Ivanka Trump participates in a presentation ceremony of The
Collar of Abdulaziz Al Saud Medal to President Trump at the Royal
Court Palace on Saturday in Riyadh.
Evan Vucci/AP
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will donate a combined
$100 million to a World Bank fund for women entrepreneurs that was
the brainchild of Ivanka Trump.
The announcement by World Bank President Jim Young Kim came
during a visit to Saudi Arabia by President Trump, who was
accompanied by his wife, Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law,
Jared Kushner.
“We thought it was a fantastic idea,” Kim said. “But we had no
idea how quickly this would build. This is really a stunning
achievement. I’ve never seen anything come together so quickly, and
I really have to say that Ivanka’s leadership has been tremendous.”
The money will help kick off a $1 billion women’s empowerment fund
that the World Bank will announce in July, he said.
The UAE’s U.S. ambassador, Yousef Al Otaiba, said in a statement
that the promised donation reflects “our commitment to empowering
women in our region and builds on the progress we have made in our
country, where women play a role in every segment of society.”
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Trump often excoriated the Clinton Foundation
The donation raised some eyebrows, since candidate Trump
regularly excoriated the Clinton Foundation for accepting donations
from repressive Middle East regimes such as Saudi Arabia.
USA Today quoted a June 2016 Facebook posting in which Trump
said, “Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast
amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and
to kill gays. Hillary must return all money from such
countries!”
During an October debate, Trump also told Democratic nominee
Hillary Clinton, “Saudi Arabia giving $25 million, Qatar, all of
these countries. You talk about women and women’s rights? So these
are people that push gays off business – off buildings. These are
people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take
their money.”
The World Bank fund, which provides technical help and
investment funding for women business owners, differs from the
Clinton Foundation in some significant ways. While Ivanka Trump
proposed the idea along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, she
is not involved with its operation.
Donations need to be strictly vetted
Norm Eisen, former ethics official for the Obama Administration
and a regular critic of the Trump family’s conflicts of interest,
noted in an email to NPR, “In my view foreign government donations
to a fund run by a reputable international organization like the
World Bank for a good cause are generally acceptable.”
But Eisen said the donations need to be strictly vetted and must
be transparent.
“Based on what we know, there’s no reason to believe that those
two things did not happen. That said, the hypocrisy is concerning,
and the general miasma of corruption that surrounds all things
Trump suggests some extra scrutiny here,” he added.
“I don’t see this fund as a big problem if she does not solicit
[donations] and it is entirely World Bank run,” said Richard
Painter, former ethics adviser to the George W. Bush
administration.
“But the Saudis could try letting women drive cars too. That
would be good for entrepreneurship,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Ivanka Trump met with a group of elite Saudi
women at Tuwaiq Palace in Riyadh, where she largely avoided sharp
criticism of the country’s treatment of women.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done” to empower women in
both Saudi Arabia and the United States, she said.