Ivanka Trump Gets Booed at Women’s Panel in Germany While Defending Father

The first daughter claimed he was a “tremendous champion” of families.

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She was there to celebrate the business successes of women, alongside some of the world’s most powerful female leaders—but Ivanka Trump’s comments drew open derision instead.

During a panel discussion on women’s entrepreneurship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump on Tuesday provoked boos and hisses as she described her father, President Donald Trump, as an advocate for families and working women.

“I’m very proud of my father’s advocacy,” she said. “He’s been a tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive.”

The remark was immediately met with groans from the female-heavy German audience, and prompted the moderator to address the crowd’s chilly reaction:

“You hear the reaction from the audience,” Miriam Meckel, editor-in-chief of WirtschaftsWoche, a German business magazine, said. “I need to address one more point: Some attitudes toward women your father has publicly displayed in former times might leave one questioning whether he’s such an empowerer for women.”

“I’ve certainly heard the criticism from the media that’s been perpetuated,” Trump responded, prompting laughter from the crowd. “But I know from personal experience. The thousands of women who have worked with and for my father for decades when he was in the private sector are a testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women and their ability to do the job as well as any man.”

Trump was in Berlin as a US representative to the third annual W20 Summit, which focuses on promoting women’s economic empowerment and advancing women in leadership roles. As the panel took off, President Trump took to Twitter to praise his daughter:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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