Politics - News Analysis

Ivanka Trump Called Out In India Over Tone Deaf Comments About Impoverished Teen

Ivanka Trump continues to display her shocking sense of entitlement, this time managing to anger many within a nation with 1.3 billion people.

A 15-year-old Indian girl carried a wounded or injured father roughly 750 miles on her bicycle – about 107 miles per day, to get him back to their village in the country. It was an act of desperation that Ivanka treated as almost a choice, a challenge. From Reuters:

“15 yr old Jyoti Kumari, carried her wounded father to their home village on the back of her bicycle covering +1,200 km over 7 days. This beautiful feat of endurance & love has captured the imagination of the Indian people and the cycling federation!” Ivanka, daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump, tweeted on Friday night.

“Beautiful”?

It is amazing, it is shocking, it is jaw-dropping. But in this day of airplanes, helicopters, trains, and cars, all of which Ivanka enjoys for her personal use, it is also a sign of humiliation for us as a world and India as a country. Rather than something beautiful, nor does it “capture the imagination” as if this was “quite an adventure.” It is a sign that there is something desperately wrong. My family does a 750-mile journey here in the U.S. in less than 10 hours twice a year. We are not rich. But compared to this girl, we certainly are. We know it and think about our daughters doing it, and cringe. It doesn’t “capture our imagination.” Ivanka just doesn’t “get it.”

“Cycling federation?” Even though local media in India said that the Indian cycling federation did offer to possibly train her afterward, that sounds like something that is done as an offer of charity, an offer to make up for the shame.

But opposition political figures, as well as some commentators, in the country of 1.3 billion said Jyoti’s desperate journey home because of a crippling transport shutdown was hardly something to celebrate.

Her poverty & desperation are being glorified as if Jyoti cycled 1,200 KM for the thrill of it. Government failed her, that’s hardly something to trumpet as an achievement,” Omar Abdullah, a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, tweeted on Saturday in response to Ivanka’s message.

And that is why the Indian cycling federation came with their offer. It is because they wanted to reward her courage and make-up for the nation’s failure. Ivanka cannot comprehend that life is terrifying for people forced to “bike” 750 miles to save a loved one. It is not “beautiful.” Ivanka likely spends $1,00o a month on her hair alone, one-tenth of that figure would have had that man at home safe in one day.

So Ivanka continues to humiliate us in many ways. We are led by a “First Family” that is so fundamentally incompetent, incapable, and uncaring, that they pat the poor on the head, “So beautiful! You need to be a cyclist!” and then go get her hair done or go golf at a “club” that probably charges $250 or more for a round.

The story is inspiring, but the appropriate response would be something akin to promising to talk to her father about working with India, and possibly a donation to the girl and others like her. Ivanka and Jared made a reported $82 million last year. If they could get by on $81 million, Ivanka could’ve made a massive difference for this girl, her father, and her village. It would also be a drop in the bucket, but some sort of sign that Ivanka gets it, and actually cares enough to do something besides “tweet.”

And she couldn’t even do that right.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom

meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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