Ivanka Trump decries ‘viciousness’ of Washington

Ivanka Trump says she did not expect the level of “viciousness” her father’s presidency would bring her, but also felt “blessed” by moments, including a private visit to the Western Wall.

“There is a level of viciousness that I was not expecting, I was not expecting the intensity of this experience,” she says Monday morning on “Fox and Friends” on the Fox News Channel. “I think some of the distractions and some of the ferocity was, I was a little blindsided by on a personal level.”

Ivanka Trump, an unpaid aide in US President Donald Trump’s White House, does not describe what attacks particularly affected her. She has come under fire from the left for claiming to bring progressive values to the White House, including on LGBT and women’s rights, while her father rolls back some gains in these areas.

A gag started by “Saturday Night Live” in which Ivanka Trump, who before joining the White House ran an eponymous lifestyle branding company, launches a perfume called Complicit has gone viral.

Trump says she understood the work would not be easy and was instead focused on advancing her father’s jobs agenda.

“My father and this administration intends to be transformative, and we want to do big bold things and we’re looking to change the status quo,” she says.

Trump, who is Jewish, says her visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem was one of many “surreal” moments since her father assumed the presidency.

“It was the first time a sitting president was at the Western Wall and visited the Kotel,” she says, using the Hebrew word for the site. “Every day in this experience has been surreal, but that was truly an unbelievable moment, so I feel truly blessed and privileged to have been there.”

— JTA