A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
On Wednesday, Melania Trump hosted a luncheon at the White House to celebrate International Women’s Day. As Breitbart noted, her husband marked the date by tweeting that he has “tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy.”
Conservative publications took the occasion as an opportunity to criticize those who planned to take the day off work. Fox News declared that “‘Day Without a Woman’ supporters got $246M from Soros,” while a Breitbart headline asked, “How Many People Do You Have to Kill to Get Involved With the Women’s March?” That post and several others attempted to connect the protests to what it called the “violent views” of its organizers, including Linda Sarsour, who Breitbart says “supports the discriminatory and terror-tied BDS Movement.” (BDS is the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” movement, which attempts to put economic pressure on Israel to change its policies toward Palestinians.)
In “Women Refuse to Smile as Part of a ‘Day Without a Woman,’ ” the Daily Caller discussed the “consequences” of a women’s strike. “Various female teachers requested Wednesday off, a move that left both parents and children in a bad place. Some children are missing a day from school and parents are searching for alternative childcare while they are at work,” it wrote. Focusing on one such district, National Review proposed that teachers in Alexandria, Virginia—which closed school for the day—should instead focus on improving their own schools, whose problems “existed before Donald Trump took office.”
The Federalist wrote that the protest assumes “a set of elitist and inegalitarian privileges for participants and further marginalizes an already-marginalized group of women.” After calling women who intended to strike “whiny,” LifeZette similarly proposed that they simply didn’t know how good they have it:
They are privileged women who have had the luxury of spending four or more years in universities, sitting at the feet of their adored indoctrinators, who tell them they are victims and deserve safe places to be able to hear the echoed sounds of their own voices without trigger words that hurt their itty bitty feelings.
That same article upheld Ivanka Trump as a more affirmative ideal, calling her a “renaissance woman.” A separate LifeZette piece offered a handful of “better options for making a difference in the lives of women” that those who are “serious about celebrating females” can pursue instead of staying home. The list included visiting a senior center, taking your old work clothes to a women’s shelter, and checking out a library book “on great women in history.”
The Federalist suggested that women should instead take the day to remember “the women the world is without today given the policies and priorities the organizers of A Day Without A Woman promotes,” including “750 million aborted females” worldwide since 1980. The Daily Caller, meanwhile, invited its readers to “Celebrate International Women’s Day With Tactical Yoga Pants.”
On social media, posts discussing the latest jobs report were widely shared from conservative Facebook pages:
