Ivanka Trump Reportedly Joined High-Level Nuclear Negotiations With North Korea
Ivanka Trump was mocked for tagging along to the G20 summit with her father, President Donald Trump, and a viral video showed her awkwardly trying to inject herself into conversations with world leaders, per The Inquisitr. Now, Business Insider reports that Ivanka, along with her husband and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, was present during top-level nuclear negotiations with North Korea during the president’s visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on Sunday.
The pair were reportedly present for meetings that included high-level conversations about nuclear weapons and sanctions in the Freedom House, which is located on the South Korean side of the DMZ. However, it’s not clear if they were present during the 50-minute-long private meeting between Trump and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un when they discussed North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
The Daily Beast reports that Garrett Marquis, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, highlighted the fact that Ivanka has participated in previous bilateral meetings, as well as on behalf of the White House at previous G20 summits.
“Issues of women’s empowerment are central to the president’s national security and women’s peace and security strategies,” he said.
But progressive firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was quick to take to Twitter to criticize Ivanka’s presence.
“It may be shocking to some, but being someone’s daughter actually isn’t a career qualification. It hurts our diplomatic standing when the President phones it in & the world moves on.”
Christopher Hill, a U.S. ambassador who oversaw U.S-North Korea negotiations under President George W. Bush, echoed Ocasio-Cortez in an interview with The Washington Post.
“It looks to the rest of the world like we have a kind of a constitutional monarchy.”
Ivanka Trump predicted that the Korean peninsula would enjoy a “golden era” if Kim Jong Un closes a deal with her father to relinquish his nuclear weapons https://t.co/E8nSiAe0B0
— Bloomberg (@business) June 30, 2019
Per The Inquisitr, South Korea’s President Moon Jae believes that the meeting between Trump and Jong Un marks an end to the hostility between South and North Korea and paves the way for peaceful times. Yahoo News reports that Jae said the meeting was the result of “the fruits of amazing imagination” and stemming from Trump’s “unprecedented” Twitter offer.
Despite the potential for positive relations, many experts remain skeptical as to whether the meeting and subsequent negotiations will be able to address the fundamental differences between Washington and Pyongyang, which led to the disintegration of the second Kim-Trump summit in Vietnam in February. As of now, the two countries are still officially at war, as no peace treaty has ended to the 1950-1953 Korean War. In addition, there are currently nearly 30,000 U.S. troops deployed near the North Korea-South Korea border.
