, “looking uncomfortable.”
Ivanka has claimed that she wants to make climate change one of her "signature issues." She had a well-publicized meeting with Leonardo DiCaprio in which he gave her a copy of a climate change documentary he made.
It's all branding. But today's meeting was Ivanka Trump branding as part of the presidential transition effort. It's no different from Papa Donald chatting about hotels in what's supposed to be a discussion with foreign leaders or diplomats. The Trumps never stop doing business. This was more of that.
What I can't figure out is why Daddy Donald met with Gore. He does like us to think that even his enemies feel the need to pay court to him (see: Mitt Romney). And maybe someone on his team felt he should give cover to what was, in effect, a business meeting at the unofficial transition headquarters. Or maybe Big Poppa doesn't want his base to think that his liberal daughter and the evil "Algore" are conniving to ban internal combustion engines behind his back. Beyond that, I'm drawing a blank.
Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog
