Justin Trudeau Took Ivanka Trump to a Musical Her Father Should See Instead
Ivanka Trump with Justin Trudeau back in February, 2017.
By Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Bloomberg.
The timing could not have been more jarring for Ivanka Trump as she took her seat in row F next to Justin Trudeau at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater on West 45th Street in Manhattan on Wednesday evening. Her father, President Donald Trump, had left Washington earlier that afternoon to promote his agenda on the road, and so she did, too. A source close to the First Daughter said that they had struck up a friendship when the Canadian prime minister visited the White House last month, and that Ivanka had joined Trudeau at his invitation. The two attended a reception together beforehand, and he seated her next to himself and his wife up front near the stage.
They were there to see the new musical Come from Away, a story based in a small Canadian town that sheltered thousands of air travelers who had been diverted on September 11 and left without a place to go when the North American airspace was shut down. At a time when Muslim travelers were singled out, this Newfoundland town opened its arms to them. “The world gets to see what it is to lean on each other and be there for each other through the darkest times,” Trudeau said in brief remarks he made from the stage. Along with Ivanka, the audience was filled with 125 United Nations ambassadors, who had been invited to the show by the Canadian consulate general in New York. “It’s about friendship, as well.”
The inclusive message of Trudeau’s Canada could not have been more at odds with that of Donald Trump’s America. Ivanka, the source said, found the show’s message of acceptance very powerful. But as she clapped along, her father soaked in applause thousands of miles away in Nashville as he promoted the opposite, railing against a federal judge for striking down his revamped executive order banning immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and temporarily halting refugees from entering the U.S.
VIDEO: Donald Trump vs. Immigration
On Wednesday evening, the judge issued a temporary restraining order nationwide, blocking the ban, which was set to go into effect on Thursday. The ruling stated that Trump’s executive order—his second attempt to impose“extreme vetting” on predominantly Muslim travelers, after his first order was also halted by the courts—still discriminated on the basis of religion. The second try took Iraq off the original list of the banned countries, took out an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees, and removed portions about prioritizing religious minorities when deciding which refugees get to come into the U.S. It also clarified that immigrants with green cards and permanent visas are not impacted—an issue that created a great deal of turmoil the first time around. Still, immigrants from Syria, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, along with all refugees, would have been temporarily stopped from entering the country.
A “reasonable, objective observer—enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance—would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously neutral purpose,” the Hawaiian judge wrote in his opinion. He specifically cited past statements by the president himself, who had called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
The restraining order did not go over well with the president in Nashville, who called the decision an “unprecedented judicial overreach” and a threat to national security. “The order he blocked was a watered-down version of the first order that was also blocked by another judge and should have never been blocked to start with,” he said. “This new order was tailored to the dictates of the 9th Circuit's—in my opinion–flawed ruling. . . . And let me tell you something, I think we ought to go back to the first one and go all the way, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.”
Trump’s speech was hard to square with Trudeau’s sermon on the importance of “leaning on each other” in the “darkest of times,” which Trump’s daughter found so moving. That’s because the Trump administration has adopted the idea that in the darkest of times, America must turn inward—with trade, with jobs, with immigration, with refugees. Yet again, Ivanka Trump was caught somewhere in the middle.
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Ivanka and Tiffany Trump’s Half-Sister Act
A ringletted, towheaded, toddler Tiffany Trump drew both of her parents’ attention in New York City.
Photo: By Catherine McGann/Getty Images.
Ivanka with her father at the Plaza hotel, 1991.
Photo: BY RON GALELLA/WIREIMAGE.
Ivanka with Donald at a Beach Boys concert in Palm Beach, 1996.
Photo: FROM DAVIDOFF STUDIOS/GETTY IMAGES.
A six-year-old Tiffany Trump, with a cherry-red flamenco dress and gold fan, stood for a portrait at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach in 1999.
Photo: by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images.
Donald and Ivanka at a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, 2016.
Photo: BY SUZANNE KREITER/THE BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES.
Ivanka Trump and Tiffany trade whispers across their sister-in-law, Lara, in the audience at the Republican National Convention this summer in Cleveland.
Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop.
Tiffany Trump and Ivanka Trump outside the main doors of Donald Trump’s penthouse at Trump Tower, in Manhattan, 2014.
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A ringletted, towheaded, toddler Tiffany Trump drew both of her parents’ attention in New York City.
By Catherine McGann/Getty Images.
Ivanka with her father at the Plaza hotel, 1991.
BY RON GALELLA/WIREIMAGE.
Ivanka with Donald at a Beach Boys concert in Palm Beach, 1996.
FROM DAVIDOFF STUDIOS/GETTY IMAGES.
A six-year-old Tiffany Trump, with a cherry-red flamenco dress and gold fan, stood for a portrait at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach in 1999.
by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images.
Ivanka Trump, in a Canadian Tuxedo, spent Christmastime in Aspen with her father in 1990, where the two celebrated designer Dennis Bassos’s fur collection at the Little Nell.
From Getty Images.
A velvet-clad Ivanka Trump and her mother, Ivana, were all smiles on the Studio 54 dance floor.
by Ron Galella/WireImage.
The color-coordinated two sisters celebrate the season finale of their father’s hit reality show, The Apprentice.
By by Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic.
Tiffany on the runway during New York Fashion Week, 2016.
BY JACOPO RAULE/GETTY IMAGES.
Ivanka Trump joined her father and his then-girlfriend (and later, third wife), Melania, at the Met Ball in 2004. The annual gala’s theme that year: “Dangerous Liaisons.”
by Evan Agostini/Getty Images.
Tiffany Trump, her nearly invisible dress, and a friend posed for a selfie last summer at a benefit in the Hamptons.
From IZZY/WENN.com
Ivanka Trump gives her husband, Jared Kushner, a little squeeze after the White House Correspondence Dinner in 2012, four years before the couple set its sights on Washington.
Photograph by Justin Bishop.
After her father clinched the win for the presidency on Nov. 8, Tiffany Trump gave her father a kiss on stage at the New York Hilton.
By SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images.
Donald Trump patted his daughter’s baby bump at his victory rally in South Carolina, after he won the Republican primary in the state in February. Ivanka gave birth to her third child, Theodore, a month later.
By JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images.
Donald and Ivanka at a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, 2016.
BY SUZANNE KREITER/THE BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES.
Ivanka Trump and Tiffany trade whispers across their sister-in-law, Lara, in the audience at the Republican National Convention this summer in Cleveland.
Photograph by Justin Bishop.
Tiffany Trump and Ivanka Trump outside the main doors of Donald Trump’s penthouse at Trump Tower, in Manhattan, 2014.