Ivanka Trump's Tweet About Impeachment Has A Big Mistake
Let's face it, we all can make mistakes on social media. While President Donald Trump is known for a typo from time to time, Ivanka Trump's tweet about impeachment has a mistake that Twitter is calling out big time. A fact-check might be in order.
During the week of Nov. 18, the House Intelligence Committee held back-to-back public impeachment hearings as a part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Trump. In an emailed statement to Elite Daily, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham characterized the inquiry as Democrats' attempt to "weaponize politics." On Nov. 21 White House senior staffer and Trump's oldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, took to Twitter to respond to the ongoing impeachment hearings. In the tweet, Trump cited an 1835 quote from French historian and political writer Alexis de Tocqueville. The tweet read,
“A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.” Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
The problem? That quote isn't actually from de Tocqueville. Historians on Twitter quickly called out the senior staffer, noting the quote was actually from author John Innes Clark Hare's 1889 work American Constitutional Law, in a section which paraphrased de Tocqueville. So, Trump missed the mark slightly. Elite Daily reached out to the White House for comment on Trump's tweet, but did not hear back in time for publication.
Despite its mistake, Trump's quote is definitely timely. On Sept. 24, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House was opening an official impeachment inquiry into President Trump regarding a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which President Trump asked Zelensky to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. A non-verbatim transcript of the call confirmed the two discussed Biden, though President Trump denied any wrongdoing. In the weeks since, the inquiry has amped up. The week of Nov. 18, a number of public officials testified publicly to Congress about what they knew regarding the president's dealings with Ukraine.
This isn't the first time Twitter has called Trump out for tweeting inaccurate information. In August, Trump took to Twitter to address a shooting on a Chicago, Illinois, playground, and claimed it was the city's "deadliest weekend of the year." Trump wrote,
As we grieve over the evil mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, let us not overlook that Chicago experienced its deadliest weekend of the year... With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City- and little national outrage or media coverage- we mustn’t become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day.
City officials and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot quickly noted that Trump's tweet had a few significant mistakes, such as claiming the August shooting was the "deadliest weekend" in Chicago. Lightfoot also noted Trump's tweet suggested the shootings in Chicago that weekend occurred in one place, which was also inaccurate. During a news conference on Aug. 7, Lightfoot addressed Trump's tweet, stating she "got the fundamental facts wrong." Lightfoot said,
That's the danger of somebody with a platform and audience that time, that doesn't know what they're talking about—and getting the fundamental facts wrong that they could easily figure out, if they had the decency to actually reach out to us if they wanted to be a constructive and engaged partner.
Elite Daily reached out to the White House for comment on Trump's Aug. 6 tweet, and for response to Lightfoot's comments, but did not hear back in time for publication.
