Donald Trump Wanted Ivanka As World Bank President, ‘She’s Very Good With Numbers,’ He Tells ‘Atlantic’
In a new interview published Friday, President Donald Trump said that he considered appointing his own daughter, 37-year-old Ivanka Trump, to lead the World Bank because “she’s very good with numbers.” The World Bank was created in 1944 to help rebuild Europe after World War II and currently has 189 member countries as it has continued its role in shaping the world economy, according to the financial site Investopedia.
Though Ivanka Trump now serves as a White House adviser, she has no banking or financial industry experience. Instead, before joining the White House, she operated a “lifestyle brand,” at which “she worked relentlessly at ‘cultivating authenticity,’ as she put it,” according to the profile published in The Atlantic Monthly online.
But Trump also described his daughter as possessing “great calmness,” a supposed attribute for which he credited himself, telling The Atlantic, “that’s usually a genetic thing.” He also claimed that in her White House position, Ivanka Trump has “created millions of jobs.”
As Atlantic reporter Elaina Plott noted, Trump’s claim that his daughter created “million of jobs” is flatly untrue. Nonetheless, Trump said that he also considered nominating his daughter to serve as United States ambassador to the United Nations, saying, “she’s a natural diplomat.”
Trump ultimately nominated David Malpass, 63, the Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in Trump’s administration, to lead the World Bank. Malpass took office on Tuesday of this week, The New York Times reported.
Asked by Plott why he did not nominate his daughter to either position for which he said he considered her, Trump claimed, “If I did, they’d say nepotism, when it would’ve had nothing to do with nepotism.”
The word “nepotism” is defined by Vocabulary.com as “favoritism shown to relatives or close friends by those in power (as by giving them jobs).”
Trump also praised his other four children, citing son Donald Jr. as “enjoying politics; actually, it’s very good,” and praising his second son Eric Trump for running the Trump family business. He also added that Tiffany Trump, his daughter by second wife Marla Maples, is “doing extremely well,” while Barron Trump, his 13-year-old son by his current wife Melania Knauss Trump, is “young, but he’s got wonderful potential,” as quoted by The Washington Post.
The Atlantic article contained additional details about Ivanka Trump’s daily life, noting that she lives with her husband Jared Kushner in a 6,870-square-foot colonial mansion in the elite Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Kalorama, which according to Town and Country Magazine is also home to Barack and Michelle Obama as well as Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
