Ivanka sells Trump childcare to Capitol Hill

Donald Trump rolled out his new childcare proposal last week. He sent his daughter to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to help sell it.

Ivanka Trump, the Republican presidential nominee’s top female surrogate, huddled with GOP lawmakers to discuss issues related to working families and women in the workplace — part of the Trump campaign’s push to appeal to women as he competes against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

{mosads}House GOP Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), a mother of three, helped arrange Tuesday’s meeting.

Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) both attended the closed-door meeting at Republican National Committee headquarters, as did a dozen female GOP House members. They included Reps. Lynn Jenkins (Kansas), Virginia Foxx (N.C.), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Diane Black (Tenn.). Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.) attended with her young daughter, Abigail.

The nearly hourlong meeting covered topics ranging from equal pay and workplace flexibility to increased take home pay, sources in the meeting said.

Ivanka Trump took detailed notes as lawmakers shared their own ideas with the campaign, sources said.

The idea of expanding family leave historically has not been popular among Republicans, who’ve argued it creates a new federal mandate and puts a greater burden on employers.  

The GOP’s top two leaders in the House — Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) — said they both had not reviewed the Trump plan.

McCarthy dodged a question from The Hill about whether he backed it.

“I haven’t had a chance to read it, but I love the idea that people are talking about ideas,” the No. 2 House GOP leader told reporters during a news briefing in his office. “We may not all agree with them, but that’s what I’d rather debate.”

Upon accepting the Speaker’s job last fall, Ryan said he would not give up his family time on weekends but reiterated that he was opposed to expanding paid family leave.

“I don’t think that sticking up for being a person with balance in your life, for wanting to spend your weekends in your home with your family … I don’t think that means signing up for some new unfunded mandate,” Ryan told CNN last November.

Trump met privately with Ryan in New York on Monday at her request. Campaign aides said she shared updates about her father’s campaign but wouldn’t say whether his family leave plan had been discussed.

The Trump campaign’s decision to make Ivanka the public face of his mandatory paid family leave plan was an easy call. The articulate businesswoman and former model has lived most of her 34 years in the spotlight and gave a prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention in July. She’s also a mother of three young children who can speak personally about the rigors of juggling work and family life.

Throughout the campaign, Ivanka Trump has served to soften her father’s rough edges and headed the campaign’s outreach to women. But that doesn’t mean the intense media glare hasn’t rattled her at times.

Last week, in an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine about the new childcare and family leave plan, Trump was asked about her father’s past comments about how pregnancies are inconvenient for business and whether the new policies would apply to gays or same-sex adoptive parents.

There was “a lot of negativity” in those questions, Trump told the reporter.

Tuesday brought more drama and underscored the campaign’s distrust of the news media. Trump campaign and RNC officials escorted photographers and TV cameramen to capture images of Ivanka meeting with lawmakers, but reporters and producers were barred from the RNC’s fourth-floor Reagan Conference Room.

That prompted some networks, including NBC, to yank their cameramen from the room and threaten not to run the footage on air.

A Trump official on hand said news outlets had been warned earlier Tuesday that no questions of Ivanka Trump would be allowed. But reporters and producers who had been personally informed about Ivanka’s appearance Tuesday had not been told they would not be allowed to set foot in the room.

Under Trump’s five-part plan, the federal government would guarantee at least six weeks of paid maternity leave without raising taxes; it would be paid for by changes to state unemployment insurance programs.

The plan also calls for amending the tax code to allow working parents to deduct childcare expenses from their income taxes. And it would offer incentives to employers that provide childcare facilities at the workplace.

The Manhattan real-estate mogul has struggled throughout his campaign to win over traditional conservatives. But his plan got a big boost from Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council Action, who endorsed it and praised Ivanka Trump’s help in writing it.  

“The Trump campaign recently unveiled a pro-family revamp to the tax code that goes beyond any policy initiative that we’ve seen in years,” Perkins said in a statement. “Donald Trump proved that he understands the challenges of moms with young children by unveiling a proposal that will give families the flexibility they need to care for their own kids.”

In recent weeks, Trump may have closed the gap with Clinton in the polls. But his widespread unpopularity among women could be his undoing in this election.

Clinton is backed by 52 percent of likely female voters, while 39 percent support Trump, a recent New York Times/CBS News poll revealed. Fifty-five percent of women polled said Trump does not respect women.