“Complicit” is a smooth-sounding word with a rough definition, meaning “involved with others in an activity that is unlawful” or (according to Webster) “helping to commit a crime or do wrong in some way.” When Michelle Obama supported her husband, when Hillary and Chelsea Clinton supported their husband and father, it was described as being loyal, being involved and being assertive, all excellent traits in your present-day woman.

Only when Ivanka Trump is supporting her father does it become something quite close to criminal action, and it is the fact that she looks, acts and lives both the feminist dream AND the dream life of the urban elites that hate her father that drives both of these factions insane. Calling her his “alibi,” his enabler (and his ambassador to the sane, who might otherwise shun him), Frank Bruni has it a hysterical high note, but there is nothing that new in the gist of the argument: Democrats calling Republicans brutes, and the women who vouch for them hostage/enablers is a very old story, and one that has gone on for some time.