WASHINGTON — (CNN) President Trump tweeted Wednesday that Nordstrom’s treated his daughter Ivanka “so unfairly” when it discontinued her fashion line.
Trump tweeted form his personal account — @realDonaldTrump — but it was then retweeted by the official @POTUS account, which had so far been reserved strictly for government issues.
Nordstrom announced last week that it would no longer carry Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing and accessories. Nordstrom said that it decided to part ways with her products “based on the brand’s performance.”
The president went on Twitter to defend his daughter — who is also a close White House adviser.
“My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!” he tweeted.
The tweet lit a fire under the president’s critics who’ve criticized his refusal to satisfy ethics experts by completely separating himself from his business dealings. While ethicists say he needed to sell off his companies in order to ensure he won’t financially benefit from his presidency, Trump has left control of the Trump Organization to his two sons, Eric and Donald Jr.
Larry Noble is general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization of election law experts, and he said Trump’s tweet was “totally out of line.”
“He should not be promoting his daughter’s line, he should not be attacking a company that has business dealings with his daughter, and it just shows the massive amount of problems we have with his business holdings and his family’s business holdings,” Noble said Wednesday.
Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, known simply as Ivanka Trump, is not part of her father’s company. And she went further than her father to divest from her business holdings by selling her common stock and converting her equity in the Trump Organization into fixed payments.
She’s currently on a leave of absence from the Ivanka Trump brand and the Trump Organization, promising she will “no longer be involved with the management or operations of either company.”
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