Ivanka Trump claims she doesn't 'voice dissent publicly' because that would mean she's 'not part of the team'

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published 14 September 2017

In an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday, first daughter Ivanka Trump effectively blamed her silence over her father's response to the violence last month in Charlottesville, Virginia, on her unwavering commitment to being a team player. "To voice dissent publicly would mean I'm not part of the team. When you're part of a team, you're part of a team," Trump said. "That doesn't mean everyone in the White House has homogeneous views — we don't, and I think that's good and healthy — but that doesn't mean we're publicly undermining [each other] and this administration."

Even behind closed doors, Trump, who is also a senior adviser to the president, claimed that it's "unrealistic" for people to expect she could change her father's mind on key issues. "That my presence in and of itself would carry so much weight with my father that he would abandon his core values and the agenda that the American people voted for when they elected him, it's not going to happen," Trump said. "To those critics, shy of turning my father into a liberal, I'd be a failure to them."

Notably, she didn't mention that time she reportedly heavily influenced her father's decision to bomb Syria in the wake of the country's chemical attack.