White House staffer Ivanka Trump responded to critics Tuesday by saying she did not know what they meant when they said she was “complicit” in her father’s presidency.
“You hear the phrase ‘complicit’ – that Jared and Ivanka are complicit in what is happening to the White House. Can you just weigh in how you feel about that?” CBS’ Gayle King asked Trump. “There have been articles, there have been parodies. What do you think about that accusation?”
“If being complicit is wanting to, is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I’m complicit,” Trump said, using a definition that does not describe the word “complicit.”
“I don’t know that the critics who may say that of me, if they found themselves in this very unique and unprecedented situation that I am now in, would do any differently than I am doing,” she continued. “So I hope to make a positive impact. I don’t know what it means to be complicit, but I hope time will prove that I have done a good job and much more importantly that my father’s administration is the success that I know it will be.”
Complicit, as King used it, refers to the criticism that Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, have failed to steady President Donald Trump’s tumultuous White House.
Kushner and Ivanka Trump were skiing in Aspen, Colorado, for example, when Trump offered conservative Republicans in Congress his support for removing Obamacare’s Essential Health Benefits during the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Those EHBs include maternity care, the removal of which many assumed Ivanka Trump would lobby against, given her advocacy on issues like paid maternity leave and a tax deduction for child care expenses.
Watch the interview clip below via CBS News:
