The Weaponized Nice of the Better-Behaved Trump
What Ivanka Trump's Diary of a CEO appearance should teach the left about persuasion
Donald Trump has made a career out of being an overly combative bull in a china shop, even to his supporters.
His older daughter, Ivanka Trump on the other hand has always been the better behaved, more elegant version.
But Ms. Trump – yes, that’s still her professional name – has always also known exactly what she was doing. Her father’s gut instincts in the moment have gotten polished in Ms. Trump. With a heavy dose of message discipline and a weaponization of nice you probably couldn’t pay her father to implement, even on a rested, hydrated, no Social Truth day.
All of that dangerous elegance is quietly and effectively on display in Ivanka’s April 8 conversation with Steven Bartlett on Diary of a CEO. This episode is a switch from our usual fare at UNASB, because Bartlett is not known as a right-wing podcaster. There is no verbal kayfabe on display, and guests have run the gamut from Brené Brown and Neil DeGrasse Tyson to Graham Hancock, who can best be described as a “pseudoarchaeologist.” Bartlett talks to anyone, with curiosity, without judgement – which is a thing that UNASB’s crew is learning to do – in order to understand and better engage with entire media bubbles and communities that wouldn’t ordinarily open up enough to have a conversation. In other words, Bartlett is doing what Democrats have, arguably, failed at over the last few years.
Which is how we get to nearly two full, seemingly eye-opening hours of conversation with Ms. Trump. Some details we learn about Ms.Trump:
She has warm memories of her grandmother, and still takes care of her. Which is deeply moving. Because you have to wonder at the heartbreak of a nonagenarian who outlived her daughter, Ivana, who died unexpectedly in 2022. Throughout human history, there are few, if any, words to describe parents who outlive their kids. Because it’s not the normal way of life, nor is it meant to be.
She never doubted that her parents loved her, even if they were not always present. And they often weren’t because both were building empires and that was just the deal. This is where the grandmother enters the picture – she stepped in to make sure a teenager actually got up before noon and ate a proper meal. It’s incredibly heartwarming.
She talks about living through her parents’ very public divorce, and being hounded by paparazzi on the way to school at the age of 9 – something no child should have to live through.
She has enormous admiration for her mother – who we forget was an athlete before she became the first of three Mrs. Trumps. As far as she is concerned her mother was a trailblazer who set the bar for motherhood, glamour, femininity, and grit in the face of a lot of mocking headlines.
As someone born into incredibly privileged circumstances, and with two famous headline-making parents, she is all about looking for the signal in the noise. There’s also an incredibly involved story about eagles and crows and shrugging off your haters (the crows) by simply flying so high that you lose them in sheer altitude (the soaring eagle). So in other words ::checks notes:: when they go low, she goes high?
She thinks her father has an authenticity that is hard to fake. That we’re just listening to the wrong things about him. And oh yes, she found out he was running for office two weeks before he announced.
Truly, you would have to be heartless to not appreciate all of the above, or soften at least a bit.
But we did say “seemingly,” yes?
The UNASB challenge was “if you know nothing about her, what would you come away with?” Well, if you didn’t know her, or about her, Ms. Trump is a polite, measured, rational, elegant – literally not a hair out of place, no make-up mussed despite two calls for tissue – scion of a famous family whose father just happened to be president twice, with everything that choice (thank you, 2016 Electoral College) says about American society. More importantly, she is someone who loves her family – a wife, a mother, a daughter robbed abruptly of her beloved mother, and a caring and caregiving grandchild. And, at least for the women in the audience, she is – despite a bit of the “poor little rich girl” flavor that pervades the conversation – utterly relatable on expectations. Chances are high she owns “underestimate me – that’ll be fun” merch, and you know what, not gonna argue with that.
If you truly knew not a thing about Ivanka or the Trumps, that is.
Because upon closer listening, unless you’ve truly been living under a very large, and truly sheltering flat rock – in which case, could we come join you, just for a bit? we’ll bring snacks and help with the laundry – it’s really hard to buy a lot of things that come out of the conversation.
She takes enormous pride in having passed multiple, incredibly important policies on child tax credits and human trafficking. Except of course it’s extremely unlikely she’d have come within any distance of serious policy were her father not president. That’s called Nepo Baby 101. And to not mention that even once, when she is fully aware of all else her upbringing and parentage affords her, is unconvincing at best.
Then there is the “sacrifice” she makes to close down her business in order to serve in the government. Um, that’s called ethics 101. Next.
