WASHINGTON -- Eight months after winning the White House, President Donald Trump launched a Twitter attack Monday on former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, daughter Chelsea Clinton and the media.
The tweet was prompted by criticism of first daughter Ivanka Trump, who sat in for her father during part of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, last week, a White House spokesman said.
News reports said her appearance was a breach of protocol, a claim the president and his staff rejected.
"If Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!" Trump stated in an early morning message.
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Shortly after Trump tweeted to his 33.6 million followers, Chelsea Clinton sent a tweet of her own to her 1.76 million followers.
"Good morning Mr. President. It would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me [to take their seat at a global summit]," she wrote. "Were you giving our country away? Hoping not."
Clinton, the former first daughter and one-time NBC News special correspondent, was a frequent campaign surrogate during her mother's 2016 White House bid.
In recent months, reporters have asked Chelsea Clinton about her future political plans. The New York resident has been mentioned, among other things, as a potential congressional candidate.
In April, she ruled out a 2020 presidential campaign bid, telling CBS's Norah O'Donnell, "I clearly don't agree with our president, but I'm definitely not the right person to run to defeat him in 2020."
Asked when the president would put the Clintons in his rearview mirror and move on, White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that Trump was simply responding to attacks on his daughter.
"Look, this wasn't about putting them [the Clintons] in the front. This was about responding to an outrageous attack against a White House senior adviser [Trump's daughter]," Sanders said during a Monday afternoon press briefing.
"It's pretty standard protocol that when the leader gets up, someone takes their seat -- as [German] Chancellor [Angela] Merkel also pointed out and said that this was perfectly standard protocol."
The criticism was unwarranted, Sanders said.
"In fact, I think that we should be proud to have Ivanka sitting in that seat, considering particularly the topic at hand was part of her portfolio," she said. "If she didn't have the last name that she has, I think she would be constantly celebrated instead of constantly attacked, and I frankly think it's a sad thing that they chose to go after her in that moment."
A Section on 07/11/2017