President Donald Trump considered naming his daughter Ivanka as head of the World Bank, he told The Atlantic in an interview published Friday. “She would’ve been great at that because she’s very good with numbers,” he said.
The head of the World Bank has far less work doing number calculations than understanding economic development and how to fight poverty. Leaders typically have decades of experience in economics, government or international development. The institution bankrolls projects and provides technical assistance around the world to serve its mission of ending extreme poverty and “promoting shared prosperity by fostering the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of every country.”
Ivanka Trump, 37, served as an executive in her father’s Trump Organization and launched a fashion and jewelry brand. She shuttered her company after Trump made her a White House adviser.
Trump told The Atlantic he also considered his daughter to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations, which he had previously revealed, claiming in a tweet last year that “everyone” wanted her to take the role.
“She would’ve been great at the United Nations,” Trump said, calling his jack-of-all-trades daughter a “natural diplomat.”
He also said that “if she ever wanted to run for president, I think she’d be very, very hard to beat.”
Trump didn’t put Ivanka’s name forward for U.N. ambassador because “if I did, they’d say nepotism, when it would’ve had nothing to do with nepotism. But she would’ve been incredible,” he added.
He said Ivanka has a “great calmness.” She “reacts very well — that’s usually a genetic thing, but it’s one of those things, nevertheless.”
The White House had previously said that Ivanka Trump was involved in the process to choose a new head of the World Bank, which traditionally goes to an American. But The Atlantic interview was the first time Trump publicly acknowledged that he was considering his daughter for the post.
The Financial Times reported in January, however, that Ivanka was a possibility to replace the outgoing World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, which didn’t go over particularly well.
The current World Bank president, David Malpass, who was nominated by Trump, was approved last week for the role. He’s a Trump supporter who has criticized China and called for a “shakeup of the world economic order,” Bloomberg reported. Malpass was undersecretary of international affairs at the Treasury Department under Trump and also served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
The profile of the first daughter — who did not agree to be interviewed for it — underscored what seems to be Trump’s fixation with Ivanka, whom he sometimes calls “Baby” at official appearances and considers his “heir apparent,” according to The Atlantic.