Scarlett Johansson Is "Baffled" By Ivanka Trump

Scarlett Johansson is continuing to be very vocal when it comes to first daughter Ivanka Trump, whom the White House recently announced would take an assistant role for her father, the president. Johansson played a very convincing Trump in a parody ad for a perfume called Complicit when she hosted Saturday Night Live on March 11. And on Thursday, during an interview with Ariana Huffington at the Women in the World Summit in New York, Johansson said she finds Trump not only complicit, but cowardly. "The whole situation baffles me," she said of Trump's involvement in her father's administration.

Johansson seemed to refer to the interview that Trump did with Gayle King on CBS This Morning in which she said:

My father is gonna do a tremendous job. And I wanna help him do that. But I don’t think that it will make me a more effective advocate to constantly articulate every issue publicly where I disagree … And that’s okay. That means that I’ll take hits from some critics who say that I should take to the street. And then other people will in the long-term respect where I get to. But I think most of the impact I have, over time most people will not actually know about.

Johansson expressed her confusion and disappointment with Trump, and said at the summit, "You can't have it both ways, right? If you take a job as a public advocate, then you must advocate publicly, right?"

In responding to criticism, which has come from everyone from SNL to political pundits, Trump also notoriously said in her interview with King that she did not know what it meant to be "complicit." She added, "If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good, and to make a positive impact, then I'm complicit."

Merriam-Webster slammed her with a tweet in a way that only a dictionary could, tweeting that the word was their number one lookup after Trump said on-air that she didn't know what it meant. It is defined as helping to commit a crime or do wrong in some way, so decidedly the opposite of Trump's understanding of the word.

Johansson was particularly disappointed by Trump's intentions to make changes behind the scenes in the administration "where nobody would know she made that decision."

"How old-fashioned, this idea behind every great man is a great woman," the actor said. "How about being in front of that person or next to that person? It's so uninspired, and actually I think really cowardly. And I was so disappointed by that interview that she gave yesterday."

Trump's advocating for women has left much to be desired, to say the least. Recently it was revealed that she had met with Cecile Richards from Planned Parenthood in secret (so, behind closed doors), but the meeting largely consisted of Richards explaining how exactly their funds were allocated, according to a Planned Parenthood spokesperson who confirmed the meeting. It's situations like this that invite criticism that Trump is not only complicit in her father's agenda, but furthering it by remaining silent though she could have major influence.

The tagline for Johansson's faux perfume, Complicit, was "For the woman who could stop all this, but won't." It's a little too painfully on the nose, like a lot of political comedy has been lately, because the bleak satire writes itself. One thing is clear, though: Johansson plays a very convincing Trump, and it could come from her downright disappointment in the first daughter.