FOREIGN POLICY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP FAMILY/IVANKA: “When President Donald Trump left a session at the Group of 20 summit on Saturday [7-10-17], the White House official who slipped into the chair he had just vacated was his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump. It was a reminder of the role that his family plays in his presidency.
A photo taken and tweeted by a woman who identified herself as a Russian ‘sherpa’ at the Group of 20 summit showed Ms. Trump sitting at the main table between British Prime Minister Theresa May and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Leaders are allowed to bring a few aides into the G-20 meetings. And the aides are permitted to fill the leaders’ chairs should the need arise. Besides Ms. Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was also in the room on the president’s behalf.
Ms. Trump is far lower in the formal hierarchy than Mr. Mnuchin. But she took the seat, a White House official said, because the conversation turned to a subject that touches on one of her projects—African development. She had been sitting at the back of the room and ‘briefly joined the main table’ after her father left, the official said.
When other leaders stepped away, their seats, too, were ‘also briefly filled by others,’ the official said.”
-Peter Nicholas, “Ivanka Trump Briefly Fills President’s Seat at G-20 Summit,” The Wall Street Journal online, July 8, 2017 03:45pm