News

Anger and disbelief at Ivanka Trump's 'tone deaf' advice to Americans who've been laid off

Anger and disbelief at Ivanka Trump's 'tone deaf' advice to Americans who've been laid off
Getty

How do you solve a problem like Ivanka Trump mass unemployment?

This is an issue the first daughter is thinking about a lot at the moment, given the US is facing the worst unemployment crisis in modern history.

Ivanka has now launched a new employment campaign, called… wait for it… “find something new”.

Wow, why didn’t anyone think of that?!

Aimed at helping the over 18 million (yes, that’s eighteen *million*) unemployed Americans find new careers, the initiative launched with a virtual roundtable hosted at the White House featuring Ivanka and business leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook.

During the snazzy launch, the first daughter said:

Now, as a result of Covid, people need to, unfortunately, in some cases learn a completely new skill.

But that is also an opportunity to be put on for a new trajectory for themselves and their lives and we want to facilitate that connection back to the workforce and make it as smooth as possible.

Obviously this campaign hasn’t exactly gone down so well on social media.

Perhaps it’s Ivanka’s own difficult career path of being steadily employed by her father than marrying a property mogul who allegedly bought his way into Harvard University that’s blinded her to reality, but this isn’t exactly an option that’s available to most people.

It’s true that Ivanka has had a lot of different jobs: a model, a clothing and footwear designer, a high-end jewellery designer, an author, and an executive at the Trump family hotel business, and now an adviser to the president.

But almost all of these were directly tied to her surname or family businesses. In fact, Ivanka launching a campaign about getting a job based on skills of any kind is about as tone-deaf as Melania’s campaign about online bullying.

People had no problem letting the first daughter know exactly what they think of "find something new".

Oh dear.

Maybe instead of this slogan Ivanka should... find something new?

The Conversation (0)