The Republican National Committee (RNC) has hired author and model Elizabeth Pipko, whom The Algemeiner selected for its 2023 list of the top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life, as its newest spokesperson.

Pipko, who worked for former US President Donald Trump’s long-shot bid for the White House in 2016, revealed the news on a New York City area radio show last Monday. With the position, she will continue an unplanned career in US politics that has drawn opprobrium from critics who continue to scorn both her modeling career and her support for one of the most controversial American political figures in recent memory.

“‘Swimsuit model joins RNC’ is what I’ve been reading in the press lately,” Pipko told The Algemeiner during an interview on Monday. “Apparently, the fact that I have modeled in a swimsuit supersedes any degrees I’ve earned, any books I’ve written, any advocacy work I’ve done, or any charitable work or anything else I will ever do.”

Born in 1995, Elizabeth “Liz” Pipko is the descendant of Russian Jews who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States in the 1980s to escape antisemitism and an authoritarian government which reinforced its authority by terrorizing its own citizens.

Her parents used their fresh start in the US to give their children a better life. They kept a young Elizabeth busy studying foreign languages — she learned four, including Mandarin — and violin. In middle school, Pipko was elected captain of the math team, and she went on to earn degrees from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. The opportunities the US accorded Pipko’s family made her fervently patriotic, she told The Algemeiner.

“I’m the daughter of immigrants who came here with $90 in their pockets, and it’s humbling that I’ve been offered this kind of job just one generation removed from their arrival here,” Pipko explained. “It’s significant because it represents, to me and hopefully to other people, what’s possible only in the United States of America. My dad used to tell me stories about how he would walk home instead of taking the subway so that he could afford dinner. Regardless of where people are politically, they should celebrate America’s unique ability to lift people up.”

As recounted in her 2020 memoir, titled Finding My Place: My Parents’ American Dream Come True, becoming a political operative for Trump — as well as being associated with the Republican Party in general — has blocked Pipko from joining the “glitterati” of high fashion, a circle to which she believes she would have likely been admitted with open arms had she chosen to promote the politics of the progressive left. She regrets nothing, however, and believes the fate of the Jewish people in America, as well as that of the US-Israel relationship, hangs on the outcome of this year’s presidential election — which, she hopes, will be a victory for Trump.

“The answer in November is another Trump administration and not another Biden administration,” she said. “We can right now make a direct comparison between how President Biden and President Trump treated Israel and responded to rising antisemitism. There is one president who after two decades of broken promises moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, who recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, who brokered the Abraham Accords and extended protections of Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act] to include antisemitism. Under the current administration, there has been nothing but chaos abroad and rising antisemitism here at home.”

Beyond her political work, Pipko has been active fighting antisemitism, encouraging support for Israel, and promoting Holocaust education. Last year, she launched a new project, “Lest People Forget,” a digital museum designed to allow individuals anywhere to contribute materials in order to help preserve the history of the Holocaust.

For Pipko, a strong America is good for the wellbeing of the Jewish people. When asked to identify the biggest problems facing the US today, she cited declining faith in the country’s principles and ideological polarization as obstacles to a new American Century.

“These days, I reflect on President Ronald Reagan’s warning that freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction,” Pipko said. “When I was a child, my parents told me every second they could about the magnitude of the American experiment and what it continues to mean to the world. Our chances of overcoming the threats we face today and handing down to future generations the America we know and love would be greatly increased by renewed pride in what he have here. Too many of us don’t appreciate it.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Only in America’: Algemeiner ‘J100’ Pick Elizabeth Pipko Discusses New Role With Republican National Committee first appeared on Algemeiner.com.