Fact Check

Was Ivanka Trump Fired from the White House?

The comings and goings of the Trump administration's White House staff may seem like a revolving door, but First Daughter Ivanka Trump hasn't yet been shown the exit.

Published March 1, 2018

 (Albert H. Teich/Shutterstock.com)
Image Via Albert H. Teich/Shutterstock.com
Claim:
President Trump's daughter Ivanka has been fired from her position at the White House.

On 28 February 2018, the web site RealtimePolitics published an article headlined "Ivanka Trump Is Finally Being FIRED From The White House — And It Has Trump In A RAMPAGE!" which deliberately left social media users and headline-browsing readers with the impression that President Trump's daughter Ivanka had been terminated from her White House position an an adviser to the President, and that her firing had been ordered by someone other than President Trump (thereby triggering the latter to go on a "RAMPAGE!").

However, the text of the RealtimePolitics article provided no supporting documentation for its headline assertion that Ivanka Trump had been fired, nor did the article even reference that putative event anywhere other than in the headline. The RealtimePolitics article simply rehashed a few bits from a CNN article published the previous day that covered tensions and awkwardness created within the White House by Ivanka Trump's role in her father's administration, but included no mention of her being fired:

White House chief of staff John Kelly is reportedly furious with first daughter Ivanka Trump's job performance within the administration, according to a recent report by CNN.

Sources revealed to the news network that Kelly thinks that Trump has failed to have an objective perspective on the first daughter and senior adviser to the president.

Kelly has reportedly explained to others privately that the first daughter is "playing government," while branding her child tax credit as "a pet project."

Completely absent from the reporting of CNN and RealtimePolitics (and everyone else) was any statement or documentation attesting to Ivanka Trump's having been dismissed from her role in her father's administration, or to her father's engaging in a "rampage" over that non-event.

RealtimePolitics simply engaged in a practice common of disreputable web sites trying to generate web traffic, that of luring readers by tagging an article with a provocative and misleading political clickbait headline which has no actual relevance to the underlying story.

Sources

Zeleny, Jeff et al.   "Ivanka Trump's South Korea Trip Fuels White House Tension."     CNN.   27 February 2018.

Realtime Politics.   "Ivanka Trump Is Finally Being FIRED from the White House — And It Has Trump in a RAMPAGE!"     28 February 2018.

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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