As America watched MAGA rioters violently attacking the Capitol Building and terrorising Washington, DC on Wednesday, outgoing First Daughter Ivanka Trump came under fire for a tweet that grossly mischaracterised the situation. Trump's tweet – which has since been deleted – didn't condemn the chaos but rather called her father's violent supporters "American Patriots".
"American Patriots — any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable," she tweeted on Wednesday afternoon. "The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful."
Shortly after she posted this, Twitter users reviled Trump for her empty message, which read more like a suggestion that children "play nice!" rather than a real wish for an end to the domestic terrorism that just so happened to have been incited by her father. It should come as no surprise, though, considering that President Trump's own comments on these attacks have been comparably docile; not only did he release a video in which he declined to ask protestors to stand down and stop breaking Capitol building windows and shooting at members of Congress, but he also told them: "We love you."
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The president also tweeted: "I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it. Especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace."
None of this is unexpected, as both the president and his adult children have fanned the flames of his base, lying about the election being "stolen". Leading up to the Electoral College vote that would confirm President-elect Joe Biden, Trump's second oldest son, Eric, threatened to "personally defeat" any Republicans who did not support Trump's efforts to discredit the election results. "I will personally work to defeat every single Republican Senator/Congressman who doesn’t stand up against this fraud – they will be primaried in their next election and they will lose," he tweeted on Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday, Eric's birthday, he attended the protests, even tweeting about how the crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to him, before releasing a toothless tweet saying that Republicans are the "party of Law & Order" but refusing to ask for the violence to stop. Meanwhile, Don Jr.'s softball approach involved calling his father's most faithful followers "wrong" and "not who we are". Sure. But perhaps the best tweet came from Tiffany Trump, who, at 5.48pm local time, just as a woman was pronounced dead at the hands of protestors shooting inside the Capitol Building, wished her brother a happy birthday. "I love you and I’m so grateful to always have you by my side!" she wrote, apparently not reading the room in any capacity.
As for Ivanka, though, after she deleted her original tweet calling the domestic terrorists "American patriots", she posted another, ostensibly clarifying her first tweet, and writing: "Peaceful protest is patriotic. Violence is unacceptable and must be condemned in the strongest terms."
All it really clarified though is that Donald Trump isn't the only problem here, it's his whole family — and all their cultish followers.
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