Ivanka Trump's very high profile during Trump's trip to G-20, Koreas, has people puzzled, concerned, smirking

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner at the DMZ
(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

After Ivanka Trump returned from the North Korean side of the DMZ on Sunday, she pronounced the experience "surreal." Christopher Hill, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and a North Korea nuclear negotiator, had a different word for Trump's high-profile participation in her father President Trump's visit to the DMZ and the preceding Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan: "Increasingly problematic."

"It looks to the rest of the world like we have a kind of a constitutional monarchy," Hill told The Washington Post. "It says to our allies, to everyone we do business with, that the only people who matter are Trump and his family members." At the G-20 meeting, Ivanka Trump "was everywhere," her "hybrid and often inscrutable role" as stand-in first lady, quasi-diplomat, presidential daughter, and White House employee on full display for unknown reasons, the Post reports. And her presence at meetings sometimes "puzzled other participants."

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.