For the Trumps, it appears tone-deaf Twitter habits run in the family.
While thousands of immigrant children are being separated from their parents at the southern border of the U.S., Ivanka Trump posted a family photo depicting her clan very much in tact. The next day, Donald Jr.’s ex Vanessa Trump also posted a family pic. Like Ivanka, she was swiftly criticized for ignoring what has been described by Hillary Clinton as a “humanitarian crisis.”
In the since-deleted post, Vanessa shared photos of herself with her children lounging in casualwear and pretending to camp with a fake indoor fire and a cozy tent. “Last trip with my kiddies before their summer camps start!” she wrote.
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On the plus side, it appears she took her critics’s comments to heart, because an hour later the tweet was gone.
You may recall that later that same day, Fox News host Laura Ingraham likened the detention centers where children are being held to “summer camps.” (We highly doubt the Trump kids’s summer camp looks anything like the images we’ve seen from inside the centers.) After major blowback on social media, Ingraham later adjusted her language, instead comparing the facilities to “boarding schools.”
For her part, Vanessa has still remained silent, even as more devastating news rolls out. On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that children under five years old are being held in “tender age” shelters across southern Texas, while older children continue to be held inside large, cage-like cells in warehouses where the lights are kept on 24 hours a day.
But Ivanka and Vanessa aren’t the only women in Trump’s circle who could benefit from social media sensitivity training. Though earlier this week she said she “hates to see children separated,” First Lady Melania Trump also shared a tone-deaf social media post Tuesday afternoon. She tweeted an image of herself with the King and Queen of Spain, sharing how they discussed how to “positively impact children,” a message came across to many, including actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, as ironic.
While stories of the separated families are distressing, there are ways to help now.