“Where is Ivanka Trump?”

That’s the question that has been asked lot in headlines and in social media posts over the past week. Amid the humanitarian crisis on the border, and after President Donald Trump issued racist tweets targeting four congresswomen of color, people wanted to know why Ivanka Trump, the supposed voice of compassion and moderation in the White House, had not spoken up.

Then on Wednesday night, the president stood silent for more than 10 seconds as the crowd at his rally in North Carolina chanted “send her back” to denounce Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. In the minds of “nervous Republicans,” and of Ivanka Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, things had finally gone too far, the New York Times reported.

That’s when Ivanka Trump decided to speak up — well sort of.

In a pattern that is known to journalists who cover Ivanka Trump, the first daughter and White House senior adviser expressed her concern to major news organizations — but only through leaks.

Per the New York Times:

“Mr. Trump’s inner circle immediately appreciated the gravity of the rally scene and quickly urged him to repudiate the chant. Ms. Trump, his elder daughter and senior adviser, spoke to the president about it on Thursday morning, the people familiar with the discussions said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.”

CBS News similarly reported: “President Trump took a lot of heat from his family over the racist chants at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday. He heard from first lady Melania Trump, his daughter Ivanka and Vice President Mike Pence.”

On Thursday, President Trump disavowed the “send her back” chant, said he was “not happy” about it, and claimed he tried to stop it, though video of Trump at the rally shows otherwise.

Perhaps Ivanka Trump is hoping that reports about her concern and displeasure — via “people familiar with the situation” and speaking anonymously — will show the U.S. public that she has “not disappeared from view,” as some say, when America is in the grips of an increasingly polarizing debate about race and immigration.

But if Ivanka Trump will only voice an opinion via leaks, she is reverting to a strategy she regularly employed during her father’s first year in office, according to Atlantic writer Elaina Plott. It was a strategy that she hoped would allow her “to have it both ways.”

“In the first year of her father’s administration, it was common to see anonymously sourced news reports detailing her distress following an especially unpopular decision by the president,” Plott reported. “Still other reports would explain her attempts to persuade her father to change course. Even if those attempts failed, a ‘source close to Ivanka’ was usually there to inform the public that she had tried.”

New York magazine writer Bridget Read likewise said that the former Manhattan socialite and one-time friend of the progressive elite became known for portraying herself as “Donald Trump’s voice of reason, explicitly or through carefully placed anonymous sources.”

After Ivanka Trump failed to persuade her father on several hot-button issues, including keeping the United States in the Paris climate change accord, those “anonymous sources” reports ebbed, Plott wrote.

The president’s close adviser instead adopted a “narrowly tailored portfolio” of “largely uncontroversial” initiatives — women’s empowerment and workforce development, Plott said. That way, she hoped she wouldn’t be expected to comment on matters “outside her purview.”

However, the edges of Ivanka Trump’s portfolio “become blurry” whenever “flashy opportunities arise” — such as when she had the chance to play diplomat at the G-20 summit or in her father’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Plott noted.

Over the past couple weeks, during the “most urgent crisis created by her father,” Ivanka Trump has been busy and visible — but only on her signature, “toothless” issues, Read said. She has been posting tweets that advocate for “working families” and “empowering women” by overcoming barriers “that inhibit women’s full and free participation in the global economy.”

The first daughter’s goal, according to Read, has been to use her silence on controversial issues in a “specific” and “self-preserving way,” so that “when (her father’s) presidency is over, she likely hopes she’ll be able to use it to maintain distance from the most shameful parts of his legacy.”

Still, Read said, Ivanka Trump can’t help but stay by her father’s side, always loyal and dutiful in public. Read quotes a White House official who told Plott: “Maybe she’s coming more to grips with the fact that she’s tied forever to everything that happens in there.”