Ivanka Trump Sits In for Her Father at G20 Meeting With World Leaders

Ivanka Trump listens as World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim speaks during the panel discussion “Launch Event Women’s Entrepreneur Finance Initiative” on the second day of the G-20 summit in Hamburg. (Patrik Stollarz/AFP via Getty Images)

President Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump has an expansive portfolio in her father’s administration. But on Saturday, she literally took his seat at the table at the Group of 20 summit.

The first daughter was spotted slipping into Trump’s seat at a working session on “Partnership with Africa, Migration and Health,” putting her shoulder to shoulder with British Prime Minister Theresa May. Russian President Vladimir Putin was sitting one seat down.

President’s daughter filling in at this AM’s #G20 – sitting next to Chinese President Xi (Photo/@LanaLukash) pic.twitter.com/kzl8eahobG

— West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) July 8, 2017

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And replaces Pres Trump at the #G20 table as he leaves for bilateral meetings pic.twitter.com/Hf1zfGQeIP

— Svetlana Lukash (@LanaLukash) July 8, 2017

Trump’s presence at the high-level table was somewhat unusual, given that government ministers or senior officials are typically the ones called to stand in for heads of state at such sessions. But she is both the president’s daughter and an unpaid “assistant to the president” who focuses on issues of women’s empowerment and workplace development, and she maintains broad influence in the administration.

She entered the session with her father but “briefly joined the main table when the President had to step out,” a spokesperson for the first daughter said.

It isn’t the first time Ivanka Trump has participated in high-level meetings at the summit. On Thursday night, she and her husband, Jared Kushner, another Trump adviser, joined the president at a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Kushner also participated in Trump’s bilateral meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Friday.

Asked about Ivanka Trump’s presence at the table on Saturday, Merkel did not weigh in on whether it was appropriate, but she said that the decisions about who sits at the table should be left to the American delegation.

“The delegations themselves decide, should the president not be present for a meeting, who will take the chair, and Ivanka Trump was part of the American delegation,” Merkel said at a press conference. “It is very well known that she works at the White House and that she is engaged in certain initiatives.”

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SOURCE: The Washington Post, Abby Phillip