Star treats Trump children’s potential White House influence as breezy gossip

Please, Lisa Gutierrez and Kansas City Star, please never again write that Ivanka Trump is a “champion for working women.” She is not, she is not, she is not.

That ignorant assertion is one of the babbling points in Gutierrez’s sub-Us Weekly assembly today of breathless fun facts about the incoming first children. The story, inexplicably slotted under “Government & Politics” and given prominent placement on the paper’s homepage, is slugged “Big White House roles ahead? Here’s the 411 on Donald Trump’s three oldest children,” and it gathers links to various personality profiles while portraying the eldest offspring of the president-elect as just your average, politically wet-behind-the-ears heirs to a moneyed, tabloid-suckled family. 

The biggest problem with this grotesque approach, aside from its banality and its sloppiness (the first quote in the story comes from Liz Smith — in 2004), is that it helps fortify the mythology of the Trump White House as a nexus of happy disruption, presided over by breath-of-fresh-air outsiders. It normalizes the offensive and demonstrably false idea that Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump (along with Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband) are awesome bonus extensions of the Donald’s Make America Great Again brand, rather than unqualified garbage humans comfortable with sexual assault, anti-Semitism and white nationalism. 

Nothing about this family is normal. Nothing about the Trump brand is going to make anything great. There is nothing acceptable about three unelected Trumps acting as presidential advisers. 

So it’s not just dumb but also insulting that the Star has published this Chuck E. Cheese-grade interpretation of what is actually a consequential and unprecedented circumstance — the first family setting the table for a full-on kleptocracy — on the day the Electoral College rubber-stamps the whole mess. Here’s an alternative primer on the Trump children:

Donald Trump Jr. is horrible for democracy and/or America. 

Ivanka Trump is horrible for democracy and/or America.

Eric Trump is horrible for democracy and/or America.

Donald Trump Jr. is a horrible person.

Ivanka Trump is a horrible person.

Eric Trump is a horrible person.

Donald Trump Jr. mitigating factors: zero

Ivanka Trump mitigating factors: zero

Eric Trump mitigating factors: zero