Helping to do bad things
Ivanka Trump sells clothes. That’s her job experience. She now officially works for the Trump administration, complete with a large office in the White House. She doesn’t know what the word “complicit” means.
In an interview with Gayle King on CBS, Ivanka Trump addressed critics who said she and her husband, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, are “complicit” with President Trump.
“I don’t know what it means to be complicit, but you know, I hope time will prove that I have done a good job, and much more importantly, that my father’s administration is the success that I know it will be,” she said.
“Success” at what? What does she mean by that? Success at throwing millions of people off health insurance? Success at making our air and water dirtier? Success at making it harder or impossible to get an abortion? Success at stirring up racism? Success at encouraging sexual assaults? Success at pretending to drive a big truck? Success at insulting journalists, politicians, activists, scholars, judges, immigrants, Democrats, women…?
Merriam-Webster stepped in to help.
https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster/status/849378025191997440
Ivanka Trump told King that in her case complicit could mean the following: “If being complicit is wanting to… be a force for good and to make a positive impact then I’m complicit,” she said.
That’s not what it means. And yes she is complicit.
Nobody knew it could be this complicicatered!
(I’ll check tomorrow if my neologism made it into Merriam-Webster!) ;-)
Since Jared Kushner has already indicated that showing Trump made money (in the year he leaked his one-page of tax returns) is the same as being successful, I suspect that “success” means getting richer, making more money for Trump enterprises, spreading the Trump brand around the world even more than it is already…putting up cheesy, overpriced hotels, covered in gold paint, in areas where most of the people couldn’t possibly think of going to a luxury hotel…success in putting his name on more casinos and golf courses…success in selling dresses for the Ivanka Trump brand…
I suspect they have little concept of success outside that narrow definition of “makes money”. They would find me very strange, because I consider myself a success even though I make only a college professor’s salary and do not have any particular fame…
If that is what she means – she’s as thick as her father. “Success” for a head of state is supposed to have some connection to the well-being of the country as a whole and the people who make it up. It is also explicitly not supposed to equate to the personal enrichment of said head of state.
So she probably doesn’t really mean that, for public consumption. (No doubt it’s exactly what she means in private, but this was very public.) She can’t really be that stupid, can she…?
“She can’t really be that stupid, can she…?”
Well, she had several weeks between when SNL aired the “Complicit” ad parody and this interview in which to, you know, look up the meaning of the word, yet apparently didn’t. Is that stupid, incurious, arrogant, or all three?
I am complicitly not surprised.
If I’m blonde and blue eyed (which I am) is it appropriate to say she’s a dumb blonde.
Oh look, there’s that word again: