How do foreign leaders deal with First Daughter Ivanka Trump?
According to one anonymous diplomat quoted by Hindustan Times editor-in-chief Bobby Ghosh, the key is to flatter her and make her feel important — just as you would do with a visiting member of a royal family.
“We regard Ivanka Trump the way we do half-wit Saudi princes,” the diplomat told Ghosh. “It’s in our national interest to flatter them.”
The diplomat also told Ghosh that he found it “a shame” that the U.S. was now being ruled by what looked like a royal family — “but that is America’s shame, not Modi’s, or India’s.”
The reason for the diplomat’s frank language about Ivanka Trump is that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently invited her to his country to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit this fall — and this is apparently controversial because she is seen as someone who owes her success to nepotism, not entrepreneurship.
“Mr Modi’s invite to Ms Trump has generated a fair amount of unease because Ms Trump’s career credentials have almost entirely been built within her father’s business empire,” writes the Hindustan Times in an editorial. “But before criticizing Mr Modi’s decision, please do remember that Ms Trump is a senior adviser to the US president, Donald Trump. By inviting Ms Trump, Mr Modi is taking one for the team, and the nation.”