Theresa May defends Ivanka Trump sitting in for President at G20

Prime Minister Theresa May has said it is entirely reasonable that Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump's daughter, briefly took his seat at a roundtable at the G20 summit on Saturday.

Trump with his daughter (AP Photo)

The “First Daughter”, who is arguably the President’s closest confidant, raised eyebrows by taking the seat vacated when her father ‘stepped out’ of the room during a series of multilateral meetings with other world leaders.

Ms Trump, who has an unpaid role as a Presidential advisor, recently told an interviewer in the USA that she tended to ‘stay out of politics’, despite her high profile.

Asked about the move, which was tweeted by a Russian official, Theresa May said yesterday in the House of Commons that there was nothing untoward about it.

She told MPs: “In relation to the fact Ivanka Trump took President Trump’s seat at one point, that was after a session we had in the morning where we had launched the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative which is an initiative which has been developed by Ivanka Trump and the World Bank - so I think it was entirely reasonable.”

The President’s daughter, who is said to be more liberal than her father and many of his more conservative colleagues, has made widening access for women in business one of her priorities.

President Trump himself defended Ivanka Trump, whose husband Jared Kushner is also one of the White Houses’s most trusted, and most controversial, advisers in typically ebullient style.

He tweeted: “When I left Conference Room for short meetings with Japan and other countries, I asked Ivanka to hold seat. Very standard. Angela M agrees!”

He added: “If Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!”

The President’s visit to the G20 was dominated by his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Trump has been far more complimentary about than all of his recent predecessors.

America’s intelligence agencies are unanimous in their agreement that Putin interfered in the 2016 election to help elected Trump, something he has continually refuted.