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.

Donald Trump had no prior political experience before he was elected president of the United States, so he had to fill out his advisory board with people that knew him and his ideas well, notably his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump. During the campaign, she advised her father on women's issues, including advocating for a maternity leave proposal, which, as a working mother (and head of the "Women Who Work" initiative), was something she understood.

So, as an advisor to the president, would Ivanka Trump be a mouthpiece for the female half of the population? Comedian and talk show host Chelsea Handler certainly didn't think so. In an interview with Variety a few days before Donald Trump took office, Handler dismissed the idea that Ivanka would have any say whatsoever. "They have absolutely no influence over him," Handler said of Trump's offspring. "The idea that Ivanka is going to help women, or do anything for women, is absurd, because she's a puppet. They're all his puppets. They're scared s***less of him."

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."

As a late-night talk show host, it's basically Bill Maher's job to speak truth to power and call out politicians of any party for actions he and his writing staff deem egregious, offensive, or immoral. As the one-time host of Politically Incorrect and now HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher has always been much more specific, pointed, and incendiary with his criticisms.

On June 1, the beginning of Pride Month, in 2017, Ivanka Trump tweeted, "I am proud to support my LGBTQ friends and the LGBTQ Americans who have made immense contributions to our society and economy." But several weeks later, Maher questioned that stance. In August 2017, President Trump ordered the military to ban transgender people from joining. On an episode of Real Time taped just hours later, Maher cast blame on Ivanka Trump. "I mean, really, Ivanka? You couldn't even stop the transgender in the military thing?" Maher asked rhetorically. "I thought this was your area. She has no sway over Daddy." Maher went on, characteristically not mincing words, calling the First Daughter "the greatest disappointment so far" of the Trump presidency.

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.

Ivanka Trump publicly commented on family separation in August 2018, telling CNN that the policy of placing children apart from their parents in prison-like conditions was "a low point" for her. She added that while she was "vehemently against family separation," immigration remained an "incredibly complex" subject. According to The Guardian, director Paola Mendoza, journalist Alyssa Klein, and actress Sara Sophie Flicker organized an online movement to urge Trump to take action against the family separation she admittedly didn't care for, by asking President Donald Trump and Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen to end it. Mendoza and her associates looked at all the accounts Ivanka Trump followed on Instagram, and reached out to them, asking them to re-gram a written, anti-family separation statement. That way, Trump would be directly hit with the message over and over again as she picked up her phone and scrolled through her feed. The message was as direct as the means of distribution:

"Dear Ivanka, You follow me on social media. You said family separation was a 'low point' for you. The low point is for the separated families. You spoke in past tense. This crisis is ongoing." After discussing alleged offenses and citing statistics, the post calls for Trump to "end these racist, inhumane, and unconscionable abuses now!" Among the Trump-followed celebrities who hit Trump's feed: comedian Amy Schumer, designer Alexa Chung, model Poppy Delevingne, actress Sophia Amoruso, and entrepreneur Audrey Gelman.

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.

Chrissy Teigen: model, food personality, and master of Twitter, where more than 12 million followers enjoy her blunt and funny hot takes. She's frequently taken aim at Ivanka Trump. In September 2017, Trump posted a photo of herself "Cuddling my little nephew Luke... the best part of an otherwise incredible day!" Teigen savagely pointed out a grammatical flaw: "'Otherwise' implies you did not like hangin with this baby." In March 2020, during the COVID-19 crisis, in which a widespread shortage of tests caused panic and concern, Trump sent out a picture of herself and her kids self-isolating in their well-appointed home playing "living room camp out!" which included a tent made out of a bed sheet and packed sandwiches. Teigen tweeted in reply, "after we quote pack unquote sandwiches can we please have Covid tests."

Teigen has criticized Trump in the meat-world, too. In 2019, she spoke at a House Democratic Caucus issues conference, and referred back to what she considered Trump's callous behavior during the family separation crisis. "It's a painful thing to see such a complete lack of empathy when it comes from people like Ivanka, I will say, that can post all day pictures of her children that are just in her home and 'oh my daughter's having trouble in her crib' or 'my daughter's doing this' and there are children out there that don't have that opportunity," Teigen said (via Business Insider).

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??"

Perhaps he can relate to Ivanka Trump — Mark Hamill is best known for his role as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars saga, where he played (spoiler alert) the son of an extremely powerful and not-exactly-universally-beloved leader. In fact, he compared his fake dad to Ivanka Trump's real one on the Cape Up podcast (via the Washington Post) in 2018. "Listen, I really get upset then when people compare him or even Dick Cheney to Darth Vader because Darth Vader repented," Hamill said. 

It's not too surprising then that the actor didn't like it one bit when Trump made a Star Wars reference. In September 2019, she tweeted a photo of herself and her family — she and husband Jared Kushner were dressed to the nines, but one of their sons was adorned in a complete, authentic Star Wars stormtrooper costume. "The Force is strong in my family," Trump quipped. Hamill replied to the post with two insults in just six words: "You misspelled 'Fraud.' #GoForceYourself."

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."