First Daughter and White House assistant Ivanka Trump said Monday on "Fox and Friends" that work in the administration has been "hard" and there is a "level of viciousness" she didn't expect from the opposition.
She said, however, that the work was not supposed to be easy.
"My father and this administration intends to be transformative. And we want to do big, bold things. And we're looking to change the status quo. So I didn't expect it to be easy," she said.
"I was a little bit blindsided by [the distractions] on a personal level," she added. "But for me, I'm trying to keep my head down, not listen to the noise and just work really hard to make a positive impact in the lives of many people."
She said the real difficulty was being faced by Americans out in the country but pointed to positive economic news as well.
"Small businesses have this sense of vigor. And you know I talking to someone the other day who was referring to it as the animal spirt of small business owners have been released," she said. "At the end of the day if you want to think about difficult, it's the factory worker who's been laid off. Difficult is the mother whose lost a child to opioid abuse. So these are the real challenges and I think this puts it in perspective for me."