Ivanka Trump hears groans as she defends father in Berlin
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,” she said.
Trump has been a vocal advocate for policies benefiting working women and vocational training. But she also has faced criticism in the United States, particularly from those who think she has done little to temper her father’s conservative agenda.
Sharing a stage with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and others, 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 said,
As Trump 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, the editor of a business magazine and a professor of corporate communications at a Swiss university. “Are things changing?”
Trump replied: “I’ve certainly heard the criticism from the media, and that’s been perpetuated.”
She added that her own personal experience and the fact that “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.”
“He encouraged me and enabled me to thrive,” Trump said. “I grew up in a house where there was no barrier to what I could accomplish beyond my own perseverance and my own tenacity.”
There was, she stressed, “no difference between me and my brothers. And I think as a business leader you saw that, and as a president you will absolutely see that.”
Talking later to a small group of reporters, Trump said she was unfazed by Meckel’s direct questions in a public forum.
“I’m used to it. It’s fine,” she said, and also shrugged off the audience’s reaction.
“Politics is politics, as I’m learning, and there are many different viewpoints and people with different opinions and perspectives,” she said.