Surprised that Ivanka was almost head of the World Bank? You shouldn’t be | Arwa Mahdawi

Donald Trump wanting his daughter to have the top job at the World Bank is no great surprise. What intrigues me is the thought of Steven Mnuchin blocking it

It's no secret that Donald Trump has something of a soft spot for his eldest daughter, Ivanka. He's constantly tooting her horn and gushing over her talents. Not only does Ivanka have a very nice figure", Trump has boasted, but she's very good with numbers". She's so good at all that numbers stuff that the former president even considered her for the top job at the World Bank in 2019. And that wasn't just a fleeting fantasy, either; according to a recent report by the Intercept, Ivanka's nomination for World Bank president came incredibly close to happening". The reason it didn't is that Trump's treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, intervened. Which, by the way is a rather different story from the one Ivanka tells. The former first daughter has said she passed on the job because she was very happy with the high-powered White House position she'd appointed herself to.

I can't say I'm surprised that Ivanka was a stone's throw away from a(nother) prestigious job she was laughably unqualified for. What does intrigue me is why Mnuchin might have blocked her nomination. Trump has a knack of surrounding himself with sycophants who do his bidding; what could have prompted Mnuchin to break ranks? Could it possibly be that the guy finds brazen nepotism distasteful? Alas, it seems unlikely, considering he's a product of it himself. Mnuchin's first job out of Yale was at Goldman Sachs, where his dad just happened to be a general partner. According to a New York magazine profile, Mnuchin's colleagues at Goldman Sachs didn't consider him especially book smart", but that didn't stop him becoming partner himself. The same profile notes that his elevation to partner came at the expense of an African American trader from a working-class background who struck one colleague as being much smarter than Steven" and having accomplished a lot more". I don't know how fair that profile is, but I'd bet both my kidneys that Mnuchin isn't someone who stays awake at night fretting about nepotism.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist