Ivanka Trump discusses being ‘competitive’ like her father in 2014
There is just a week left until Mr Trump is officially out of office, but there are fears he may use this time to “go out with a bang”. Tobias Ellwood, Chair of the Defence Select Committee, told Express.co.uk that Mr Trump likely has something “up his sleeve” and will not go quietly. Vice President Mike Pence has refused calls to invoke the 25th amendment and remove the President from office early.
Meanwhile, several Cabinet members have resigned following accusations Mr Trump incited the riot on Capitol Hill that saw four people die and many more injured.
Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka was a senior adviser to him throughout his term in office and is seen by some as a calming influence or stabiliser on her erratic father.
However, Mr Trump may have a tactic to sideline her after reportedly saying her decision to go to Mr Biden’s inauguration is the “worst decision she could ever make”.
It has been suggested that Mr Trump has previously kept Ivanka away from decision-making by timing his more extreme moves for a Saturday, when the First Daughter is observing the Sabbath.
Ivanka is a practicing Orthodox Jew, having converted when she married her husband Jared Kushner.
This means that between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday, the couple must observe the Sabbath, which includes not using technology, such as smartphones.
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Donald Trump may be planning to sideline his daughter Ivanka before Joe Biden’s inauguration (Image: GETTY)
Ivanka Trump is a senior adviser to the President (Image: GETTY)
Jared told Vogue in 2015 that he and his wife turn off their phones for the Sabbath.
For this reason, despite both Ivanka and Jared being senior advisers to the President, they are completely unreachable for 24 hours each week.
Mr Trump appears to have sneakily timed some of his most controversial outbursts for a Saturday when his daughter and son-in-law are not around to temper him.
A 2017 article in The Telegraph suggested that the President may be deliberately excluding them so he is given free reign.
This pattern started to appear right at the beginning of his presidency, when he sent out then-press secretary Sean Spicer to say the crowds at his inauguration were record-breaking, only for photos to later contradict this.
This infamous moment happened on a Saturday.
Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner at Hannukah Reception at the White House (Image: GETTY)
It was also a Saturday when Mr Trump baselessly accused Barack Obama of tapping his phones during the 2016 election.
Bizarrely, he followed up the allegation with a non sequitur about Arnold Schwarzenegger driving The Apprentice ratings into the ground.
Mr Trump also signed his controversial travel ban ‒ so-called ‘Muslim ban’ ‒ at 4:48pm on a Friday after Mr Kushner had already left the White House.
Even the TV show Saturday Night Live picked up on this running theme.
Alec Baldwin, who plays President Trump in the sketch show, once said: “When the Jews are away, the goys [non-Jews] will play.”
One of Mr Trump’s final days in office lands on a Saturday ‒ January 20.
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Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live (Image: GETTY)
If Mr Ellwood is correct and the President is indeed planning to “go out with bang”, he may well choose Saturday to make his move so that Ivanka and Jared don’t hold him back.
However, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, who oversaw Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism in 2009, dismissed the idea that Mr Trump times his more outrageous moments for the Sabbath.
He told Politico in 2017: “I think it’s a very foolish assumption to say that in some way, people in the Trump administration wait until the Sabbath so they can make decisions that otherwise other members of the Trump administration might weigh in on.”
He added: “The way in which I believe Jared Kushner and Ivanka observe the Sabbath is they observe it together with their children.
“They’re disconnected ‒ but anything could be discussed.”
He claimed Jared often travels with the President to Mar-a-Lago on weekends and there was no reason why they could not discuss matters of state, or Twitter, then.
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What’s more, Jared has broken with his normal Sabbath routine in the past.
In October 2016, after the ‘Access Hollywood’ video was released in which Mr Trump could be heard bragging about groping women, Mr Kushner went to Trump Tower to help deal with the crisis, although he did walk all the way there from his flat.
He and Ivanka also attended Mr Trump’s inaugural balls, all of which were held on a Friday night.
Rabbi Avidan Milevsky, the interim rabbi at Kesher Israel, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Georgetown, warned not to let this narrative slip into “blaming Jews” for Mr Trump’s behaviour.
He said the rules of the Sabbath are “not so black and white” and when it comes to work, it’s “a little bit of a grey area in terms of what’s permitted to be discussed”.
Ivanka’s rabbi, Haskel Lookstein speaking to members of the press (Image: GETTY)
He claimed it was a “dangerous misconception” to assume Ivanka and Jared are off the grid during Mr Trump’s most inflammatory moments.
He said: “It implies that anything disastrous is somehow indirectly to be blamed on Jared’s absence ‒ and by extension, the Jews.”
However, other rabbis took a harder line in what it means to observe the Sabbath.
Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, who ordained as a rabbi in 2011, said: “Discussion should not be about business-related matters.
“Don’t be in the room where business is taking place. Don’t put yourself in a position where you might violate a prohibition.”
He added that many observant Jews don’t even read the newspaper on the Sabbath, but admitted that Ivanka and Jared are in an unusual situation.
He said: “It is an extraordinary act to remain religious and have a job like that.”
NewsMax CEO Chris Ruddy, a Mar-a-Lago member and friend of Mr Trump’s, proposed another reason why the President makes a lot of statements on a Friday night or Saturday.
He said: “He understands the news cycle. It’s an opportunity to get news out on a Saturday, when other news organisations aren’t publishing too much.
“He realises that Saturday is a free media day for him.”