During his presidency, Donald Trump wanted to appoint his daughter Ivanka as ambassador to the United Nations, but she chose to focus on job creation, claiming that she has employed millions of people.
The 2024 Republican presidential candidate made the bizarre remarks during a “fireside chat” in Washington on Friday night at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit that has led efforts to remove references to LGBTQ identity and structural racism from classrooms.
In a long, zigzagging and at times incoherent conversation, Trump bounced around a wide range of topics, including his parents’ marriage, Scotland, “The Apprentice,” Elon Musk (a “super genius”), the debates with Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and his upcoming showdown with rival Kamala Harris, whom he described as a “Marxist” and a “flawed human being.”
At one point, the 78-year-old Trump reflected on the career of his daughter Ivanka Trump, who served as a senior adviser in his early administration but has barely been seen on the campaign trail this time around, claiming that she had “made a lot of money” with her fashion line but gave it up to enter politics.
Trump recalled: “I said, ‘You’d be a great ambassador to the United Nations, you know, secretary-general of the United Nations. Nobody could ever match her. She may be my daughter, but nobody could ever match her. You know, with her crafty personality.’
“She said, ‘Dad, I don’t want to do that, I just want to help people find jobs.’ She went around. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but she went to big companies, like Walmart and Exxon, and hired people, and she hired millions while she was there.”
Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, who sat on stage with Trump, did not dispute his outlandish claims that Ivanka had the experience needed to work at the United Nations or that she was responsible for millions of jobs.
Justice repeatedly advocated for anti-transgender policies. Trump has argued that transgender women should not play in women’s sports and said they should be restricted from accessing gender-affirming medical care. She repeated the right-wing false claim that Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif is transgender, when in fact Khelif was assigned female at birth.
Trump went on to make a wildly misleading claim: “But the transgender issue is unbelievable. Think about it. Your kid goes to school, a few days later they have surgery and come home. The school decides what happens to your child, and 15 years later a lot of these kids are going to say what the hell happened, who did this to me, who did this to me? It’s unbelievable.”
“I fully support parental rights. I can’t even comprehend the concept of not having rights,” he said.
Trump added: “Parents really love their children… We’ve got to give parents their rights back.”
Trump also returned, often spontaneously, to his favorite topic: immigration. Regarding migrants illegally crossing the southern border, he said, “It’s madness. It’s poisoning our country. And your schools and your kids are suffering so much because they’re coming into your classrooms and they’re sick and they can’t speak English.”
The Republican candidate continued his lengthy defense of his recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery, which he has criticized for turning into a campaign photo opportunity. Trump claimed he went at the invitation of the families of 13 U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan, who asked to be photographed with him. One member of the audience shouted, “Mr. President, thank you for honoring our veterans!”
Trump has repeatedly blasted Biden and Harris over the Afghanistan withdrawal, saying “these people were killed by Biden, in my opinion” and slamming the “wokeness” in the military.
The conversation also gave Trump a rare opportunity to reflect on his life and career. He told the audience that his mother, Mary Ann MacLeod, was from Scotland. “Did you know that some of our greatest, wisest, most accomplished leaders have come from Scotland? At the very least, their parents came from Scotland. Scotland has been very successful in this country.”
She came to the United States and met his father, Fred, he continued. “They fell in love. They got married and were married for 65 years. That’s a long time. I said, ‘Dad, I can’t beat you.'” Trump is now in his third marriage.
The former president walked into a hotel ballroom, as he does for any rally, and stood to his feet, soaking up the applause and chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” blared over a loudspeaker.
Trump was trying to solidify the support and enthusiasm of a large portion of his base. Moms for Liberty’s more than 130,000 members are mostly conservatives who agree with Trump that parents should have more of a say in public education and that racial equity programs and transgender accommodations have no place in schools.
But Trump also risks alienating moderate voters who see Moms for Liberty as an extremist group, whose influence has been called into question in recent months after a series of embarrassing scandals and disappointing performances in local elections.
The group has also voiced its support for Project 2025, a radical Republican blueprint for the presidency that President Trump has repeatedly tried to distance himself from. Moms for Liberty sits on Project 2025’s advisory board, and the author of the document’s education chapter has presented a “strategy session” at the group’s rallies.
Paula Steiner, a Republican activist from Vienna, Virginia, said in an interview that Trump is “standing in the way” of further attacks on parental rights. “Tim Walz and Kamala Harris are going to do everything in their power to make America the most liberal country we’ve ever had,” she added. “They’re going to surpass the UK and other European countries.”