Ivanka Trump is very concerned that the US may have a white supremacist problem. On Sunday, as the country reeled from two mass shootings that killed at least 31 people, she implored her fellow Americans not just to pray for the victims, but to “raise our voices in rejection of these heinous and cowardly acts of hate, terror and violence”. She further tweeted: “White supremacy, like all other forms of terrorism, is an evil that must be destroyed.”

I had to sit down in shock after reading that tweet. The unthinkable had happened; for the first time in my life, I agreed with Ivanka. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the first daughter for bravely pointing out the obvious: white supremacy is terrorism. I would also like to point out the obvious: if Ivanka gave a damn about the rise of white supremacy, she could stroll over to her father’s office and have a word with him. She might suggest, for example, that Trump stop using the term “invasion” to describe asylum seekers and migrants. She might suggest that he not refer to Mexicans as “rapists”. She might suggest that he stop telling congresswoman of colour to “go back” to their countries.

Parts of the media have been disgracefully squeamish about calling the president a racist, preferring to use weasel words such as “racially charged” to characterise his bigoted statements. It is increasingly difficult, however, to ignore the mounting evidence that Trump is a racist whose incessant inflammatory statements embolden dangerous white supremacists. The El Paso suspect is alleged to have posted a white nationalist manifesto on the far-right forum 8chan before Saturday’s attack; this manifesto, as has been pointed out, uses strikingly similar language to the president. As the Democratic presidential candidate and former El Paso congressman Beto O’Rourke said on Monday: “The president’s open racism is an invitation to violence … The action that follows cannot surprise us.”

It isn’t a stretch to say that Trump’s rhetoric helped inspire the shooting. He has blood on his hands. And it isn’t just the president who bears responsibility for enabling white supremacists; Ivanka has blood on her perfectly manicured hands, too. After all, she isn’t only the president’s daughter; she is his adviser – the only first daughter to have had an official office in the West Wing. She has thrust herself into governmental affairs in an unprecedented way. So, too, has her husband, Jared Kushner, who is busy interfering – sorry, “making peace”– in the Middle East with Trump’s blessing.

It is easy to laugh at her, to underestimate her, to dismiss her as a spoiled “shoe entrepreneur” who foolishly thinks she can talk policy with world leaders at the G20. But Ivanka isn’t merely overprivileged and underqualified; she is more insidious than that. She has helped sanitise and soften Trump’s presidency with her faux feminism and performative motherhood; she has given his crassness a veneer of respectability. She isn’t just a passive accomplice to his presidency; she is an active participant. Ivanka may condemn white supremacy in her tweets, but her actions tell another story. She has turned herself into a global representative of Trumpism and she must bear responsibility for what that entails. Unless she explicitly denounces her father’s racism, one must assume that she agrees with it.

•Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist