Believe It Or Not, People Did Not Like Ivanka Trump's International Women's Day Tweet

On Thursday, March 8, the world celebrated International Women's Day. International woman Ivanka Trump, naturally, wanted to get in on the joy-spreading as well, and she took to social media to recognize the day. However, the first daughter doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to public displays of feminism. As such, Ivanka Trump's International Women's Day tweet was hounded with backlash about as soon as she posted it on Thursday morning.

Trump tweeted,

Today we come together in recognition of women at home & around the globe. We celebrate women’s achievements, past & present, & pledge to empower women to reach their full economic potential for generations to come. When women thrive, we ALL succeed.

She punctuated the tweet with a #InternationalWomensDay. Trump also sent a social media message about International Women's Day on her Instagram story, where her daughter, Arabella, shouted it out with a spinning jump.

Also on Thursday, Trump embraced the international holiday by paying a visit to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She documented the visit on her Instagram story. On Instagram, she said she was there "to celebrate this important day and to talk about empowering women across the globe." At that meeting, Trump and USAID Administrator Mark Green launched the #WomenConnect challenge to work to elevate women through technology.

As the morning went on, Trump retweeted other messages about International Women's Day and shared messages about USAID and the Canada-United States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs & Business Leaders.

As tends to happen with the first daughter, her positive intentions to say something that sounds nice about women was met with backlash from women pointing to her work within her father's administration. The Donald Trump administration has been adversarial to women, their work, and their rights. Within his White House, few women have key roles, contrary to the Barack Obama White House. Meanwhile, the policies that President Trump has promoted, especially when it comes to health care and reproductive rights, are harmful to women.

This does not begin to get into the president's own treatment of women. Donald Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by over a dozen women. (The White House's official stance is that all of these women are lying.) One accuser, Summer Zervos, is suing President Trump for defamation. (Elite Daily reached out to the White House for comment on the Zervos case, but did not receive a response.) Just this week, adult film star Stormy Daniels sued President Trump over an alleged affair. (A White House official denied the affair, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Wednesday that the White House had won an arbitration proceeding against Daniels, apparently referring to a restraining order filed against her.) Meanwhile, his public comments over the past three decades have reeked of overt sexism and misogyny, and he has made troubling comments in the White House, including to an Irish reporter, Mika Brzezinski, and an intelligence analyst. President Trump has also been dismissive of allegations of domestic abuse.

All of which is to say, a positive message about women for International Women's Day, coming from a member of the Trump White House, which Ivanka is in an official capacity, was not well received by the public.

Ivanka Trump herself was heavily criticized for her response to a question about her father's accusers. In an interview with NBC's Peter Alexander that aired on Feb. 26, Trump took issue with Alexander's question asking whether she believed her father's accusers. Trump said it was "a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter." She went on to say that she believes her father, who has said that the women are lying (and has suggested that many of the accusers are "too unattractive" for him to have considered sexually assaulting).

Many took issue with Ivanka Trump's response to the question, as she is an official White House adviser, meaning that she should expect to answer questions about major issues within the White House. Even former first daughter Chelsea Clinton, whose father had his own highly-public sexual misconduct cases, said this week that "anyone who works for the president is — certainly should expect to be scrutinized for not only whatever decisions she or he is making but also for whatever decisions the White House is making on any given day."

But hey, at least Ivanka Trump sent out some pretty tweets, huh?