IVANKA TRUMP MET WITH A HOSTILE RECEPTION WHEN SHE STEPPED OUT ON THE WORLD STAGE AS A WHITE HOUSE ADVISER. THERE WERE HISSES AS SHE DEFENDED HER FATHER’S ATTITUDE TOWARD WOMEN.
Defends her father’s attitude toward women
BERLIN • Ivanka Trump drew groans and hisses Tuesday from an audience in Berlin while defending her father’s attitude toward women, but she brushed it aside as “politics” during her first overseas trip as a White House adviser.
Appearing on a high-powered panel at a conference to push for more support for women in business, Trump also said she was still trying to define her place in her father’s administration.
“I am rather unfamiliar with this role as well, as it is quite new to me; it’s been a little under 100 days.”
Trump spent 25 minutes visiting the Holocaust memorial while in the German capital, meeting with the director before walking slowly through the downtown Berlin monument. Crowds snapped cellphone photos and called out as she entered the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Trump walked slowly through the undulating grounds filled with concrete slabs, along with U.S. Embassy personnel. She was flanked by a strong police guard. She paused occasionally to look at the slabs, meant to symbolize the chaos of the Holocaust.
Sharing a stage with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and others at the women’s conference, Trump was asked by the moderator whom she was representing — President Donald Trump, the American people, or her own business interests.
“Certainly not the latter,” Trump responded.
As she described her father as “a tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive,” she drew scattered groans and hisses from the audience, prompting moderator Miriam Meckel to press her for a response.
“You hear the reaction from the audience, so I need to address one more point: Some attitudes toward women your father has publicly displayed in former times might leave someone questioning whether he is such an empowerer for women,” said Meckel, editor of a business magazine and a professor of corporate communications at a Swiss university. “Are things changing?”
Trump said her own personal experience and the fact “thousands” of women have worked with and for Donald Trump for decades in the private sector “are a testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women and their ability to do the job as well as any man.”
(MY FATHER’S) SOLID BELIEF IN THE POTENTIAL OF WOMEN.