Dear Ivanka, Study Gary Cohn For Clues On Finding Your Jewish Voice In The Trump Administration

Gary D. Cohn in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York earlier this month. CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

Dear Ivanka. Once a Jew, always a Jew, but then. . . in your case. . . we are supposed to understand that you are still finding your voice seven years later on your own Jewishness. The last time Jews were visibly under attack in America and worldwide, many high and mighty Jews were unable to find the will to speak out on the growing global atrocities. My first husband was run out of Birmingham, Alabama in no uncertain terms because he is a Jew. The experience shook him to his core, being a Bronx boy from New York. 

A prominent member of your father's inner circle, his chief economic adviser, Gary D. Cohn -- a Jew -- nearly left the Trump administration in the wake of Charlottesville, reports the New York Times. 

In his first public remarks on the national dialogue about the Charlottesville violence and white nationalist marches against Jews. Mr. Cohn said in an interview on Thursday with the Financial Times, that as a “patriotic American” he did not want to leave his job as the director of the national economic council.

“But I also feel compelled to voice my distress over the events of the last two weeks,” Mr. Cohn said, with his knowledge that the mere thought that the stock market could tank if he walked out is a real one. 

Progressives are demanding that Cohn resign, if he has any moral compass. However, based on the stock market's negative reaction to the mere rumor that Cohn was leaving over Charlottesville, it's not an exaggeration to say that a dramatic plunge could happen. I lived through and wrote about those dark, dramatic days in 2007.  Add to the brew the view among some finance gurus that markets are currently tapped out. Your dad doesn't believe in such #fakeviews, but the market may be operating on funny money, as we speak.

Given Cohn's support for ending the so-called 'death tax', a position rejected by billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Starbuck's Howard Schultz, his agenda makes him unpopular among progressives, including me. But we're talking antisemitism today, not tax rates. 

In the whirlwind of Cohn's dilemma, dear Ivanka, the focus is how to be a principled Jew in the Trump administration. Cohn was standing next to your big daddy in his infamous Trump Tower Tuesday press conference two weeks ago, the one where he said that in Charlottesville there were "very fine people on both sides" of the torch-walking violence and car assassination of Heather Heyer. Cohn thought the topic was infrastructure, so standing next to the president presented no real dilemma for him, beyond serving in the Trump administration at all. 

Then your big daddy went rogue. It was sickening that he neglected to mention at his dreadful rally Tuesday night in Phoenix, that he called pro-Nazi white nationalists "very fine people'.  He tries to paint people who were horrified by his remarks as unpatriotic Americans filled with Trump-hate. On a personal level, the president of the United States called me 'unpatriotic', a woman who wants to pull America apart because I don't want to jump on the Trump hate train.

Speaking on tax reform to the Financial Times, Gary D. Cohn did try to find his Jewish voice yesterday and said that the Trump administration must do better in conveying its true position on racism and antisemitism in America. 

“Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the K.K.K.,” Mr. Cohn said. “I believe this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities.”

Mr. Cohn added, “As a Jewish American, I will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job.”

I just checked Trump's twitter, and so far he hasn't blown Cohn out of the water for his remarks. The Financial Times interview was cleared in advance, but presumably the reality of exactly what Gary Cohn would say about Charlottesville was amplified to the administration. On that topic, Cohn listened to his wife and the chorus of rabbis who have put Trump on notice that they will not speak to him on Rosh Hashana, writes the Times. 

Four coalitions of rabbis, hailing from different strains of American Judaism, publicly spurned Mr. Trump, denouncing him in unusually pointed language, and pre-emptively announcing that they would not participate in any conference call before the Jewish holidays next month.