Ivanka Trump May Have Instigated The Missile Launch On Syria

The world is still reeling from the United States' missile launch on Syria last week. While everyone tries to figure out what will happen next, one member of the First Family may have just shed some light on how the initial incident went down. According to Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump talked her father into the missile launch on Syria, who was "heartbroken and outraged" by the chemical attack allegedly committed by Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad.

"Ivanka is a mother of three kids and she has influence," Eric Trump told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph while visiting the Trump Turnberry golf resort in Ayrshire, Scotland. "I'm sure she said, 'Listen, this is horrible stuff.' My father will act in times like that."

It's unclear how directly Eric Trump came by this information, or whether it is entirely speculative. At an GOP fundraising event last month, Donald Trump Jr. told reporters that he "basically [has] zero contact with [his] father" in accordance with the ethics rules and public pressure to separate the Trump business empire from the Trump administration. Now that Ivanka's an official White House employee, the siblings may also be avoiding each other to negate allegations of impropriety, but there haven't been reports of that yet (though they may come out now that Eric Trump made this comment).

However, assuming that Eric Trump was truthful and accurate, this is exactly where the lack of experience within the Trump White House becomes a threat to Americans and the rest of the world. It's perfectly understandable that Ivanka reacted emotionally to the images from Syria following Assad's alleged gas attack — it'd honestly be more concerning if the attack had evoked no emotion at all among the senior staff. However, good intentions and/or protective instincts don't make up for foreign policy experience or expertise. Ivanka's emotions as a mother shouldn't be the reason that the country goes to war, or a reason why more people have to die.

The Trump family creates a complicated web of communication and influence that's constantly changing, making it difficult to know who really knows what. It's entirely possible that Eric Trump didn't know what he was talking about, and was merely trying to paint his sister in a specific light due to her own recent PR debacles. But if it is true, Eric Trump's comments are extremely revealing about the inner workings of his father's White House, and ultimately, a cause for concern.