Presidential races

Ivanka Trump shows father’s softer side

Ivanka Trump sought to show a different side to her father on the final night of the Republican National Convention, introducing him as a compassionate fighter who would battle for his country as fiercely as he has for his family and businesses. 
 
Trump’s eldest daughter, a mother of three, also portrayed him as a man who cares about women and who would make equal pay a major goal of his administration.

{mosads}She said her father raised her and her siblings with “positive values and a strong ethical compass.”

“I have seen him fight for his family. I have seen him fight for his employees. I have seen him fight for his company. And now I am seeing him fight for his country,” Trump, 34, said.

Trump painted her dad as a fixer and a compassionate magnate, recalling how when she was a child he would often tear stories out of the newspaper about people who were down on their luck.

“He would talk to them and then draw upon his extensive network to find them a job or get them a break,” she said.

While sharp criticism of Donald Trump’s White House rival, Hillary Clinton, has dominated much of the past four days of the Republican convention, Ivanka Trump made no mention of the presumptive Democratic nominee. 

But one of her biggest applause lines of the night came when she took on an impassioned tone in a plea for equal pay for women.

“This has long been the philosophy of the Trump Organization,” Trump said of the company founded by her dad. “Women are paid equally for the work that we do. And when a woman becomes a mother, she is supported, not shut out.”

“Politicians talk about wage equality, but my father has made it a practice throughout his company throughout his entire career,” she said as the audience cheered, including her brothers, Eric and Donald Trump Jr.

Trump said her father “values talent” above race or gender

“He is colorblind and gender neutral. He hires the best person for the job — period,” she said.

“Words and promises, no matter how visionary they sound, will only get you so far,” Trump went on. “You’re not a builder unless you’ve got a building to show for it.”

Trump, daughter of her father’s first wife Ivana, has been a constant presence throughout the campaign, which has struggled among female voters.

She said the nominee is “incapable of thinking small.” 

As a kid, she said her father would tell her, “Ivanka, if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.” 

Praising him as “honest,” “real,” and an “optimist,” Trump said to applause: “When you have my father in your corner, you never again have to be worried about being let down.”