Ivanka Trump Brags About ‘Booming Economy’ In Visit To Area Of Kentucky Hit Hard By Job Losses And Poverty
Ivanka Trump may have picked the wrong time and the wrong place to brag about what she referred to as the nation’s “booming economy.”
The daughter of President Donald Trump and one of his top White House advisers was making a trip to Eastern Kentucky, where she visited workforce development programs including an advanced manufacturing training center. During the visit, Ivanka bragged that her father’s tax cuts were creating a “climate of optimism” and strong economic growth, Kentucky.com reported.
“This is a wonderful and hospitable climate for business,” Ivanka said of the region.
But as the Kentucky.com report noted, Eastern Kentucky has been spared the growth that the rest of the nation’s economy has seen. The coal industry — which Donald Trump promised to revive as one of the major stakes of his 2016 campaign — has seen sharp declines. The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet noted that coal jobs fell from 14,619 in 2011 to just 3,909 today, the report noted.
Unemployment in the Appalachian region of the state is two or even three times higher than the state average, and poverty is also rampant as well.
“Per capita market income in Appalachian Kentucky fell to $19,022 in 2016, compared to a national average that grew to $40,679, according to a recent report from the Appalachian Regional Commission,” the Kentucky.com report noted.
During my visit to 3 technical & vocational ed sites today, I was honored to meet students + workers benefitting from the robust skills training programs in Eastern Kentucky.
Kentuckians’ strong work ethic & entrepreneurial spirit is uplifting communities & inspiring the Country! pic.twitter.com/7Oafok3AqX— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) October 26, 2018
This is not the first time that Ivanka Trump has been accused of striking the wrong tone in a very public way. She has also been criticized for failing to reel in her father’s more controversial policies, including his administration’s decision to separate immigrant children from their parents at the U.S. border.
A number of Republican sources credited Ivanka with helping convince her father to reverse the policy, but others say that it was actually Donald Trump’s television habit that helped to change his mind.
“The President watches more cable news than most Americans. So he experienced an overdose of the outrage and the media frenzy,” an unnamed source who knows Trump told Axios’ Mike Allen (via People magazine).
“So he decided, mostly on his own rather than at the urging of the advisors, that some action was required to change the narrative.”
Amidst the crisis of Donald’s child separation policy, Ivanka Trump was also blasted as “tone deaf” for sharing a picture on social media of herself hugging her children at the same time that immigrant children were being taken from their parents and placed in detention centers.
