Ivanka Trump Slammed for Tweeting Daughter Arabella's Kindergarten Quiz

Critics say that mentions of Trump's children appear to be in service to her political and professional agendas

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Arabella Kushner steps off Air Force One with her parents, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, in Florida on March 3, 2017
Alex Brandon/AP

By now, some of you may know a bunch of random but adorable facts about 5-year-old Arabella Kushner, the granddaughter of U.S. President Donald Trump. For instance, she likes Israel more than she likes ants, she loves fidget spinners and she wants to be a Marine when she grows up.

We know all this because her mother, Ivanka Trump, posted Arabella’s answers to a questionnaire made by her kindergarten classmates on social media last week.

News outlets pounced on the story, as Arabella is the daughter of the country’s most talked about Jewish power couple and anything that Ivanka Trump or her husband, Jared Kushner, do is intensely scrutinized.

But should she be dragged into the political arena?

Ivanka’s tweet about her daughter’s harmless kindergarten quiz — like so many of her other social media posts — provoked a stream of hateful and political comments.

Ivanka put Arabella at the center of a social media post just two days before the questionnaire post, tweeting an image of Arabella learning the basics of coding — which also produced negative comments.

Critics have pointed out that Arabella is not a special adviser or unpaid public aide to the president of the United States. She’s a kid — and she may not want tens of thousands of people to know that if she were a bird, she would eat 1,000 worms a day.

Others defended Ivanka's posts, which they say were most likely actions of a doting mother – and that she adored her daughter’s answers and wanted to share them with her friends and supporters.

Still, critics have countered that Ivanka Trump’s Twitter account is hardly “personal.” They argue that the account combines her roles as presidential adviser, self-help entrepreneur and brand manager. In this promotional environment, critics say that mentions of her children appear to be in service to her political and professional agendas — inviting the kinds of push-back that Ivanka herself only yesterday called “vicious.”

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