When Ivanka Trump decided to defend her dad from the resolution approved Thursday by House Democrats formalizing the impeachment process, she relied on former President Thomas Jefferson for help.
The first daughter and White House adviser tweeted a quote from the third president to his daughter Martha about the hazards of life in Washington:
…surrounded by enemies and spies catching and perverting every word that falls from my lips or flows from my pen, and inventing where facts fail them.
She added, snarkily, “Some things never change, dad!”
And as proof some things never change, many Twitter users responded to what they felt was a bit of hubris on Ivanka’s part.
Some people responded with their own Jefferson facts and quotes.
The Jefferson letter quoted by Ivanka was written to his daughter two weeks before he was elected the nation’s third president in a deadlocked race with Aaron Burr, according to Yahoo.
The first daughter didn’t quote this part of Jefferson’s full message to his daughter: “I pant for that society where all is peace and harmony, where we love and are loved by every object we see.”
However, the New York Daily News reported that Martha Jefferson Randolph had a White house role similar to that of Ivanka’s.
The newspaper said Jefferson’s letter was in response to one written by Randolph complaining that he didn’t spend enough time with the family.
One woman who looked up the context of the quote was fascinated that the first daughter picked that particular quote considering the context in which it was written.
In a follow-up tweet, the woman conceded she couldn’t be sure that Jefferson’s letter referred specifically to accusations he fathered children with slaves but points out it was a big scandal during his presidency.
However, some Jefferson historians are skeptical the president is referring to the slavery sex scandal.
Kevin Gutzman, a history professor at Western Connecticut State University, told HuffPost that he finds it dubious that Jefferson would have brought up the subject of Hemings in a letter to his daughter.
“There were other things in his background about which there was gossip to which he could have been referring,” he said.
Meanwhile, Phil Magness, an economic historian at the American Institute for Economic Research, said the gossip about Jefferson and Hemings came out in 1802, more than a year after the letter was written.
Meanwhile, one guy was concerned about Ivanka’s Jefferson tweet, but not for the reason you think.