Samantha Bee may have been the first to highlight Ivanka Trump’s “fecklessness” when it came to her father’s policy of separating immigrant families at the border. But in recent days, other, mostly female pundits have spoken out against the first daughter’s public silence on the practice she supposedly lobbied her father to stop in private.
“Where is Ivanka in all of this?” The View’s Meghan McCain asked on Tuesday. “I’m sort of interested that her whole platform has been women and mothers and she doesn’t seem to have anything to say about this.”
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski took a harsher tone on Twitter, writing “This is not honest and shameful” in response to a tweet Ivanka Trump posted thanking her father for “ending family separation” and urging Congress to enact a more permanent solution.
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Fox News host Howard Kurtz thinks those criticisms are unfair.
“What I'm seeing is a pattern here of liberal pundits led by MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, beating up on Ivanka Trump for not going public and criticizing her father,” Kurtz said on Fox Thursday. “Except we now know that she was not just pressing her father publicly,” he added, falsely, “she was bringing him pictures of the kids at the border saying we have to do something about this, contributing to changing his mind, and in other words, she chose to engage in private persuasion rather than public virtue signaling.”
Kurtz, who recently published a book that attacks the media for holding the president to account, went on to say that he believes these female pundits harbor a “personal resentment” towards Ivanka Trump. “They think that Ivanka Trump, who was not a political operative before, is more socially moderate or liberal and secretly agrees with them,” he said. “And therefore they expect every time one of these controversies come up for her to go public and rip her father. They'll never be happy unless she does that.”
He later admitted that as a senior adviser to the president Ivanka Trump is “fair game for criticism,” but added it’s “the personal nature of this criticism” that bothers him.
In response to Kurtz’s column on Fox News’ website that argued the same point, Brzezinski tweeted, “I thought u would be more fair and balanced .. I am calling on anyone who claims to care or has the power, PLEASE TELL US where are the girls and babies are—Do YOU not care Howie? Why do you attack those trying to bring this to light? SAD.”
