If you mention the term “Trump controversies,” most people would imagine you’re talking about Donald Trump. After all, the former president is no stranger to controversial words and actions. At times, it seems like he almost thrives on generating the wildest possible headlines.
However, it seems like this ability to generate controversy may be genetic. Ivanka Trump, for example, is no stranger to controversy, and she sometimes seems to alternate between putting her high-priced shoes in her mouth and simply stepping directly into one controversy after another. Don’t believe it? Keep reading to learn all about Ivanka Trump’s most shocking moments!
Defending Donald Trump’s Charlottesville comments
As we noted before, Donald Trump says and does so many controversial things that it can be difficult to keep track of them. However, one of the most controversial moments in his presidency occurred in 2017 when white supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. After one of the attendees (neo-nazi James Fields) killed protester Heather Heyer, CNN reports that the former president said “You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent,” and he went on to clarify some of the rightwing attendees were “fine people.”
This was controversial because many saw it as a defense of the white supremacists at the rally, and it seemed bizarre to blame both sides when only one side ended up murdering somebody. As The New York Times reports, Ivanka Trump later told Trump advisor Gary D. Cohn “My dad’s not a racist; he didn’t mean any of it” and “That’s not what he said.” This became its own controversy because…well…when someone insists there were “fine people” at a white supremacist rally where one attendee murdered a protester, it seems at least a little racist!
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Using her dad’s political career to promote her fashion brand
As you may or may not remember, Ivanka Trump once created her own fashion brand. It eventually went out of business, but not for her lack of trying. And that’s where the controversy comes in.
Back in 2016, Ivanka Trump was riding high after her speech at the Republican National Convention. She used the momentum to go on Twitter and write, “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech,” complete with a link to Macy’s. In the short term, it helped her make money, but in the longer term, it made many people think she was abusing her father’s political career to make a quick buck. That didn’t keep her from wearing her own brand to one event after another until the brand went under.
Defending her dad against sexual assault allegations
Sometimes, Ivanka Trump’s controversies seem like more a case of bad timing than anything else. For example, she gave an interview to CBS News in May 2016 to defend her father against accusations that he had previously groped numerous women. “Well, look, I’m… not in every interaction my father has,” she told the interviewer. “But he’s not a groper. It’s not who he is.”
This is a pretty straightforward defense, but in October of that year, Donald Trump’s comments from his 2005 Access Hollywood visit went viral. Donald Trump bragged about his ability to grab women by their anatomy, and while he later defended this as locker room talk, it certainly seemed to undercut Ivanka’s defense of her dad. More people came forward with accusations and Ivanka kept defending her dad, all of which made her look that much worse in the court of public opinion.
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That time she made the Beatles mad
Could generating very specific controversies be genetic? We’re starting to think so. For example, Donald Trump has often played music at rallies, and the artists involved (including Linkin Park and Neil Young) would later hit the former president with a cease-and-desist for using their music without their permission or endorsement.
The same thing happened to Ivanka Trump in 2016 when she appeared at the Republican National Convention to the Beatles song “Here Comes the Sun.” George Harrison wrote the song, and his estate immediately took to Twitter to condemn Ivanka. “The unauthorized use of #HereComestheSun at the #RNCinCLE is offensive & against the wishes of the George Harrison estate,” they wrote. Later, tongue firmly in cheek, the estate later wrote that “If it had been Beware of Darkness, then we MAY have approved it! #TrumpYourself.”
When she said Donald Trump was an advocate for women
Ivanka Trump has many fine qualities, but she can’t always read the room very well. That was most abundantly clear in 2017 when she attended the W-20 summit in Berlin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel invited her, which generated controversy of its own. But things didn’t get really bad until she started talking.
As CNN reports, Ivanka decided to defend how her father had treated women over the years. “That is something I’m very proud of my father’s advocacy, long before he came into the presidency, he championed this in the primaries,” she said. “He’s been a tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive.” This resulted in the audience booing, offering Ivanka a reminder that global audiences weren’t as sympathetic to her dad as the rally audiences back home were.
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Her bizarre coffee auction controversy
Donald Trump and his family have blurred the line between celebrity and professionalism for years now. And for Ivanka, this came to a head in 2016 when there was an auction to win a date with her, and all proceeds would go to the Eric Trump Foundation.
As the New York Times reports, bidding eventually reached $72,888. But the whole thing eventually got canceled because of concerns this could grant White House access to the highest bidder. It really left Ivanka with egg on her face because critics thought she was at the center of a tacky scheme that could grant just about anyone with enough money access to a strategically valuable location.