Since Donald Trump announced his intent to save Chinese electronics maker ZTE, theories have abounded for exactly why the president suddenly felt the need to swoop in and save a company his Commerce Department had punished just a month prior for violating U.S. sanctions by doing business with Iran and North Korea. Perhaps, one of the more compelling hypotheses went, he suddenly realized that he needed China’s support for June’s on-again-off-again-on-again summit with Kim Jong Un. Or perhaps, catching wind that Beijing’s list of demands in its trade talks with the U.S. included calling off the ban on exports to ZTE, Trump, the world’s worst negotiator, responded “Sure!” Maybe letting the company off the hook was yet another opportunity to enrich himself. On Monday, however, a new theory emerged from a New York Times report: that in coddling ZTE, Daddy Trump was simply rewarding China for doing his favorite child/employee a very lucrative solid.

According to the Times, around the time Trump tweeted on Mother’s Day that he was working with President Xi Jinping to get ZTE “back into business, fast,” Ivanka Trump was granted “some long-sought trademarks covering her name in China.” Six days before the announcement, Beijing said it had approved five of Ivanka’s trademark applications; less than a week after, it granted her two more, giving her a total of 34 trademarks that allow her to cash in on her image, which is bizarrely popular in China. Experts mostly concluded that while the timing did not look great, it was most likely a coincidence (one that, of course, could have been avoided had the Trump family not entered the White House with conflicts of interest pouring out of their every orifice). Rather than being directly linked to the Trump’s reversal on ZTE, most noted that the situation was symptomatic of the broader issue of foreign governments doing favors benefitting the Trump clan’s far-reaching business interests in the hopes of getting on the president’s good side. “Some countries will no doubt see this as a way to curry favor with President Trump,” said ethics watchdogs Fred Wertheimer and Norman Eisen. “Other countries may see the business requests made by his daughter’s company as requests they cannot refuse.” (Abigail Klem, president of the Ivanka Trump brand, naturally suggested to the Times that applying for the trademarks was part of “the normal course of business” and that her boss, who stepped down to take a job in the White House but retained her stake in the company, was simply out to make a buck.)

All in all, it wasn’t the worst story the First Daughter has found herself involved in since her father moved into the White House—not by a long shot. But Princess Purses—whose company was also granted a bunch of Chinese trademarks in April 2017, on the same day she dined with President Xi at Mar-a-Lago—isn’t accustomed to explaining herself, or to answering questions that anyone working as a senior adviser to the president would expect to be confronted with. When the question of her company and ZTE came up during a call with reporters today, she found that she coincidentally had to dash:

On Tuesday, Ivanka tweeted a series of quotes, including a little-known passage about how to deal with haters (“3:3 Focus on what is before you, on what you can control and ignore the trolls!”). That was seemingly in response to the backlash she received after posting a photo of herself and her youngest son on the heels of reports about a new administration policy to separate undocumented immigrants from their children, but it could also presumably apply to anyone having the audacity to question her god-given right to profit off the presidency.

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