Marc Scheff, a witness who claims to have been on the JetBlue flight where Ivanka Trump was confronted by an “agitated” anti-Trump passenger, says the individual did not directly accost the future first daughter, as TMZ previously reported.
“A man got on and got upset about her and her family. He didn’t accost her directly,” Marc Scheff wrote of the incident in a Facebook post. “When he got on and saw her, sitting behind me, he said, ‘Oh my god. This is a nightmare’ and was visibly shaking.”
According to an article published by TMZ on Thursday, December 22, Ivanka, 35, was verbally harassed by a man on a JetBlue flight departing from New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. The man reportedly expressed his indignation with Ivanka’s dad, President-elect Donald Trump. TMZ reported that the man was holding his kid in his arms as he shouted, “Your father is ruining the country,” and asked aloud, “Why is she on our flight? She should be flying private.”
In his Facebook post, Scheff said that the flight was delayed, pushing the man in question to say, “They ruin our country, now they ruin our flight.”
The individual was removed from the flight for his behavior. However, Scheff, who says he sat in the row in front of Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and three kids, told Reuters on Thursday that while the man was “clearly agitated,” he “did not scream or yell.”
In regard to Thursday’s incident involving Ivanka, JetBlue issued a statement to Us Weekly:
“The decision to remove a customer from a flight is not taken lightly. If the crew determines that a customer is causing conflict on the aircraft, the customer will be asked to deplane, especially if the crew feels the situation runs the risk of escalation during flight,” the statement read. “In this instance, our team worked to reaccommodate the party on the next available flight.”
A rep for Ivanka had no comment.
