While at Princeton, Ioffe was vice-president of the Princeton Israel Public Affairs Committee. In a college newspaper column published in 2003, she was quoted as supporting Israel's "methods of defense against terrorism", including the construction of theIsraeli West Bank Wall. According to Ioffe, the wall was "necessary for Israel to protect its citizens againstsuicide bombers".[20]
During the most violent protest, which took place onMay 6, 2012, the day before Putin's inauguration, Ioffe took a photo of a small boy on a bicycle with training wheels, facing a row of Russian riot police.[27]
Ioffe wrote an article about the 2013 anti-gay laws in Russia[34] and the Kremlin's ban on American adoptions of Russian children.[35] Her article, "The Loneliness of Vladimir Putin," appeared inThe New Republic in February 2014.[36]
In December 2014, Ioffe was one of the many staff members atThe New Republic to resign in protest against ownerChris Hughes's planned changes at the magazine.[13][47][48] Her emails and comments were cited byRyan Lizza in an article forThe New Yorker about the changes atThe New Republic.[49][50]
In May 2016, Ioffe became a contributing writer atPolitico.[52]
In December 2016,Politico fired Ioffe within hours after she posted toTwitter speculating about Trump behaving inappropriately with his daughter Ivanka.[53][54] Ioffe tweeted the following about President-ElectDonald J. Trump and his daughterIvanka: "Either Trump is fucking his daughter or he's shirkingnepotism laws. Which is worse?"[55] Thetweet had included a link to a CNN news article claiming the president elect was planning to assign the East Wing of theWhite House, traditionally theFirst Lady's domain, to his eldest daughter Ivanka. The news article was later determined to be false, with CNN publishing a retraction. After deleting the tweet from her page, Ioffe tweeted several apologies.[53]
The Atlantic, which had recently hired Ioffe for a position to start a few weeks later, issued a statement addressing Ioffe's comments, saying, "We're confident that when she joinsThe Atlantic next month she will adhere to our standards".[53]
On December 6, 2016,The Atlantic announced that it was hiring Ioffe to cover national security, foreign policy, and politics, with editor-in-chiefJeffrey Goldberg describing her as "an indefatigable reporter, a gifted analyst, and an elegant writer". Ioffe joinedThe Atlantic in early 2017.[56]
She wrote aboutThe Atlantic obtaining a 10-month correspondence betweenDonald Trump Jr. andWikiLeaks, which played a pivotal role in the presidential campaign and was suspected by the US intelligence community of being "chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked". Ioffe wrote that "though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the frequent messages from WikiLeaks, he at times appears to have acted on its requests… and shared that information with Donald Trump’s senior campaign officials".[57]
Ioffe gained access to the entire e-mail correspondence between Trump's campaign chiefPaul Manafort andOleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with strong ties to the Kremlin. According to the piece: "Manafort attempted to leverage his leadership role in the Trump campaign to curry favor with a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin".[58]
Other coverage of President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump
In April 2016, Ioffe published a profile ofMelania Trump forGQ magazine that revealed Melania Trump had a half-brother with whom the family was not in contact.[59]Slate magazine characterized the profile as "generally positive" of Trump.[60] Melania Trump, however, wrote in aFacebook post: "There are numerous inaccuracies in this article ... My parents are private citizens and should not be subject to Ms. Ioffe's unfair scrutiny."[61] Ioffe responded toCBS News saying: "I think she's understandably upset that some dirty laundry came out, but I did my job."[62] Ioffe's profile was praised bySlate andErik Wemple,[60][61] whileFox News writerHoward Kurtz said it had a "condescending tone".[63]Maxim magazine said that it "smacked of politically-motivated contempt for Donald Trump masked as a 'probing' look at his glamorous wife".[64] Following the article's publication, Ioffe received numerous anti-Semitic and threatening messages.[61][65] In an interview, Melania Trump said that Ioffe "provoked" the anti-Semitic abuse she later received with her article.[66][67]
On October 29, 2018, Ioffe appeared on CNN'sThe Lead with Jake Tapper, where she took part in a discussion about President Trump's rhetoric in the wake of thePittsburgh synagogue shooting. She opined that, "this president has radicalized so many more people than ISIS ever did", pointing to a 60 percent rise inantisemitic attacks during 2017. The comment received pushback from fellow panelistsDavid Urban andMona Charen. Ioffe later apologized for the comment during the broadcast and onTwitter, calling her comments "hyperbole".[68][69][70] In a Fox News interview withLaura Ingraham, Trump called Ioffe "some kind of a sick woman".[69][71]
On August 7, 2013, Ioffe was involved in an argument withLawrence O'Donnell over Putin's control of Russian media. Ioffe alleged that, instead of letting her answer his questions, O'Donnell "interrupted and harangued andmansplained" to her.[75]
The next day, Ioffe responded with a post onThe New Republic's website, "Dear Lawrence O'Donnell, Don't Mansplain to Me About Russia", in which she stated that she had spent several years reporting from Russia, was a native speaker, and had been invited and introduced as an expert on Russia. "What bothers me is that, look: your producers take the time to find experts to come on the show, answer your questions, and, hopefully, clarify the issue at hand".[76][77]
The post started a wide discussion about several aspects of the interaction between television and online media. Joe Coscarelli ofNew York magazine wrote that "[Ioffe's] simple, bullet-pointed list of arguments would never be allowed on cable television because they reveal an ability to think outside a black or white, good or bad, America or Russia dichotomy".[78] Philip Bump ofThe Atlantic assumed that it's "impossible to win a TV Argument in an Internet World", that "the power distinction between host and guest became flexible… [because] they interact both on-air and off" and "nearly any writing online could similarly rise to national attention" like Ioffe's.[77]
In November 2019, Ioffe accused a writer on theArkansas Democrat-Gazette onTwitter of being a Russian troll after noticing one of its stories aboutHunter Biden used a symbol that she mistakenly identified as aRussian-style quotation mark. After her mistake was pointed out to her, Ioffe deleted her tweets and tweeted an apology.[79]
