According to CNN , Ivanka Trump made the decision to cut her interview with Cosmopolitan short on Wednesday after being asked some tough questions about comments Donald Trump has made regarding maternity leave and childcare in the past. Ivanka accused the interviewer of having questions filled with a lot of negativity and didn’t feel as though the interview was going anywhere helpful.
Ivanka Trump had hoped to use the interview with Cosmo to highlight the new childcare policy she had helped Donald Trump craft and introduce earlier this week. The interviewer, however, clearly had other plans for how the interview was going to go. Namely, the interviewer grilled Ivanka about why Donald Trump’s views and opinions had changed so much in the last decade.
Cosmo Interviewer Savages Ivanka Trump, Softballs Chelsea Clinton | https://t.co/rc7mTg9RA8
— lamcdo30 (@Linda18788) September 15, 2016
The interviewer – Prachi Gupta – asked, “In 2004, Donald Trump said that pregnancy is an inconvenient thing for a business. It’s surprising to see this policy from him today. Can you talk a little about those comments, and perhaps what has changed?”
Instead of answering the questions, Ivanka commented on how negative the questions were and didn’t think anything useful would come from answering. The interviewer from Cosmo, however, continued to grill her.
“I would like to say that I’m sorry the questions — you’re finding them negative, but it is relevant that a presidential candidate made those comments. So I’m just following up.”
Ivanka Trump argued that the questions were painting an unfair picture of his track record as well as his support of professional women. Trump also argued that the interviewer was claiming Donald Trump had made these comments, but the interviewer did not have any proof of the comments, and Ivanka had no way of knowing if these comments were actually made by Donald Trump.
Ivanka Trump couldn’t handle basic questions from a Cosmo interviewer and abruptly left https://t.co/FjCU3iD1Ee pic.twitter.com/sfKhfQHC0R
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) September 15, 2016
The Cosmo interviewer responded to Ivanka’s comment by showing the source of her father’s quote which as an interview with NBC back in 2004.
Ivanka Trump argued that regardless of how the Cosmo interviewer felt about Donald Trump from a political point of view, the new childcare policy is something that should be celebrated. She emphasized that the point of the interview was to discuss the childcare policy – not talk about comments her father may or may not have made ten years ago.
During the Cosmo interview, Trump also conflicted with the interviewer when she was asked why the paid leave proposal didn’t apply to homosexual couples or offer paternity leave. Trump claims the original intention of the plan is to give mothers a chance to heal and recover from the aftermath of giving birth, and this wasn’t something parents in a homosexual couple or fathers needed to do.
Ivanka Trump has white hot emotional online meltdown following disastrous Cosmo interview https://t.co/jfekR2vXD2 pic.twitter.com/vtENUfvtZ6
— Raw Story (@RawStory) September 15, 2016
“So I just want to be clear that, for same-sex adoption, where the two parents are both men, they would not be receiving special leave for that because they don’t need to recover or anything?” Gupta asked.
Trump wanted it to be clear that what the interviewer said was the interviewer’s words and not hers. She went on to say the whole purpose of the plan was to focus on mothers. This could be mothers in a traditional or same-sex marriage. It, however, was focusing on mothers who gave birth to a child. She went on to say that even in lesbian couples, the child-bearing mother would be eligible for the policy.
The Cosmo interviewer decided to change the topic and ask how exactly Donald Trump was going to pay for all of these expensive policy proposals. For example, how was he going to pay to put a border wall up between the United States and Mexico? Ivanka claims all the proposals would be paid for through the forthcoming tax reform that Donald Trump also has planned.
It was shortly after that question that Ivanka cut the interview short saying that she apologized, but she had to go. A few hours later, Ivanka tweeted Cosmo and more or less shamed them for the way she was treated with such negativity during the interview.
3/3: @Cosmopolitan , your readers do & should care about issues impacting women & children. Keep the focus where it belongs—advocating change.
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) September 15, 2016
Ivanka felt that it was a shame the interview couldn’t focus on the children and mothers like she had wanted it to.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign has argued that it is unfair for the policies Trump is putting in place to only focus on the mothers and offer nothing for the fathers.
What do you think about the interview Ivanka Trump had with Cosmo?
[Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images]