‘Inappropriate and offensive’: Ivanka Trump speaks out on father's lewd 2005 comments
Ivanka Trump, a top figure in Donald Trump’s campaign, finally addressed the lewd-tape scandal that kicked off the wave of controversy engulfing her father’s campaign.
In a statement to Fast Company published Monday night, the businesswoman called her father’s comments — which included boasts of groping and forcibly kissing women — “clearly inappropriate and offensive.”
“I’m glad that he acknowledged this fact with an immediate apology to my family and the American people,” she said.
Ivanka Trump had been relatively silent since earlier this month, when the Washington Post published a 2005 video tape of her father making shockingly vulgar comments on “Access Hollywood.” Though Trump denied ever actually groping women, an increasing number of women have since spoken out with allegations of sexual misconduct, including assault, against the GOP nominee.
Ivanka Trump’s statement came as a last-minute addition to a Fast Company feature on the Republican presidential nominee’s daughter, who is executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization and runs her own clothing company. The feature addressed how she’s managed to weather the “surreal experience” of her father’s presidential campaign.
“I mean, it’s been a year and a half of enormous scrutiny, of my family, every business, every movement, action,” she told the magazine. “I think that, you know, that sort of comes with the territory. And I think I’ve probably learned a lot through it and I’ve probably grown a bit tougher in terms of my resilience toward what is thrown our way because, you know, I’ve read some very negative stuff.”
The 34-year-old former model, who helped her father craft his maternity-leave policy, also dismissed the idea that she would serve in his administration.
“I don’t intend to be part of the government,” she told Fast Company, insisting that her role in Trump’s campaign is simply that of “a daughter and an executive who has worked alongside him.”
Asked how she’s able to withstand some of the more disturbing controversies surrounding her father in recent months — such as the allegation that he once sexually assaulted a 13-year-old— she replied: “The greatest comfort I have is the fact that I know my father. Most of the people who write about him don’t. I do.”
That, she continued, “gives me an ability to shrug off the things that I read about him that are wrong.”
Ivanka Trump also made clear during the interview that she wants nothing to do with white nationalists and other members of the far-right fringe who’ve rallied around Trump’s campaign, and insisted that her father feels the same way.
“I categorically reject any people within a community that espouses hatred toward anyone, and my father does and has as well, so this is not support that I would be comfortable with,” she said. “ And I couldn’t be comfortable with my father as president of this country if I thought that he could be comfortable with that type of support, and I know that he is not, that’s why he’s denounced it.”
Despite her best efforts to keep business and politics separate, both Ivanka Trump the person and the brand have been the subjects of backlash thanks to Trump’s unconventional and controversy-filled campaign. Glossier CEO Emily Weiss, for example, recently expressed regret for participating in an interview featured on IvankaTrump.com, and many Twitter users have called for a boycott of Ivanka’s products.
According to Fast Company, however, “major retail partners, including Bloomingdale’s, Zappos, Amazon, Dillard’s, Nieman Marcus, Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, and Nordstrom show no signs of discontinuing their affiliation” with her brand. Writer Anjali Mullany concluded that “one thing that’s become clear is that the Ivanka Trump collection has benefited from all the attention.”
Read the full Fast Company profile of Trump’s eldest daughter >>
