Helen Mirren Calls Out Ivanka and Melania Trump
Photo: Getty.
Last October, Helen Mirren made it clear what she thought of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, calling him one of the last remaining misogynist “dinosaurs”—and an improperly proportioned one at that. But in a new interview, Mirren—an ardent feminist—takes aim at the women surrounding Trump since he has taken office, who seemingly, she said, have not tried to curtail his reign of terror.
Speaking about First Lady Melania Trump, Mirren told Allure, “You look at old Mel there, and she is one of the most powerful women in the world because she could take him down.”
“She almost did that with the hand,” Mirren continued, referring to the hand-swap seen around the world last May, when Melania appeared to bat her husband’s hand away during their first foreign trip as president and First Lady.
Remarking on her own similarity to the Slovenia-born Melania, Mirren added, “I’m Eastern European, you know; [we’ve] got these dark souls. . . . That dark Slovenian soul is about to come out.”
Mirren was also asked about the president’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump, who controversially sat in for Trump during a G20 summit meeting this July and fashions herself as a champion of working women.
“[Ivanka] talks a good game, but there’s no substance,” Mirren said of the First Daughter, whose [recent book](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/ivanka-trump-women-who-work-book), Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, was criticized as out of touch. “Her book is so ignorant about how the majority of women live, talking about ‘Make time for yourself to have a massage.’ Puh-lease.”
Mirren also circled back to Trump himself, opining that the president “just said and did whatever it took to get what he desired. That is quite terrifying, because it means there’s a lack of morality there and a lack of conscientiousness.”
Speaking about the stranglehold fixation the constantly evolving White House has on the world, Mirren offered this no-nonsense observation: “It’s a bit like watching a car crash. There is a sort of mesmerizing horror—it’s why we love horror films.”
In May, Mirren used an actual podium to criticize Trump and his administration while giving a commencement address at Tulane University in New Orleans.
“Whether you’re in the French Quarter or the Oval Office, no good can ever come from tweeting at 3 A.M.,” Mirren quipped, while giving advice to graduates. She also pleaded with the students to do everything they can to encourage equality.
“It’s a necessity if we—and really by ‘we’ I mean you guys—are to move us forward and not backward into ignorance and fearful jealousy,” she said, before closing with a stern warning. “Never again allow a group of old, rather grumpy, rich white men define the health care of a country that is 50.8 percent women and 37 percent other races.”
This story originally appeared on Vanity Fair.
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