Ivanka: Separating children was wrong
Ivanka Trump says the border policy was a “low point” for the Trump administration.
WASHINGTON — Ivanka Trump on Thursday cited the separation of migrant children from their parents as a low point of her White House tenure. She said that she was “vehemently against family separation” but noted that immigration was “incredibly complex as a topic.”
The president dropped the immigration 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. She tweeted her thanks after he signed an executive order designed to keep families together.
During an event Thursday hosted by Axios, Ivanka Trump was asked about the high point and low point of her time in the White House.
Noting that her mother was an immigrant who came to the United States legally, Ivanka Trump said this was a “country of laws.” She added: “We have to be very careful about incentivizing behavior that puts children at risk of being trafficked, risk of entering this country with coyotes or making an incredibly dangerous journey alone.”
But she said she felt “very strongly” about the issue. “I am very vehemently against family separation and the separation of parents and children,” she said.
On high points for the administration, Ivanka Trump cited the president commuting the sentence of Alice Johnson, a woman who was serving a life sentence for drug offenses and whose case had been championed by reality star Kim Kardashian West. She called Johnson leaving prison “one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” The senior White House adviser also said she doesn’t view the news media as “the enemy of the people.”
President Donald Trump later tweeted 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!”
At a rally Thursday night in Pennsylvania to support GOP Rep. Lou Barletta, Trump cast journalists as his true political opponent. “What ever happened to the free press? What ever happened to honest reporting?” he asked. “They don’t report it. They only make up stories.” The inflammatory comments came hours after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to distance herself from Trump’s previous assertions that the media is the “enemy” of the people. Pressed during a White House briefing on the issue, Sanders said Trump “has made his position known.”