Ivanka Trump: Of Course Media Is Not ‘Enemy of the People’
In a new interview, the first daughter seemed to laugh off the question as ridiculous, departing from her father’s dangerous claims about the free press.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
During a live sit-down interview with Axios’ Mike Allen on Thursday morning, Ivanka Trump made a couple of significant public breaks from her father.
Noting that there were several members of the press in the audience, Allen asked her directly, “Do you think that we’re the enemy of the people?”
“Sorry?” Trump asked, prompting nervous laughter from the crowd. When he repeated the question, she smiled and said, “No, I do not,” as if she had never heard of such a ridiculous suggestion before.
“That’s not a view that’s shared in your family,” Allen reminded her.
President Donald Trump first tweeted those words early in his term and has repeated them several times since. Most recently, following the huge backlash to his press conference with Vladimir Putin, he wrote, “The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media.”
Sharing her own “perspective,” Ivanka Trump told Allen, “I’ve certainly received my fair share of reporting on me personally that I know not to be fully accurate, so I have some sensitivity around why people have concerns and gripe, certainly when they feel targeted.”
“But, no, I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people,” she repeated.
In the same interview, Ivanka also spoke out against her father’s zero-tolerance family separation policy, an issue about which she stayed publicly silent until the president finally signed an executive order to stop the separations.
"That was a low point for me as well,” she said, agreeing with other White House staffers who have expressed similar feelings.
“I feel very strongly about that, and I am very vehemently against family separation and the separation of parents and children.”
The first daughter and White House daughter only tweeted about the issue after Trump had decided to end the policy, writing, idealistically, “Thank you @POTUS for taking critical action ending family separation at our border. Congress must now act + find a lasting solution that is consistent with our shared values;the same values that so many come here seeking as they endeavor to create a better life for their families.”
As of this week, hundreds of migrant children are still believed to be separated from their parents.