Celebs Who Can't Stand Ivanka Trump

Not since Jenna and Barbara Bush — twin daughters of George W. Bush — has the United States had such publicity-ready and gossiped-about presidential offspring as Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana Trump. And not since teenaged Amy Carter advised her father, Jimmy Carter, on nuclear proliferation, has there been a First Daughter entrusted with so much actual political power as Ivanka Trump. She's a new kind of celebrity — blond, elegant, conventionally attractive... and yet also frequently in the rooms at the White House where major official presidential policies are crafted and enacted, and with her input and opinions taken into consideration, what with her role as Advisor to the President.

Ivanka Trump shares many of her father's political positions, which makes her just as controversial and divisive. A number of celebrities have gone public with their distaste, dislike, or overall problems with the First Daughter. Here are all the stars who just aren't big Ivanka Trump fans.

A queen of acting, Helen Mirren specializes in playing complex women of power — in 2007 she won two Golden Globes in one night for portraying Queen Elizabeth I in the made-for-TV Elizabeth I and Queen Elizabeth II in the film The Queen. She's also an advocate for underserved women — she's a patron for the Women for Women International organization — and a proud feminist. All that gives the Dame mixed feelings about one of the most powerful women in the U.S., in that she has the president's ear: Ivanka Trump. 

In a 2017 interview with Allure, Mirren gave praise where praise is due, admitting that Trump "talks a good game" but then posits "there's no substance." The actress called into question Trump's 2017 book Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, which NPR said consists mainly of platitudes taken from famous self-help authors. "Her book is so ignorant about how the majority of women live," Mirren said, "talking about 'Make time for yourself to have a massage.' Puh-lease."

The host — and writers, for that matter — of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee are clearly not huge supporters of the Donald Trump presidential administration. The former Daily Show correspondent and her associates often devote the weekly satirical commentary series to criticizing and mocking Trump and company's latest political machinations, such as the 2018 policy of separating children from their parents when picked up at the border attempting to enter the United States without proper documentation. When all that was going on, Trump tweeted out a picture of herself holding her toddler son close. Bee called that post "oblivious," and then criticized Trump for not standing up to her father. "You know, Ivanka, that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless c***."

Samantha Bee earned some criticism for using the worst of the bad words, with President Trump calling her a "no talent" who ought to be fired. The host issued an apology on an episode of Full Frontal. "I crossed the line. I regret it, and I do apologize for that," she said.

Each spring, Washington, D.C. hosts the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, a social event for political journalists generally presided over by a comedian, which turns into a roast of the president of the United States, who also attends and responds to the ribbing with a few jokes of his own. 

In 2018, stand-up comic and Late Night with Seth Meyers writer Michelle Wolf hosted the dinner and delivered a set critical of President Trump that was one of the most ferocious in recent memory, although she saved some of her most cutting remarks for Ivanka Trump. "She was supposed to be an advocate for women, but it turns out she's about as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons," Wolf said, adding that she was "the Diaper Genie of the administration: on the outside, she looks sleek, but the inside, it's still full of s***." While Wolf received some criticism for her words (via WBUR), she doubled down on her anti-Ivanka rhetoric on an episode of her Netflix show The Break (via USA Today) just a couple of months later. "If you see Ivanka on the street, first call her 'Tiffany.' This will devastate her," Wolf instructed viewers, referring to Donald Trump's other daughter that he doesn't lovingly and publicly praise as much as he does Ivanka. She went on to compare her to faulty vaginal mesh, dangerous and discontinued birth control medication, and herpes.

In 2017, the Washington Post broke the story that over the previous year, Ivanka Trump had used a personal, meaning non-governmentally secured, email account to send a few hundred emails about government business. The first daughter "sometimes used her private account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family," Peter Mirijanian, the spokesman for Trump's ethics counsel, admitted, adding that nothing classified or top-secret was ever discussed or revealed. 

In other words, what she did was more or less what Hillary Clinton had done during her tenure as Secretary of State, the news of which was divulged 11 days before the 2016 presidential election which she lost to Ivanka Trump's father, per the BBC. Clinton's email scandal was the main reason why Donald Trump supporters would chant "lock her up!" at campaign rallies, and the irony of Ivanka Trump committing a similar faux pas many times over was too delicious for Charmed and Mistresses star Alyssa Milano to pass up. Milano tweeted a link to a news story about the matter with the caption, "Hmmm.... Ivanka Trump used a private email to discuss government business," along with a hashtag "#LockHerUp??"

While all these celebrities and public figures directly and specifically criticized Ivanka Trump for her actions — or lack thereof — while working in the administration of her father, actress Scarlett Johansson took another approach: She portrayed Trump in a witheringly satirical pre-taped sketch when she hosted Saturday Night Live in March 2017. The bit in question: An ad for a fictional, Ivanka Trump-branded signature fragrance called "Complicit." "She's a woman who knows what she wants and what she's doing," purrs Cecily Strong's narrator as Johansson purses her lips, drinks champagne, and slinks across the room while other women give her the stink-eye. "She doesn't crave the spotlight. But we see her. Oh how we see her," the narrator continues, adding that Trump is "a feminist, an advocate, a champion for women, but, like, how?" The harsh tagline for the fake commercial: "Complicit — the fragrance for the woman who could stop all this but won't."

In an interview with CBS This Morning, Trump took umbrage, saying that, "If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I'm complicit." At the Women in the World conference (via W Magazine), Johansson called Trump's rebuttal, "really cowardly."