Thread: Ivanka Trump gets booed, hissed at during Berlin event

Ivanka Trump gets booed, hissed at during Berlin event

The first daughter was put on the spot during her first trip abroad as a representative of America.

By Annie Karni

04/25/17 08:33 AM EDT
Updated 04/25/17 12:33 PM EDT

BERLIN — Ivanka Trump arrived in Berlin on Tuesday morning armed with facts and figures to recite at what was expected to be a highbrow international summit to discuss women's entrepreneurship, alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But on her first trip abroad as an official representative of the United States, the first daughter was put on the spot about her father's attitudes toward women, booed and hissed at by the crowd, and grilled by the moderator about what, exactly, her role is in President Donald Trump’s administration.

“You’re the first daughter of the United States, and you’re also an assistant to the president,” said the moderator, WirtschaftsWoche editor-in-chief Miriam Meckel. “The German audience is not that familiar with the concept of a first daughter. I’d like to ask you, what is your role, and who are you representing, your father as president of the United States, the American people, or your business?”

It was an aggressive opening line of questioning for the first daughter, who was seated next to Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and one seat down from Merkel. Queen Maxima of the Netherlands was also a participant on the W20 Summit panel, which Ivanka Trump attended at Merkel's invitation. And it appeared to put her on the spot.

“Certainly not the latter,” Trump said. “I’m rather unfamiliar with this role as well. ... It has been a little under 100 days, and it has just been a remarkable and incredible journey.”

She did not define what her new role as a senior White House official entailed but said she cares "very much about empowering women in the workplace" and defined her goal as enacting “incremental positive change. That is my goal. This is very early for me; I’m listening, learning.”

The questions asked of Trump seemed more direct than those about women in the workforce posed to other panelists. But there was a deep curiosity in Europe, ahead of her visit here, about the first daughter's new role in her father's administration.

Ivanka Trump, who was deeply involved with her father’s campaign and has been instrumental in his administration in the first three months in office, positioned herself as someone who is still in humbling listening-tour mode. “I’m striving to think about how best to empower women in the economy,” she said, at one point calling herself a feminist. “I have no doubt that coming out of this trip I’ll be more informed.”

But she was booed and hissed at by the majority-women audience at the conference when she lauded her father for supporting paid-leave policies. “I’m very proud of my father’s advocacy,” she said, calling him “a tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive.”

Meckel, the moderator, pushed her to address the vocal disapproval from the audience.

“You hear the reaction from the audience,” she said. “I need to address one more point — some attitudes toward women your father has displayed might leave one questioning whether he’s such an empowerer for women.”

During the campaign, more than a dozen women went public to accuse Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, unwanted advances and assault. Ivanka Trump did not comment on those accusations during the campaign, and on Tuesday she dismissed the criticism via her father’s favorite enemy — the press.

“I’ve certainly heard the criticism from the media, that’s been perpetuated,” she said, drawing laughs from the audience.

And despite being invited to attend the panel by Merkel in her role as a senior White House official, she defended her father from her vantage point of loyal daughter — in what appeared to be muscle memory from when she was confronted by uncomfortable questions about her father on the campaign.

“As a daughter, I can speak on a very personal level,” Ivanka Trump said. “I grew up in a house where there was no barrier to what I could accomplish beyond my own perseverance and tenacity. That’s not an easy thing to do; he provided that for us.” She said that her father treated her exactly the same way he treated her two brothers, who now run the family business. “There was no difference,” she said.

Trump also credited her father’s administration for hiring women in important roles.

“The team basically going through the vetting and hiring process — six out of eight of those people are women,” she said.

Ivanka Trump and her team touted the summit as a political win, in a question-and-answer session with reporters following the panel, noting that Merkel had announced from the stage her support to work together on a fund to support women entrepreneurs.

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“Politics is politics, as I’m learning,” Ivanka Trump said, shrugging off the reaction to her comments at the panel. “My father is a champion for all Americans — women, of course.... I think the fact that he’s embraced my interest in taking on this role shows that he aligns with the interests I most deeply care about and advocate for. Otherwise it wouldn’t make for a very good family dynamic.”

She insisted that the president has been a “champion of women” throughout his career.

As for the pointed questions from the moderator, she shrugged: “I’m used to it.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...berlin-237569\

Of course the European left rallied their "team".

I think Ivanka as lovely, intelligent and capable a young woman as she is should just run her business and when she has ideas about a program or something for her father to consider, just make the suggestion and then he can assign a department to investigate it and try to implement it, assuming it's a good and valid idea to begin with.

As a professional woman for a very very long time that worked in totally male dominated fields because I broke the barrier the same as millions of other American Women, this soft talk about "empowering women" is really not how it gets done. It gets done by individual women willing to forge the trails, do the work and break the barriers themselves.

The best thing Ivanka's father, our President, Donald Trump, can do to help women break the barriers, is to stop illegal immigration, deport all illegal alien, significantly reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country to work and fix these bad trade deals.

American Women have been sold out by massive excess immigration along with millions and millions of American Men.

There may be a few regulations and laws that we need to better balance the situation, but there's nothing about that or our situation at all on any level that involves the G20, or any Euro Summit off-shore. The problems of the American Workers, both male and female have been perpetuated by the G20 and Europeans just as much as the Chinese, Japanese and Mexicans feeding off the trough of the US economy.

Let Trump be Trump and he will fix our economy. When he does, tens of millions of unempowered Americans will be empowered again, because they'll have good jobs they can count on for enough money to support themselves without government assistance which frees them to chart their own course and achieve better lives for themselves. This will also enable more Americans to advance up the chain in the companies they work for, secure promotions and higher pay. This will also secure them more good benefits, including company sponsored health insurance, 401 K's, pensions, paid sick leave, paid vacation and holidays, over-time, possibly day care services depending on the company.

To quote Trump himself, "all talk, no action". We need to stop talking about problems, and start acting to fix them. All of them starting with immigration and trade. To get there, we need to end illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration, reduce corporate and business taxes to keep our companies and bring operations back home from overseas.

There is nothing the Germans or anyone else in Europe is going to do to help US do that. So my advice is let them have their "summits", let them waste time with "all talk", because there's only one solution to the problem here and that's more jobs.

So my advice to Ivanka is go back to your business and make it a huge success. Your dad's got this deal at the White House. He really does.

Also, I hate this "first daughter" crap. That's a Chinese thing, that's not an American phrase. Stop using it.