CLEVELAND ― Ivanka Trump on Thursday offered an inspiring and personal portrait of her father, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, at the Republican National Convention.
“My father taught us that potential vanishes into nothing without effort,” she said. “He taught us to work for the betterment of those around us.”
She also suggested he would adopt a number of positions traditionally backed by Democrats, including equal pay for women.
“As president, my father will change the labor laws that were put in place before women had joined the labor force,” she said. “Policies that allow women with children to thrive should be the norm.”
The crowd remained relatively quiet during those remarks.
Donald Trump’s eldest daughter is one of his closest advisers, and she and her husband, publisher Jared Kushner, have helped to steer the direction of Trump’s presidential campaign.
In her speech, she claimed her father backs equal pay for equal work, and said she would “fight for this, too, right alongside of him.” (Her father’s campaign, however, reportedly pays its male staffers 35 percent more than female staffers.)
Ivanka Trump’s speech was an attempt to defend her father against the critics who describe Trump as sexist. “He is colorblind and gender-neutral,” she said of the nominee, who has called women “pigs” and “dogs” in the past.
But according to Ivanka Trump, her father has “the kindness and compassion that will enable him to be the leader this country needs.”
In recent weeks, Ivanka Trump was instrumental in convincing her father to fire campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. A former New Hampshire political operative, Lewandowski formed a close personal bond with the nominee, but was a controversial and divisive figure within the campaign.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.