Ivanka Trump touts father’s first-term achievements during Valley stop

CANFIELD -- Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and a White House adviser, said her father has moved the country in the right direction during his first term in office and to change leadership would be a disaster.

Of President Donald Trump, his daughter said, "Now more than ever America needs four more years of a warrior in the White House. My father fights so hard every single day for each of us. Now we have an opportunity to fight for him and fight for the future of this country."

She spoke for about 35 minutes Saturday at the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center in Canfield with about 400 people attending outdoors on a soggy and muddy lawn.

Most of the attendees weren't wearing face masks, and chairs were set up next to one another even though an announcement urged people to wear masks and socially distance because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state has experienced its highest numbers of cases during the past 12 days.

Ivanka told the audience: "With your help, your voice and your vote on Nov. 3, we will win another historic victory, and we will make America greater than ever before."

She added that her father "made me and countless Americans ask ourselves what we believe, what are our convictions, what do we stand for, what kind of America do we want to leave for our children? I'm more certain than ever before that we want an America that believe in America's greatness. We want a society where each child can live in a safe community and go to a great school of their choice. We want a culture where differences of opinion and debate are encouraged, not canceled, where law enforcement is respected, where our country's rich diversity is celebrated."

She criticized Democrat Joe Biden as "another empty vessel who will do what the media and the fringe of his party demands."

Polls show a close race in Ohio between Trump and Biden.

Ivanka was the second Trump family member to campaign for the president in Mahoning County last week. Donald Trump Jr., the president's oldest son, had a Monday rally at The Maronite Center in Youngstown with about 400 people in attendance.

While Ohio and the nation is experiencing record-high numbers of COVID-19 cases, Ivanka praised her father for taking "early and aggressive actions to stop travel from China and Europe," which she contended saved about 2 million lives. She also said the nation is on track to have a vaccine for the virus by the end of the year.

"When my father makes a promise, he keeps a promise," Ivanka said.

In the Oct. 22 debate with Biden, Trump claimed a vaccine was ready and would be announced "within weeks." A month earlier, he said a vaccine would be ready by Election Day. Alyssa Farah, a White House aide, acknowledged Friday that Election Day was "kind of an arbitrary deadline."

Ivanka said, "President Trump will never surrender to the virus."

In response to Ivanka's visit, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said, "You can't spin failure with a photo op. Donald Trump promised to save Ohioans' jobs, protect our health care and keep us safe from COVID-19. Instead, he's overseen a cratering economy, he's suing to strip health coverage away from hundreds of thousands of Ohioans and he's surrendering to the pandemic even as cases reach a record high."

Ivanka also said among her father's accomplishments are brokering peace treaties in the Middle East, fixing bad trade deals and bringing jobs back to "America and Ohio."

"President Trump has done more for Ohio in 47 months than Joe Biden did in 47 years," she said.

But Pepper pointed to statistics from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that show 2019 -- before the pandemic -- was the worst year for job growth in Ohio in a decade at just 0.3 percent.

Before Ivanka, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a Cincinnati-area Republican, addressed the crowd and spoke of the president helping to bring jobs to the former General Motors complex that closed in March 2019. When it stopped operating, GM was down to a single shift with about 1,500 workers. Since then, GM sold the facility to Lordstown Motors Corp. to build its all-electric Endurance vehicle and GM is teaming up with LG Chem to build a battery plant nearby.

Portman said, "Now we have 2,000 good-paying jobs on that campus already with the hope of much more."

But there aren't more than 200 employees at Lordstown Motors. At full capacity by September 2021, that facility is expected to have 800 jobs.

Construction recently began on the Ultium Cells facility -- the GM / LG Chem battery plant -- and it plans to open by January 2022 and employ about 1,200.