You didn’t know we had a monarchy, where a relative of the King or Queen takes his or place during an official meeting, did you? You didn’t know we had an authoritarian system where an unelected person totally unqualified for an international meeting sits in for The Leader because he or she is a relative, did you?

But now we know (apparently via a photo leaked from the Russian side according to some reporters) that Ivanka Trump sat in for her father at a world leader’s table during a G-20 meeting. The Washington Post reports:

President Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump has an expansive portfolio in her father’s administration. But on Saturday, she literally took his seat at the table at the Group of 20 summit.

The first daughter was spotted slipping into Trump’s seat at a working session on “Partnership with Africa, Migration and Health,” putting her shoulder to shoulder with British Prime Minister Theresa May. Russian President Vladimir Putin was sitting one seat down.

Trump’s presence at the high-level table was somewhat unusual, given that government ministers or senior officials are typically the ones called to stand in for heads of state at such sessions. But she is both the president’s daughter and an unpaid “assistant to the president” who focuses on issues of women’s empowerment and workplace development, and she maintains broad influence in the administration.

She entered the session with her father but “briefly joined the main table when the President had to step out,” a spokesperson for the first daughter said.

Why should she be sitting in for her father at all?

It’s because bit by bit our norms are being ignored, and there’s little, real substantive push back. So norms are systematically crumbling. It’s now a trite question to ask but let’s ask it:

What would have been the GOP response if Chelsea Clinton had sat in for her father at a meeting?

Would either of the Bush Presidents have EVER had a relative just sit in for them at a meeting like this? (The answer is no: they stuck to traditional Presidential and diplomat norms)? Would Richard Nixon have had his daughter sit in? (The answer is no).

This has sparked a ton of tweets. Here are a few:

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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