Everyone, it seems, has had it with Ivanka Trump. The Trump that was once portrayed by the media as the softer, more intelligent member of the family, and one who would have a positive (and progressive) impact on her father has tumbled from grace recently. Public sentiment has swayed and it is not good for President Trump’s newest assistant.
To be clear, Ivanka has always been just as problematic as her father. In fact, she was likely more dangerous, as her harmful ideas and actions were shrouded in the non-threatening veil of gentle-seeming white womanhood. Her talking points about women’s empowerment helped, too (until you looked at them too closely, when they all fell apart).
But after yesterday’s interview on CBS This Morning with Gayle King, it’s clear that Ivanka has long since lost her luster for those who once gave her the benefit of the doubt. For instance, Vogue wrote a pretty scathing take on her CBS appearance, writing, “In one breath, Ivanka insisted that she voices disagreement with her father and hopes to ‘make a positive impact’; in another, she conceded that she is ‘still my father’s daughter’ and declined to provide a single example of a time when she was able to sway the president or soften his position.” The piece concludes that her interview “made no sense” and that she’s “just as confused” about her new role in the White House “as the rest of us.” Vogue also isn’t falling for Ivanka’s political spin and coy attempt to pretend she doesn’t know what “complicit” really means, noting that she is a “University of Pennsylvania graduate, former real estate executive and multimillion-dollar company founder.” Essentially, she’s no dummy.
Samantha Bee also took jabs at Ivanka on her show Full Frontal With Samantha Bee. The comedian pulled no punches, opening the segment with a CNN anchor’s assertion that Ivanka Trump is “the new sheriff in town” and yelling, “Wrong! Sheriffs are elected to their jobs!” From there, she asserted that Ivanka doesn’t know what she’s doing despite trying to “float [her] $500 billion childcare plan,” and optimistically asserted that perhaps the most influence Ivanka has had on her father is stopping, at most, “one out of 24 appalling executive orders.”
Bee wasn’t falling for Ivanka’s feminist image, either. “Look, I get it, people are comforted by the thought of a progressive feminist in the White House,” she said. “To which I say, if you wanted that, you should have voted for it,” she continued, while showing a photo of Hillary Clinton on the screen behind her.
“Stop it, Democrats! She’s not a Wailing Wall for you to stuff your prayer notes into!” was perhaps Bee’s most Jewish jab at the noted convert to the faith.
Someone else not buying Ivanka’s feminist claims? Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood. The two had a “secret” meeting in the weeks following her father taking office. According to Planned Parenthood, the goal of the meeting was to help clarify what kinds of services the organization provides and how the funding actually works, in the hopes that Ivanka could communicate the necessity of these services to her father. However, the meeting didn’t stop Richards from openly calling out Ivanka for her support of her father’s since-defeated healthcare legislation, which would have defunded the organization.
If Ivanka hoped she was slick enough and smart enough to keep up the likable and fairly positive public image she had before her father entered the presidential realm, she was sadly mistaken. As ELLE has pointed out, Ivanka may be the closest thing America has to a princess, but princesses, in reality, can be “terrifying.”
