‘He is the people’s president!’ Ivanka Trump introduces her father at RNC

First daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump introduced her father as ‘the People’s President’ during her Thursday night speech at the Republican National Convention, delivering her remarks from the White House’s South Lawn. 

‘I recognize that my dad’s communication style is not to everyone’s taste. And I know his tweets can feel a bit unfiltered,’ she said with a pause. ‘But the results speak for themselves.’ 

She talked of the admiration she’s seen from working Americans for her father, ‘to see these stoic machinists and steelworkers come to him with tears in their eyes and thank him for being the only person willing to go to the mat for them.’ 

Ivanka Trump gave the speech directly before her father at Thursday night’s Republican National Convention

Ivanka Trump’s speech served as an introduction to her father and she tried to soften his image by providing details about his reaction to Americans dying of COVID-19 

Ivanka Trump can be seen on giant screens positioned around the South Lawn at the White House Thursday night, where President Donald Trump accepted renomination 

Ivanka Trump talked about how American workers have approached her father with ‘tears in their eyes’ for the work he has done for them 

She called that a ‘new and profound experience for him, and for me’ despite Trump having ‘admired and befriended construction workers on countless jobsites,’ a reference to her father’s real estate tycoon past. 

The first daughter, wearing a black Gabriela Hearst number, began her remarks discussing her move to Washington in 2017. 

‘We didn’t exactly know waht we were in for, but our kids loved it from the start,’ she said.  

‘My son Joseph promptly built grandpa a Lego replica of the White House,’ she continued. ‘The President still displays it on the mantel in the Oval Office and shows it to world leaders, just so they know he has the greatest grandchildren on earth.’  

In Washington, Ivanka Trump said, she found that politicans would ‘silence their convictions and skip the hard fights’ in order to survive.   

‘I couldn’t believe that so many politicians actually prefer to complain about a problem, rather than fix it,’ she said. ‘I was shocked to see people leave major challenges unsolved, so they can blame the other side and campaign on the same issue in the next election.’        

‘But Donald Trump did not come to Washington to win praise from the beltway elites,’ she said. 

Her father’s unpopularity among certain groups became a theme of her speech. 

‘For the first time in a long time, we have a President who has called out Washington’s hypocrisy – and they hate him for it,’ she said. 

‘Dad, people attack you for being unconventional, but I love you for being real, and I respect you for being effective,’ she added. 

She also took time to soften her father’s image, playing tour guide for the audience during pivotal points of his administration. 

Ivanka Trump described him as a president ‘who is fighting for you from dawn to midnight, when the cameras have left, the microphones are off, and the decisions really count.’ 

 She talked of standing at his side when he went to Dover Air Force Base to receive remains of a fallen soldier. 

Ivanka Trump (center left), along with Hope Hicks (center right), is seen walking toward the South Lawn Thursday night before delivering her address to the Republican National Convention 

‘And each time it steeled his resolve to finally stop the endless foreign wars,’ she said.   

She spoke of seeing her father’s more personal reaction to the deaths from COVID-19. 

‘I’ve been with my father and seen the pain in his eyes when he receives updates on the lives that have been stolen by this plague,’ she said. ‘I have witnessed him make some of the most difficult decisions of his life.’  

She said, among those, was closing the U.S. border to Europeans. 

Ivanka Trump brought up some of her pet projects as well, including the Farmers to Families Food Box Program, which she and the president promoted on their Monday trip to North Carolina, where the RNC was supposed to be held.  

Ivanka Trump’s speech was the curtainraiser for her father’s on the White House lawn, where 1,500 people were gathered in a not-so-socially distanced way. Many didn’t wear masks. 

Air horns from protesters outside the White House gates could be heard during Ivanka Trump’s address.