On Monday, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to claim that he and his White House support breastfeeding. But that’s not the impression his administration gave when its delegation to the U.N.-affiliated World Health Assembly reportedly tried to bully smaller, less wealthy nations into agreeing to water down an international resolution encouraging mothers to nurse over using formula.

That’s also not the impression given by Trump in his past personal statements. Indeed, comments made by him and his first wife Ivana Trump indicate that the 72-year-old former reality TV star has long viewed breastfeeding with discomfort or distaste.

Trump once called a lawyer’s desire to use a breast pump “disgusting,” while Ivana wrote in her memoir that she didn’t breastfeed Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric because she regarded the practice as “unsexy.”

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials at the meeting in Geneva refused to support a pro-breastfeeding resolution unless certain language was deleted. This language called on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” and to limit misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Get more celebrity news and photos delivered to your inbox for free on weekdays.

Sign up for our Coffee Break newsletter here.

The Trump delegation threatened to launch trade restrictions, withhold military support and take other financial measures against countries that supported the measure, the Times reported, in what many saw as a policy serving the interests of the $70 billion infant formula industry,

In his tweet, Trump said he believes that women should have the option to use formula.

The failing NY Times Fake News story today about breast feeding must be called out. The U.S. strongly supports breast feeding but we don’t believe women should be denied access to formula. Many women need this option because of malnutrition and poverty. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2018

Global health experts aren’t saying that women shouldn’t have a choice or that breastfeeding isn’t difficult or impossible for some women. But health experts note that breast milk has been scientifically established to provide the best possible nutrition to infants. The resolution also recognized that it’s simply not affordable or safe for many women to use formula, especially in poor countries. Formula is heavily marketed in those countries, but can cost more than $50 a month, which can be out of reach for impoverished mothers, according to Elle writer Sady Doyle.

Another chief concern is that mothers in many countries don’t have access to clean water, and powdered formula mixed with unclean water can be dangerous, and even deadly, for babies. In 2016, the World Health Organization said that breastfeeding, which is free, “is so critical that it could save the lives of over 820,000 children under the age of 5 years each year.”

If such realities are lost on Trump, that wouldn’t be surprising, according to Elle magazine’s Doyle. She put it this way about U.S. threats to launch a trade war over breastfeeding: “It’s an unprecedented and bizarre fracas, sparked by the same qualities that seem destined to define the Trump administration: Proud ignorance, pointless belligerence, and a hostile cluelessness about anything related to women’s bodies.”

There are two notable accounts of Trump and his first wife Ivana Trump expressing outright distaste for lactation and nursing.

In 2015, attorney Elizabeth Beck told the New York Times and CNN that she was questioning Trump in 2011 in a deposition for a lawsuit over a failed Florida real estate project. But when Beck asked to take a break, the then-real estate mogul and his lawyers objected, demanding that the deposition continue. Beck said it was urgent, that she needed to pump breast milk for her 3-month-old daughter. She displayed the pump to make her point.

Trump erupted into anger, Beck said. “He got up, his face got red, he shook his finger at me and he screamed, ‘You’re disgusting, you’re disgusting,’ and he ran out of there,” Beck told CNN.

Reading this on your iPhone or iPad? Check out our new Apple News app channel here and click the + at the top of the page to save to your Apple News favorites.

Trump, campaigning for president in 2015, didn’t deny his “disgusting” comment in an interview with CNN. But he said he was angry because he thought Beck wanted to pump milk pump in front him.

“I may have said it was disgusting,” he told CNN. “I thought it was terrible.”

It’s not known if Trump supported his second and third wives, Marla Maples and Melania Trump, in breastfeeding his younger children, Tiffany and Barron.

But his first wife, Ivana Trump, definitely didn’t nurse his three older kids. In her 2017 memoir, “Raising Trump,” Ivana Trump was very candid about how she wasn’t the most hands-on of mothers, according to a review by Slate. In addition to relying on nannies to help raise her children and ferry them to playdates, she also rejected the idea of nursing them.

She was “grossed out” by it and by childbirth, according to Slate. Perhaps in an echo of her husband, Ivana Trump called breastfeeding “totally unsexy,” according to Slate.

If there is one Trump woman who has indicated that she supports breastfeeding, it’s first daughter Ivanka Trump. In an undated interview with Fit Pregnancy, Ivanka Trump joked about how her husband Jared Kushner almost forgot to pack a nursing bra for the birth of their oldest child Arabella in 2011.

In her 2017 memoir, Ivanka Trump also disclosed that it was hard to return to work and continue to breastfeed, while “watching your milk supply plummet,” CNN reported. The White House senior advisor also revealed that the difficulties she had with breastfeeding “made me feel like an awful parent.”

But if Ivanka Trump nursed her children, she hasn’t been inclined, like other celebrity moms, to post proudly photos of herself in the act. Instead, in one 2014 photo, Ivanka is using a bottle to feed her five-month-old son Joseph.

Like our Facebook page for more conversation and news coverage from San Jose, the Bay Area and beyond.

Whatever Ivanka Trump’s preferences for breastfeeding, Elle’s Doyle pointed out that she has never publicly crossed her father or actions by his White House, so it’s not likely she’ll speak out on this issue either.

Related Articles Are Harry and Meghan in trouble for urging Americans to vote?

‘Powerless’ Kim Kardashian supposedly thought Kanye West was back on his medication

No, we ain’t gonna take it: Twisted Sister singer blasts anti-maskers for using band’s hit song

Kamala Harris’ ‘Timbs’ and other practical campaign footwear wins Twitter attention

JK Rowling’s new book sparks fresh transgender rights row As it turns out, the Trump administration failed in its efforts to gut the breastfeeding resolution. “Common sense” prevailed, and the resolution passed without much alteration, largely due to support by Russia, which isn’t in a position to be bullied by the United States, according to a New York Times editorial. The Times editorial added that the trade war threat was just one of several recent examples of the “administration’s zeal for badgering weaker countries into tossing public health concerns aside to serve powerful business interests.”

Elle’s Doyle similarly wrote that the threats were part of a “broader” attack on women’s reproductive health services. “Under Trump, the U.S. government exhibits an aggressive lack of knowledge about life with a uterus,” she wrote. “In the process, safe, healthy motherhood has become a luxury item.”