News

Politico Axes Julia Ioffe Over Tweet About Ivanka Trump

Julia Ioffe exited Politico for The Atlantic more quickly than expected after tweeting a controversial comment about Ivanka Trump.

Published Dec. 15, 2016

 (Shutterstock)
Image Via Shutterstock

On 14 December 2016, reporter Julia Ioffe's plans to leave Politico for The Atlantic were hastened by a controversy over a Twitter comment she made about Ivanka Trump and her father, President-elect Donald Trump.

Although Ioffe has since deleted the tweet, numerous screenshots and text-based copies of it remained on social media platforms and in news articles. Ioffe's tweet originally read:

Either Trump is fucking his daughter or he’s shirking nepotism laws. Which is worse? [link]

In the original tweet, Ioffe linked to a 14 December 2016 article reporting that Ivanka Trump would be using space in the White House traditionally used by the First Lady. It's unclear if the article meaningfully changed in the interim (as its URL suggest) but a version accessed on 15 December 2016 said:

A spokesperson for President-elect Donald Trump is pushing back on a report that Ivanka Trump will get an office in the space typically reserved for the first lady.

"This is false. No decisions regarding Ivanka's involvement have been made," Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told The Hill on Wednesday.

A strongly worded internal memo to Politico staffers about the controversy was leaked to reporters soon after Ioffe's termination:

In return, The Atlantic issued an official response:

Ioffe sent two tweets apologizing after she deleted the controversial tweet, and one suggesting that the outcome amounted to government meddling with the media:

The Atlantic said that it was confident that Ioffe would uphold its standards in her new position.

Kim LaCapria is a former writer for Snopes.