At the height of the original wave of the #MeToo movement, around the time when the Harvey Weinsteins and Charlie Roses and Matt Lauers of the corporate and media and Hollywood worlds were toppled, their ugly behaviors exposed, Ivanka Trump would tell people that she was grateful for the reckoning. But as usual with Ivanka, there was a quiet part. There was no acknowledgement in these moments that the movement was catalyzed in part by her father’s election, despite the many credible sexual assault and harassment allegations against him throughout the presidential campaign, and his subsequent policies once he took office. She simply expressed that it was about time. There was usually a coda to these remarks, however. Would male CEOs, worried about H.R. complaints, keep women, say, from business trips? She feared an overcorrection.
It was, to my mind, the beginning of the backlash to #MeToo. Ivanka was not the only one saying these sorts of things in private. Far from it. Many people of privilege were repeating similar things within the quiet comforts of their offices and lunches and dinner parties. The progress was great! It was about time! But! It could backfire! Women will end up paying the price!
That, mercifully, did not pan out. But the stance has evolved, as what has become known as “cancel culture” has come into focus, and Ivanka’s Team Trump position appears to have hardened. On Tuesday night, the White House senior adviser tweeted a photo of herself displaying a can of Goya black beans in her manicured hands, against an all-beige backdrop. “If it’s Goya, it has to be good,” she captioned the photo, adding the translation, “Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno.” Bean brand ambassador didn’t seem to be part of Ivanka’s reel, but politics is a strange business.
The posts come as Goya faces backlash and public consumer revolts after its CEO, Robert Unanue, visited the White House last week and explained that “we’re all truly blessed…to have a leader like President Trump.” People started dumping out the company’s products and urging others to steer clear, with hashtags like #Goyaway and #BoycottGoya trending. Unanue doubled down in a Fox News interview on Friday, saying that he was “not apologizing” and calling the boycott a “suppression of speech.” It is unclear if the campaign has impacted the privately-held business, but Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning that Goya is “doing GREAT,” adding, “the Radical Left smear machine backfired, people are buying like crazy.”
When criticism became deafening, Team Trump circled the wagons. A White House spokesperson for Ivanka responded that the first daughter had not, in fact, violated federal ethics standards for White House employees, which say that they may not use their government positions to endorse products, saying that “only the media and the cancel culture movement would criticize Ivanka for showing her personal support for a company that has been unfairly mocked, boycotted and ridiculed for supporting this administration.” The statement went on to detail Ivanka’s right to express her personal support for a company and tout what she says is the administration’s commitment to the Hispanic community. Poor bean lover, unjustly maligned.
This is not the first time Ivanka has addressed “cancel culture.” This spring, in the midst of the worldwide protests following George Floyd’s killing, students at Wichita State University Tech asked the school not to air a prerecorded address from Ivanka at its virtual graduation. Ivanka posted her original speech, which made no mention of the protests over police brutality, on her Twitter feed, writing, “Our nation’s campuses should be bastions of free speech.” She added, “Cancel culture and viewpoint discrimination are antithetical to academia. Listening to one another is important now more than ever!”