The latest in media sucking up: AP mounts a spirited defense of presidential nepotism

Rss@dailykos.com (laura Clawson) · Wednesday, April 26, 2017, 12:15 pm

The Associated Press offers up a pathetic defense of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s roles in Daddy’s White House: Nepotism was historically common. The examples offered of the 18 sons and 14 daughters or daughters-in-law who helped presidential fathers:

Martha Johnson, daughter of Andrew Johnson, lobbied members of Congress for appropriations and helped set protocols still used at the White House. Webb Hayes, son of Rutherford Hayes, "virtually ran the White House for his father," says Wead. John Eisenhower was a trusted adviser and protector of his father, Dwight Eisenhower. Anna Roosevelt went to Yalta to help with her father's meeting with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, Wead says.

Why, if you go back 65 years, you can find a clear example of a president’s child serving as an aide. Although John Eisenhower, at the time an experienced Army officer, was not tasked with his time’s equivalents to reaching peace in the Middle East, restructuring the federal government, and solving the opioid crisis. But still, if Rutherford Hayes—another popular vote loser!—had his son virtually run the White House, then Donald Trump is clearly on solid ground 140 years later. I don’t know why we’re even talking about the fact that the White House is now being virtually run by someone whose qualification is that he is a real estate heir who married a real estate heiress and hawker of branded products and sucked up to his father-in-law. Or the fact that the president’s daughter got approval for Chinese trademarks the same day she had dinner with the Chinese president. Seriously, though. Why would we talk about this when Martha Johnson did stuff?

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