Jane Fonda claims Ivanka Trump ‘laughed’ at her climate change appeal and never spoke to her again

Actor and activist hoped to recruit ‘four beautiful, sexy, smart, climate-interested women’ to encourage president to take the environment seriously

Jane Fonda at an event in 2019, and Ivanka Trump at last month's Republican National Convention (Angela Weiss/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Jane Fonda has claimed Ivanka Trump “laughed” and then never contacted her again after she appealed for Donald Trump’s help in the fight against climate change.

Fonda was arrested five times in the winter of 2019 while protesting climate change in front of the White House. But the protests only came after discussions with senior White House officials proved ineffective.

The Oscar winning actor and life-long activist said that she “understood” Trump, and recognised qualities shared between the US president and Fonda’s former husband Ted Turner, the billionaire founder of CNN.

“I thought, he’s been traumatised as a child, kind of like Ted as a child, so there are certain things that I understand about this kind of man,” Fonda told The New York Times.

To woo Trump in her fight against climate change, Fonda hoped to recruit “four of the most beautiful, sexy, smart, climate-interested women” she could find, and meet with him and “kneel, plead and beg” for his support. She claimed both Pamela Anderson and Sharon Stone were on her wish list.

“We’ll tell him what needs to be done and what a serious crisis this is and we’ll tell him that he will be the world’s greatest hero, that kind of thing,” she remembered.

Fonda said she ended up speaking with both Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, who works as a senior adviser to the president.

Jane Fonda at an event in 2019, and Ivanka Trump at last month’s Republican National Convention (Angela Weiss/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“I actually called Jared, or whatever his name is, and I told him my idea and he said, ‘Well, Ivanka is the environmentalist in the family.’ Yeah, sure. So she called me and I told her my idea and she laughed and I never heard from her again.”

Since the coronavirus pandemic, Fonda has shifted her weekly protests against climate change to the internet, where she streams environmental advice and information to thousands of viewers.