MEDIA NOT
the enemy, Ivanka Trump says.
Ivanka Trump said Thursday that she does not view the news media as “the enemy of the people,” breaking with one of President Donald Trump’s frequent attacks on the press.
The senior White House adviser spoke at an event hosted by Axios, where she was asked if she agreed with the description of the media frequently invoked by her father. “No. I don’t,” she said. Sharing her “personal perspective,” she said: “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, especially when they sort of feel targeted. But no, I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people.”
President Donald Trump later sought to downplay the distance, tweeting that his daughter answered correctly and that “It is the FAKE NEWS, which is a large percentage of the media, that is the enemy of the people!”
The president has broadly labeled the news media the “enemy of the people” and regularly accuses reporters of spreading “fake news.”
At a White House briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to distance herself from the president’s view on the media.
In a heated exchange with reporters, she recited a litany of complaints against the press and blamed the media for inflaming tensions in the country.
“As far as I know, I’m the first press secretary in the history of the United States that’s required Secret Service protection,” she said, accusing the media of continuing “to ratchet up the verbal assault against the president and everyone in
this administration.”
CNN’s Jim Acosta implored Sanders to break from the president, who first decried the news media as the “enemy of the American people” last year.
“I think it would be a good thing if you were to say right here at this briefing that the press, the people who are gathered in this room right now … are not the enemy of the people,” Acosta said, adding: “All the people around the world are watching what you’re saying.”
Sanders responded with a critique of the news media for resorting “to personal attacks without any content other than to incite anger.”
“The media has attacked me personally on a number of occasions, including your own network, CNN,” she told Acosta. She also cited the comedian who performed at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, saying the comic was brought in “to attack my appearance and call me a traitor to my own gender.”
At the Axios event, Ivanka Trump was also asked about the high point and low point of her White House tenure. When the moderator asked if the separation of migrant children from detained families was a low, she agreed, stressing that she was “vehemently against family separation,” but adding that immigration was “incredibly complex as a topic.”
The president dropped the policy more than a month ago after widespread condemnation from Democrats and Republicans. Ivanka Trump remained quiet publicly in the early days of the border crisis, but the president said she privately urged him to find a solution.
On high points for the administration, Ivanka Trump cited the president commuting the sentence of Alice Johnson, a woman serving a life sentence for drug offenses whose case had been championed by reality-television star Kim Kardashian West. She called Johnson leaving prison “one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”