The most adorably noble statement of the week came from Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, shortly after it was revealed that retailer Nordstrom has decided to drop it. As Ivanka’s firm quavered: “We believe that the strength of a brand is measured not only by the profits it generates, but the integrity it maintains.” Yes, it has a dream that we will one day live in a nation where Ivanka Trump fine jewellery will be judged by the colour of its gemstones, not by the content of executive orders.

Alas, that shining citadel has yet to be reached. Whatever Nordstrom’s official excuse, it seems clear that we still inhabit a retail environment that prioritises fear of a mass boycott of its core business over a highly versatile blush suede pump. No one is more furious about it than Ivanka’s father himself, who promptly took to Twitter to find the words for an anguished nation. “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom,” whined the president of the United States of America. “She is a great person – always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”

Even worse, fumed some appalled commentators, was that this tweet was sent 21 minutes after the commencement of an intelligence briefing, according to the White House’s published schedule of the president’s engagements. However, their outrage feels misplaced. Surely this timing is preferable to any number of alternatives. In fact, how many more minor retail annoyances could be confected by firms which carry Trump family products, thereby staving off for as long as possible the moment he finally has nothing better to do but listen to his intelligence briefing and immediately start a war?

In the meantime, Ivanka does still have some enthusiastic sales reps. Appearing in the White House briefing room on Thursday, counsellor to the president Kellyanne Conway had a clear and present message to Fox News viewers: “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff! I’m going to give it a free commercial,” chirped the architect of the Bowling Green massacre, “go buy it today.”

At time of going to press, Nordstrom had yet to be nationalised. In fact, shares in the retailer took a slight dip in the wake of the presidential tweet, but then rallied and climbed, finishing up on Thursday. But for Ivanka, the news feels less positive, with mounting reports of retailers declining to reorder her lines, discounting them heavily, or – in the case of TJ Maxx – muddling remaining Ivanka stock in with other labels. Writing in the current London Review of Books, Sidney Blumenthal decided Ivanka was the Trump scion who most resembles Michael Corleone. It is Michael, of course, who promises his wife that, “In five years, the Corleone family will be completely legitimate”, and there does seem to be much of his inevitably doomed second-generation optimism in Ivanka. No doubt she has fantasised forward eight years and imagined the Trump brand as fully laundered, and herself the new head of a modern family business. Others, however, have gazed in a crystal ball and wondered whether there will be much call for ten-grand bangles, or even wrap dresses, when the Doomsday Clock is showing 12.01.

Perhaps this is why her stepmother’s team are trying a different revenue-gathering scheme. This week, Melania Trump’s attorneys refiled her suit against the Daily Mail for wrongly alleging that the first lady had once worked as an escort (the Mail has apologised), apparently seeking $150m for injury to retail opportunities. Unfavourable comment on this drew one attorney to clarify further. “The first lady has no intention of using her position for profit and will not do so,” Charles Harder, of the Beverly Hills-based firm Harder, Mirell & Abrams, said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is not a possibility. Any statements to the contrary are being misinterpreted.”

Mmm. Having conducted an exhaustive investigation into how this misinterpretation came about, Lost in Showbiz has concluded the confusion probably arose from the actual words actually written by Melania’s lawyers. To wit: “Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million-dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.” Said categories included – but were not limited to – “apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care and fragrance”.

Well now. To those of you who somehow imagined this implied Melania wished to make money out of her role, Lost in Showbiz has this to say: Fake interpretation! Fake reading! Even so, it would seem that at least one of the Trump ladies has worked out there may be less hope of making money from retail opportunities than there might be from retail opportunities denied.