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Ivanka Is Tweeting Some Not-So-Subtle Quotes While Her Dad Meets With Kim Jong Un

by Joseph D. Lyons
Win McNamee/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The haters may hate, but the president's first daughter has a quote to hit back. Ivanka Trump is tweeting during her dad's North Korea summit, and it's anything but subtle. Some of the president's critics have questioned whether anything can be accomplished, but it seems the president's daughter thinks it's worth trying — you'll just have to read between the lines.

Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday, "'Walk tall, walk straight and look the world right in the eye.' -Val Doonican." What she was referencing is not 100 percent clear. It could be with regard to Trump's mini feud with Canada following the G7 meeting. Or it could also be about the beginning of the summit in Singapore.

The post that she wrote on Monday more directly points to the Singapore summit:

"Those who say it can not be done, should not interrupt those doing it.” -Chinese Proverb.

One of the strongest voices against the summit was Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “To the extent that Kim Jong Un has already gone from international pariah to being normalized internationally, you have to say that he’s had some success here," Menendez said on ABC's This Week.

This is not the first time that Trump has used a quote to make her point on Twitter. Following a big outrage around the tweet of a photo with her son in her arms, Trump turned to a quote to fight back at her critics. She had been criticized for being "tone deaf" for posting such a photo when Trump administration policies separated migrant moms from their kids.

Trump responded with a quote from the writings of a Roman emperor, in several tweets. She quoted:

"If thou workest at what is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything to distract thee... If thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature... thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who will be able to prevent this." -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

The message was not lost there, given that she was responded to on Twitter 27,000 times about the photo in the days before.

This time around, she does not seem to be responding to issues happening in her social media networks but in the world. President Trump arrived in Singapore already and will meet with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Tuesday.

The president has been largely positive about how the meeting will go. He spun it in a positive light to the Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. "We’ve got a very interesting meeting in particular tomorrow. I think things could work out very nicely. We appreciate your hospitality and professionalism and friendship," Trump told Lee Monday night.

Pool/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The first daughter has historically been a bit tougher on North Korea. Her main interaction with the campaign to denuclearize the peninsula came at the Winter Olympics earlier in the year.

There, Trump told the South Koreans, "I thank you for hosting us all here tonight as we reaffirm our bonds of friendship, of cooperation, of partnership and reaffirm our commitment to our maximum pressure campaign to ensure that the Korean Peninsula is denuclearized." She did not meet with the delegation from the North, who were already warming up to their South Korean counterparts.

The quotes that Trump tweeted on Sunday and Monday would show that she is supporting her father's take on North Korean foreign policy — even if it doesn't result in maximum pressure as she once called for.