July 15, 2020

Ivanka Pivots to Bean Influencer

Looks like she found something new—and may have violated federal ethics rules in the process.

Chris Kleponis/ZUMA

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Hours after encouraging the country’s unemployed millions to “find something new,” Ivanka Trump appears to have taken her own advice, adding the unlikely credit of all-powerful bean influencer to her already chaotic resume.

The image is an apparent response to calls to boycott Goya after its CEO on Friday claimed that the country was “truly blessed” to have Donald Trump as their leader. The surprising bit of praise angered many in the Latino community, a core fixture of Goya’s market.

But in elegantly posing with a can of beans, Ivanka appears to have broken a government ethics rule prohibiting executive branch employees from using their office for “own private gain, for the endorsement of any product.” “Ms. Trump’s Goya tweet is clearly a violation of the government’s misuse of position regulation,” Walter Shaub, former director for the Office of Government Ethics, said in a series of tweets. “She knows better. But she did it anyway because no one in this administration cares about government ethics.”

The potential violation comes as the latest in a string of similar accusations of Ivanka breaking federal rules since arriving at the White House. It’s proof that as her new project claims, you really can use the familiar to leverage up in these tough times.

Amid mounting criticism of Ivanka’s photo, her father on Wednesday posed with not one but five Goya products inside the Oval Office, cementing the Trump family’s status as bean influencers for these cursed times.

This post has been updated to include dad’s beans.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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