She's 'playing first lady' because Melania won't: Angela Rye smacks down Ivanka's role as Trump adviser

CNN regular Angela Rye smacked down a Trump defender's defense of Ivanka Trump as a valuable adviser to her father, saying it was fairly obvious the first daughter was playing the role of First Lady Melania Trump because, "she's not checking for Donald."

Appearing with host Brooke Baldwin, former White House staffer Paris Dennard defended Ivanka, who was the subject of boos at a forum in Germany.

"One of the unique things about the role of senior adviser is they are undefined," Dennard began. "The role that Karl Rove played when he was a senior adviser vastly different than the role that Valerie Jarrett played as senior adviser and now when you have this role that Ivanka Trump is playing."

"I think that it is -- it's evolving," he continued  as he added Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner into the mix and Rye rolled her eyes. "She's engaged with the innovation of the White House and that new task force that they are doing. She's heavily involved when it comes to womens' and entrepreneurial issues especially with girls in STEM. I know that it's multiple different things and different avenues that she's doing and that's why you have a senior adviser role because they are not like other roles in the White House where there's a strict defined chart on how you're supposed to do the job."

Given her chance to respond, Rye shot Dennard's defense down.

"So, first, I just want to be very clear we should never again compare Valerie Jarrett's credentials to Jared Kushner," she explained. "Let's talk about, you know, a black woman all-star lawyer who not only came from real estate but also a big law firm and also worked for the mayor of the city of Chicago for some time. So let's not at all mix credentials there."

"While I appreciate Paris's loose definition of what a senior adviser means," she continued," and having worked on Capitol Hill on a committee as a senior adviser and counsel, what I will say is nonetheless there was a job description, nonetheless there was something by which I had to be accountable to so that I could, get promoted and get raises and also I could deliver for taxpayers because those are the folks that actually pay us."

"When we challenge these roles being ill-defined or undefined in these spaces, it means there's nothing to hold them accountable to in terms of benchmarks. They are also hoping that this type of loose association with a job description means that they can tiptoe into conflicts of interest without any issue," Rye lectured. "We saw Ivanka doing that just last week. I think the real challenge is she doesn't have a real defined role because we all know what role Ivanka is playing, and that's the role of the first lady because Melania is not checking for Donald."

Watch the video below via CNN: