It was quite a show Friday at the Walmart Supercenter on Highway 80 in Mesquite as Ivanka Trump spent a couple of hours learning about Walmart's successful in-store training academies.

When she was out in the store, employees and customers crowded around with their shopping baskets to see the first daughter, whose official title is adviser to President Donald Trump. One of her main missions is to bring a spotlight to workforce development programs that prepare today's workers for the future.

But here among the people, she was just Ivanka. She's a hugger and cradled a few employees who had just talked about how Walmart gave them opportunities they didn't think they would have. Others were simply happy to see her in the store.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon was always at her side along with an entourage of Secret Service, Walmart public relations people and local media.

Trump's visit to Walmart followed a meeting last July when Walmart's executive vice president of people, Julie Murphy, represented the world's largest retailer at a meeting in Washington. Walmart and about a dozen companies, which has since grown to more than 100, promised to provide training and skills development to at least 1 million U.S. employees over the next five years.

Walmart plans to achieve that goal and then some. In February 2016, Walmart launched its training academies to serve a group of stores in each region. So far, Walmart has opened almost 200 academies and trained about 600,000 employees.

The event was tightly orchestrated. When Trump arrived, she stepped into a class that was already under way. From there, she entered a room where media was set up to watch her learn about the 2-year-old program from Murphy and a few other employees. A group of new store managers from North Texas Walmart stores looked on.

Trump even tried out a virtual reality headset that Walmart uses in some classes. Andy Trainor, senior director of academies, said virtual reality is used to instruct employees on a variety of store duties, including some things trainers would rather not intentionally replicate, such as a big food spill. Test scores rise about 10 percent after VR sets are used, Trainor said.

McMillon and Trump took no questions from reporters, or employees for that matter, even though Walmart has been actively lobbying the White House to limit items included in the latest round of tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods from China.

In a recent letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Walmart asked the White House to exempt Christmas lights, backpacks and vacuum cleaners, among other items. "The immediate impact will be to raise prices on consumers and tax American business and manufacturers," its letter said.

In a brief encounter, McMillon was asked by The News if he and Ivanka Trump talked about tariffs.

"We talked about a lot of things," he said, and declined to say more.

A question among the crowd was whether the first daughter had ever been to a Walmart. When asked loudly, she responded, "Yes, of course I have." It wasn't clear if she answered the follow-up question of where.

Twitter: @MariaHalkias