Not a Joke: Trump Was Going to Appoint Ivanka President of the World Bank Until Steven Mnuchin Intervened

Back in 2019, as only the patriarch of the world’s most delusional family could, Donald Trump told The Atlantic about all the jobs that he’d wanted to give his daughter Ivanka, ones for which she wasn’t even qualified to do an unpaid internship. Ambassador to the United Nations? Ivanka “would’ve been great,” just “incredible” at the job, Trump explained to reporter Elaina Plott. “I even thought of Ivanka for the World Bank,” he added. “She would’ve been great at that because she’s very good with numbers. She’s got a great calmness…I’ve seen her under tremendous stress and pressure. She reacts very well—that’s usually a genetic thing, but it’s one of those things, nevertheless. She’s got a tremendous presence when she walks into the room.”

At the time these asides just seemed like the typical pronouncements of a guy whose most dominant features are his pathological inability to ever tell the truth and his creepy obsession with his eldest daughter, which, just a few months later, would result in his boldly and insanely claiming she’d created 14 million jobs. But according to a new report, Trump was actually dead serious about naming Ivanka, of the Ivanka Trump clothing line, the president of the World Bank—and had to be stopped from doing so.

Per The Intercept:

In January 2019, Jim Yong Kim threw the global financial development sector into a state of disarray: The former academic and health official announced he would be stepping down the following month from his role as president of the World Bank, opting instead for a cushier gig at a Wall Street private-equity firm. For an institution that was already struggling with heightened competition from China and private capital, Kim’s departure—which came as a total surprise—was seen as a setback, as it handed an opportunity to choose a new leader to President Donald Trump, creating worries that the America First champion would pick somebody ill suited for the global role.

As the White House moved to select its new leader, one name very dear to Trump’s heart kept floating around: his daughter Ivanka Trump. That never came to fruition, though, with Ivanka later telling reporters that though her father had raised the subject, she declined to pursue the position as she was “happy with the work” she was doing as his senior adviser…. But two sources, not authorized to speak publicly, tell The Intercept the talk of Ivanka at the helm went far beyond the realm of Beltway chatter: Trump very much wanted Ivanka as World Bank president, and it was [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin who actually blocked her ascent to the leadership role.

“It came incredibly close to happening,” said one well-placed source.

Spokespeople for Mnuchin and Ivanka Trump did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment; neither did the World Bank or the Trump Organization. While she, miraculously, did not end up running the place, Ivanka did “aid” Mnuchin and then White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in selecting Kim’s successor, a job she was equally unqualified to perform.

Prior to her role as White House adviser, Ivanka spent 12 years at the Trump Organization as executive vice president of development and acquisitions. She also launched her own line of fashion products that, according to 2019 financial disclosures, reportedly brought in between $100,000 and $1,000,000 in rent or royalties.

Once in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Ivanka helped launch the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, colloquially known as the “Ivanka Fund”: a World Bank–supported project to raise money for female entrepreneurs in developing nations. It was her work on the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative that White House spokesperson Jessica Ditto cited in explaining Ivanka’s qualification for selecting the next World Bank leader. “She’s worked closely with the World Bank’s leadership for the past two years,” Ditto said.

But that initiative still left her pretty light on experience. “That’s a very thin base to try to establish credibility in this multilateral institution,” said Scott Morris, director of the U.S. development policy program at the Center for Global Development in D.C. “It’s hard to imagine that she would have been viewed as a credible leader. It would be the worst kind of exercise of U.S. power. I have to think as a candidate she would have encountered some resistance. But maybe [the bank’s members] would not have wanted to provoke the U.S. president.”