Ivanka Trump Errs in Saying That Judaism Is One of '3 Largest World Religions'
Presidential daughter Ivanka Trump has drawn criticism over her factually incorrect statement that Judaism is one of the "three largest world religions" while speaking about her recent overseas trip as the featured guest of "Fox & Friends" on Monday.
As her father's adviser, Ivanka joined President Donald Trump in his whirlwind visit last month to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Vatican, Belgium, and Italy where he met with Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders.
Ivanka was recalling the presidential party's visit to Israel when she made the factual mistake.
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"Every day in this experience has been surreal, but that was truly an unbelievable moment ... it was deeply personal for me as you know standing at the Western Wall in a moment of privacy," Ivanka told the hosts of "Fox & Friends."
"To have covered the three largest world religions over the course of four days, it was deeply meaningful," she added.
The Huffington Post quickly pounced on the presidential daughter and adviser for erasing "the followers of several major religions in her statement."
According to the latest population study on the world's major religions by the Pew Research Center, released in April, Judaism ranks only eighth among the world's major faiths with only about 14 million Jews worldwide.
Christianity remains the number one religion with 2.3 billion adherents, or 31.2 percent of the world's population, followed by Islam (1.8 billion, 24.1 percent), unaffiliated individuals (1.2 billion, 16 percent), Hindus (1.1 billion, 15.1 percent), Buddhists (500 million, 6.9 percent), folk religions (400 million, 5.7 percent), other religions (100 million, 0.08 percent) and only then Judaism (14 million, 0.2 percent).
Faithwire, however, wrote that it's possible Ivanka was speaking more about worldwide influence of the world's major religions rather than the actual number of followers.
The Christian Post earlier reported that in the same "Fox & Friends" interview, Ivanka spoke about "the level of viciousness" that her father has been subjected to since he took the helm of power.
Ivanka criticized the media for focusing mainly on the investigations about the alleged ties between Russia and the Trump election campaign.
"I think some of the distractions and some of the ferocity, I was a little blindsided by on a personal level," she said.
