Ivanka Trump’s bizarre Goya tweet inspires a hearty serving of memes

By Joe Berkowitz

It’s a distant memory now, but at one point, long ago, Ivanka was poised to be the Good Trump.

She had ridden a wave of girlboss-style feminism to prominence and was tipped to be a countervailing force for reason and sanity in her father’s chaotic administration.

That idea was rather short-lived.

From pursuits to actively profit off of her position in the White House to the vast and sundry list of the president’s behaviors she’s tacitly cosigned by not speaking out against (basically, all of them), Ivanka is every bit the Trump. She’s proven as much, yet again, by using her perch to promote a brand that recently praised the White House.

Last week, Goya CEO Robert Unanue praised Donald Trump during one of those now somehow normal White House events in which CEOs praise the president at the White House. Instantly, the hashtag #boycottGoya started trending on Twitter,  triggering an opposing surge of tweets encouraging patriotic Trump supporters to Buy Goya.

It should be noted that at no point during the entirety of the Goya saga was America not engulfed by both a deadly pandemic and a racism crisis.

In any case, nearly a week into the bean-based fiasco, Ivanka Trump, who has definitely shopped for and prepared beans for her family before, tweeted some support for Goya.

It’s a bizarre image, Ivanka brandishing the exact vacant smile of someone who thinks they’re in on the joke when in fact they are the joke. Truly embarrassing stuff, for all parties involved.

The first question that comes to mind upon seeing such an aberration is why on earth would she do that? First of all, as many have pointed out, it’s simply not legal, a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits political activities by most federal employees, and which Ivanka has violated several times.

More importantly for our purposes, though, is the below question:

Indeed, knowing that a certain subset of Photoshop-happy internet denizens sits around all day waiting for mockery opportunities, it is an enormous unforced error to tweet out a golden invitation. It’s a meme-template to be.

And sure enough, everyone had it.

They placed other images in her hand that reinforced the Trump administration’s cruelty toward undocumented immigrants and those caught at the southern border.

They had her holding a vast assortment of not necessarily political objects as well, ranging from the latest Goop candle to a famous painting by the Spanish artist Goya.

They made fun of Ivanka’s resemblance to characters from movies such as Jack and Jill and Wet Hot American Summer.

They recreated the tweet.

They recontextualized it to better resemble other spokesmodels.

And they did whatever the hell is happening here.

Any way you slice it, though, Ivanka Trump got served. Unless, of course, she was looking for a way to distract from the Tuesday-morning memes that accompanied the rollout of Ivanka and company’s insulting Find Something New initiative, in which case: well done.

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