Ms. Trump also remarks how becoming a mother and stepping into DC’s political world expanded her bubble and her mind. Except a couple of personal anecdotes suggest the bubble is still somewhat smaller than it could be, especially after sitting in the heart of international power.
She unironically talks about how her parents’ divorce was some of the biggest headlines in the world. Respectfully, no. No doubt that’s how it seemed to a 9-year-old. Understandably so. But “the world” is a big place, and between 1990 and 1992, the rest of the world, and indeed much of the US, was paying far more attention to any one of the following events: the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, the first Gulf War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the LA Riots. For grown-up Ivanka, post White House and two presidential inaugurations later to somehow not have gotten that is, at best, curious.
As she talks about parenting and being Donald Trump’s daughter, she mentions how he always made time for her. She has memories of him interrupting a meeting to talk to her, and then put her on speaker phone to brag about her and her grades. Which is cute, except for the weird invasion of a child’s privacy on speakerphone for the benefit of – what now feels like part and parcel of – Donald Trump, and his ability to make anything and everything about poor him. Again, as a parent of three young children, to still laugh that off is weird.
And finally, for someone who talks about authenticity, service, and sacrifice there is not one single mention of January 6. Or how she quietly chose to exit the scene after her father left the White House the first time, and has not gone back. And why should she? Her selfless move to shut down her business was never going to leave her without, and oh yes, there’s the matter of being married to Jared Kushner. Who also would have been absolutely nowhere near the policy, international diplomacy, or serving as Trump’s “special peace envoy” if he weren’t his son-in-law.
Guess we’re heartless monsters after all, for insisting on such details.
Side note: We’re not alone. The comments are FULL of what Bartlett doesn’t do.
No pushback, no hard questions, absolutely nothing about the big elephants in the room: January 6, corruption, policy by tweet in the first administration, unhinged Truth Social screeds in the current administration, the elevation of Trump into a “dear leader” figure and what any of that means for American democracy, and alarming and obvious senescence.
But in “letting the subject talk,” we learn a lot.
And that’s perhaps a really important lesson from the UNASB experiment: anyone on the Democratic side wondering how on earth we got to this juncture in our 250th year, could take a lesson in simply approaching the conversation with curiosity letting the person talk.
Would it make you grind your back teeth into dust in the process? Yes, probably. But the alternative is to not listen, not learn, and not see the patterns play out in real time. That is to our detriment on the left. And it’s why we continue to get caught by surprise when our talking points don’t land with voters – or for that matter Uncle Joe at Thanksgiving three weeks after an(y) election that didn’t go the way we wanted. In that, Ms. Trump does have one incredibly good point about tuning out the haters and the noise that any therapist has probably said at least once to their patient:
“You have a choice only in how you respond.”
I’m not one to believe that money buys happiness, but it sure has the ability to buy a more pleasant and well-provided luxury. For the rest of us, and apparently like Ms. Trump, there is only choosing in how we respond. That includes how we choose to listen to people who we share no common ground with, how we choose to employ curiosity over emotion, if for no other reason than to not be surprised again this November.
This graph is gold: "Because upon closer listening, unless you’ve truly been living under a very large, and truly sheltering flat rock – in which case, could we come join you, just for a bit? we’ll bring snacks and help with the laundry – it’s really hard to buy a lot of things that come out of the conversation."
Thank you for saying this so plainly because the watch was dystopian and propaganda levels of difficult to create coherence around.
thanks for the recap and for taking the time to review the comments. I agree Bartlett's curiosity is a genuine asset — until it isn't. Letting Ivanka claim credit for child tax credits and anti-trafficking work, without noting her father has cut funding for many children's programs, including domestic abuse programs and international trafficking prosecutions, isn't open-mindedness. It's a free promo. Journalists don't have to know everything. But they do have to ask something.
The UNASB challenge — what would you come away with if you knew nothing about her? — is exactly the right question, and this piece answers it honestly. Ivanka is formidable.
Your piece applauds Bartlett for "letting the subject talk" as a model for the left. Fair point. Kind of a problem today with MSM and all the Trump lies. Problem for Bartless is that listening without accountability isn't curiosity — it's complicity dressed up as open-mindedness. When Bartlett lets the trafficking or child care claims, let alone cuts to Medicaid to tens of millions of kids, go unchallenged, he's not modeling engagement. (I realize MSM has yet to come up with a model, either)
The comments noticed what Bartlett didn't. That's the tell. Good interviewers don't leave the accountability work to the comment section.