Ivanka compares Donald Trump to founding father Thomas Jefferson as House confirms impeachment inquiry
First Daughter Ivanka Trump has come to the defense of her father President Donald J. Trump with the words of one of America's founding fathers just moments after the House of Representatives voted to formalize its official impeachment inquiry.
On Thursday, Ivanka tweeted: "'Surrounded by enemies and spies catching and perverting every word (which) falls from my lips or flows from my pen, and inventing where facts fail them.'—Thomas Jefferson's reflections on Washington, D.C. in a letter to his daughter Martha. Some things never change, dad!"
Shortly after the House vote, the president had chimed in: "Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!"
232 members of the House, including a former Republican who left the party earlier this year, voted to formalize the inquiry. Meanwhile, 196 members, including two Democrats, voted against it.
Ivanka, who is also a senior adviser to the president, drew a parallel between her father and Jefferson, highlighting how their opponents treated them.
That said, the quote is an excerpt from a February 1801 letter Jefferson penned down for his daughter while serving as vice president.
At the time, Congress was still deciding on whether he or Aaron Burr should serve as president. Less than a month later, a vote in Congress solidified Jefferson's presidency.
In the letter, the founding father appeared to be citing the tension between himself and his political opponents—likely referring to how the Federalists and their allied press colluded to drag his name through the mud. The rivalry between Jefferson and his opponents had "reached a level of personal animosity seldom equaled in American politics" in 1800, as described by the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
According to the University, the Federalists did not approve of Jefferson's religion, which diverged from Christianity, and thereby portrayed him "as a godless Jacobin who would unleash the forces of bloody terror upon the land."
While the constant attacks on Jefferson at the time did not pertain to an impeachment inquiry, the quote did reflect the longstanding nature of bitter rivalries in Washington.