After Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination was suddenly threatened by a Bay Area professor’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her when they were in high school, Ivanka Trump privately urged her father to withdraw his support for the judge, Vanity Fair reported last week.
But Donald Trump decided to stand by his man. Meanwhile, the first daughter and White House senior advisor continued to publicly act as though Kavanaugh and his troubled nomination weren’t an issue she needed to concern herself with — even though she has long billed herself as a feminist and advocate for women’s empowerment.
And so far, Ivanka Trump has stayed silent even as a number of female celebrities over the weekend called on her to use her access to her father and to other GOP leaders to urge them to agree to Blasey Ford’s demand for “a full, fair, trauma-informed investigation by the FBI,” People reported.
Amy Schumer, Mariska Hargitay, Chelsea Handler, Alyssa Milano, Melanie Griffith, Busy Philipps, Sophia Bush and Cheryl Strayed were among the celebrities who showed their support for Blasey Ford, a 51-year-old research psychologist and professor from Palo Alto, by posting a “#DearIvanka” note on Instagram.
The note reminds the first daughter that, “as a public servant, you work for me.” The note continues, “You’ve proclaimed yourself a feminist and a champion of women’s rights. Right now, you have an opportunity to fight for women.”
If Ivanka Trump saw the note, she has yet to respond.
And last week, she appeared to ignore the Kavanaugh issue by using social media to instead tweet or retweet a series of photo ops: going with Sen. Ted Cruz to visit NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston Thursday, where she proclaimed she always wanted to be an astronaut, and hitting a Walmart training center outside Dallas on Friday, where she spotlighted workforce development programs.
Great seeing the extraordinary work being done by the talented team at @NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston today!
👩🚀 🚀 pic.twitter.com/JpRAk620ov— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) September 21, 2018
Just like @Walmart Academy associates, @IvankaTrump uses state-of-the-art virtual reality technology to manage the produce “wet wall.” 🥦🥕 pic.twitter.com/m46bxQqpiV
— Judd Deere 45 Archived (@JuddPDeere45) September 21, 2018
At the same time, the president increased his defense of Kavanaugh by lashing out at Blasey Ford. Trump especially angered survivors of sexual assault, progressive female voters and lawmakers by questioning Blasey Ford’s credibility, tweeting that if the alleged crime was “as bad as she says,” she would surely have filed charges at the time.
I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2018
“Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?” Trump asked Thursday night in Las Vegas and again on Friday morning, Rolling Stone reported, adding that the president himself has been accused by more than 20 women of various forms of sexual misconduct.
Ivanka Trump’s older brother, Donald Trump Jr., joined in his father’s defense of Kavanaugh and in GOP attacks on Democrats who are trying to delay or derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Like his father, Trump Jr. went after Blasey Ford directly. In his case, he brought up a report that she couldn’t be in Washington, D.C., early this week because she is uncomfortable flying.
“A professor of psychology that has a fear of flying that she can’t overcome for something this serious?” Trump Jr. tweeted. “Perhaps, but seems odd to me. I wonder how many times she’s flown in the past decade?”
But by Sunday, Kavanaugh’s ride to Supreme Court nomination was thrown further off track after the judge was hit with a new allegation of sexual misconduct. The New Yorker published an accusation from Deborah Ramirez, who was at Yale University with Kavanaugh in the early 1980s and who said he exposed himself to her at a dormitory party.
Moreover, Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti tweeted late Sunday that he’s representing yet another woman — not Ford or Ramirez — who has made him aware of “significant evidence” that Kavanaugh and his friends targeted women with alcohol and drugs in the 1980s in order to allow “a train” of men to take advantage of them sexually, the Daily Beast reported.
A Senate Judiciary Committee staffer told the Associated Press late Sunday that the panel is looking into the Ramirez claims as well as the Avenatti report, the Daily Beast added.
Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the accusations by Blasey Ford and Ramirez in statements to the Washington Post and to the New Yorker.
But the allegations raise the stakes for Thursday, when he and Blasey Ford are expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, CNN reported.
“Kavanaugh is likely to face intensely embarrassing questions at the hearing from Democrats about his drinking, his sexual history and his behavior as a young man, both at Georgetown Prep, a private school outside Washington, and at Yale in the 1980s,” CNN added.
Perhaps Ivanka Trump’s public silence on Kavanaugh stems from what Vanity Fair reported was her recognition that his confirmation could hurt Trump and Republican Party candidates in the midterm elections.
The allegation from Blasey Ford threw Donald Trump and his White House “into a #MeToo crisis at a moment when they can’t afford to antagonize women voters ahead of the midterms,” Vanity Fair writer Gabriel Sherman reported.
For that reason, Ivanka Trump has urged her father to “cut bait” and drop Kavanaugh, Sherman wrote.
But this private leak to Vanity Fair from someone in the White House may be the most the American people will ever hear from Ivanka Trump on this issue.
After all, Trump’s loyal daughter rarely if ever publicly crosses her father, as was made clear in that famous 2017 exchange with “CBS This Morning’s” Gayle King about her being “complicit” in her father’s controversial presidency.
“I don’t know what it means to be complicit,” Ivanka Trump said at the time.
“I would say not to conflate lack of public denouncement with silence,” she continued. “So where I disagree with my father, he knows it, and I express myself with total candor.”
“Where I agree, I fully lean in and support the agenda and hope that I can be an asset to him and make a positive impact,” she said. “But I respect the fact that he always listens. It’s how he was in business. It’s how he is as president.”
