A passenger claimed he was removed from a JetBlue flight on Thursday after an incident involving President-elect Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner were on a flight at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Thursday when a passenger confronted them, according to Matthew Lasner, who tweeted about the encounter between his husband and the couple.
"Ivanka and Jared at JFK T5, flying commercial. My husband chasing them down to harass them. #banalityofevil," Lasner said in a now-deleted tweet.
Lasner said in another deleted post that his husband “expressed displeasure in a calm tone” about Trump and Kushner’s presence on their flight when “JetBlue staff overheard, and they kicked us off the plane."
Lasner also tweeted a photo appearing to show Ivanka on the flight.
JetBlue said in a statement that “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 company said in the statement. “In this instance, our team worked to re-accommodate the party on the next available flight.”
Passenger Marc Scheff told NBC News he witnessed the incident before the plane took off. Scheff said Lasner's husband was agitated and began making comments.
"The comments were definitely for everyone but he was directing them towards her," he said.
In a post on Facebook, Scheff said he and his son were featured in the photo that appeared to show Ivanka Trump on the flight. Scheff wrote that the passenger who addressed Trump did not accost her directly and did not yell.
"He was also not what I would describe as calm. Agitated maybe," he said in the post. Lasner remained calm throughout the incident, he added.
Scheff wrote that Lasner's husband exclaimed "they ruin the country now they ruin our flight!" The flight was delayed because the Trump family needed to get on first through different a different area than the other passengers, he said.
"When the JetBlue staff went back to speak to the man I overheard Ivanka say to them 'I don't want to make this a thing,'" Scheff wrote.
Witness Brett Murphy told NBC News she did not hear the exact comment the man made, "but there were definitely no raised voices."
Murphy said after the man sat in his seat a flight manager asked him to leave his seat so they could talk.
"The passenger was calmly responding and asking questions about why he needed to talk to him, at one point — again very calmly — asking if he was being asked to leave for giving his opinion," Murphy said. "Eventually, the man agreed to get up and go, with his kid still in his arms, and he never came back."
TMZ reported earlier Thursday that the passenger was verbally berating Ivanka and "jeering" at her three children.
NBC News could not independently confirm the content of what was actually said, and Lasner said in his since-deleted tweets that it was a calm or peaceful confrontation. Lasner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The president-elect's daughter was on a flight to San Francisco, but was ultimately headed to Hawaii, a public relations representative for Ivanka Trump told NBC News.
The United States Secret Service referred inquiries to JetBlue but said Ivanka Trump has full Secret Service protection as the daughter of the president-elect.
