Ivanka Trump Will Be At The Winter Olympics & Her Role Is Really Important
With less than a week to go before the start of the games' opening ceremony, it is now confirmed that Ivanka Trump will be at the Winter Olympics — and she'll be playing an important role. The first daughter and White House adviser will lead the delegation that will travel to PyeongChang, South Korea for the winter games on behalf of her father, President Donald Trump. More specifically, Ivanka Trump will lead the delegation at the PyeongChang Olympics' closing ceremony. She'll also attend other competitive events that involve Team USA, according to CNN, which cited a White House official in reporting the news.
Joining Ivanka Trump at the Winter Olympics will be Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence, who already began traveling to South Korea on Monday, Feb. 5, with stops in Alaska and Japan scheduled along the way. During the stop in Alaska, Vice President Pence described the purpose of the delegation that's being sent by the president to South Korea. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Pence said,
I'm traveling to the Olympics with my wife and with our delegation certainly to cheer on American athletes, but also quite frankly we're traveling to the Olympics to make sure that North Korea doesn't use the powerful symbolism and the backdrop of the Winter Olympics to paper over the truth about their regime — a regime that oppresses its own people, a regime that threatens nations around the world, a regime that continues its headlong rush to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and uses those to threaten its neighbors and even threaten the United States of America.
Pence also hinted on Monday that the U.S. delegation at the Winter Olympics could possibility meet with a delegation being sent to PyeongChang on behalf of North Korea.
"President Trump has said he always believes in talking, but I haven’t requested any meeting," said on Monday, per The New York Times. "But we’ll see what happens."
In other words, the purpose of the U.S. delegation at the Winter Olympics is about both sports and politics.
Ivanka Trump's imminent trip to South Korea for the 2018 Winter Olympics is just the latest example of her experiences working as a representative for President Trump.
During the G20 summit last July, the first daughter sat in for the president during a meeting of world leaders who gathered to discuss global economics.
Ivanka Trump also led a delegation at an entrepreneurial summit in India last November, where she trumpeted the value of empowering women in business. "Only when women are empowered to thrive will our families, our economies and our societies reach their fullest potential," Trump told her audience at the three-day summit in Hyderabad, India.
Ivanka has also traveled with the president to praise the outcomes of the GOP's tax legislation, and she has been involved with shaping certain parts of the White House's economic policy as well. Before the GOP tax bill passed through Congress, Trump worked with, among others, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) to expand the child tax credit.
On Sunday, Feb. 4, Politico reported that Rubio and Trump will be working together again, this time to help rally support for paid family leave. “That’s a new idea for Republicans who still identify it as something that comes out of the left,” Rubio told Politico, while discussing paid family leave. “Forcing companies to provide it is perhaps an idea that finds its genesis on the left, but the notion that pregnancy should not be a bankruptcy-eliciting event is one that I think all Americans should be supportive of.”
Ivanka Trump's trip to South Korea, where she will lead the group of officials representing the White House, is now just another piece of government experience to her name.
