Ivanka Trump stuck up for her dad Donald Trump on Wednesday, declaring that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is fair to women and that “he’s not a groper.”
The Trump campaign has been fighting allegations of misogynistic behavior ever since a New York Times profile last weekend called into question his treatment of women.
“Look, I’m not in every interaction my father has. But he’s not a groper,” Ivanka told CBS’s “This Morning,” in an interview that aired on Wednesday.
“It’s not who he is. And I’ve known my father obviously my whole life and he has total respect for women.”
The candidate’s daughter said she was troubled by the Times piece but believes it’s in her dad’s rear-view mirror.
“I found it to be pretty disturbing, based on the facts as I know them, and obviously I very much know them,” she said. “I was bothered by it, but it’s largely been discredited since.”
Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean — whose own words were used against Trump in the unflattering piece — said Tuesday she has “nothing bad to say about him.”
“There were several reporters who had reached out to me, telling me they were doing an interview about Trump and women and how he treats women. And I told them, ‘I’m not going to do an interview at this time,’ ” Prejean told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday night.
“And I said, ‘By the way, I have nothing bad to say about him so get it from someone else.’”
In a lengthy weekend profile on Trump’s dealings with women, the paper took a page from Prejean’s memoir “Still Standing,” where she recounted a weird experience she had with Trump in 2009, when he was owner of the Miss USA pageant.
Prejean wrote that Trump grilled Miss Alabama demanding to know who she felt was “hot” among her fellow contestants.
Prejean said “the point of the whole exercise was for him to divide the room between girls he personally found attractive and those he did not. Many of the girls found the exercise humiliating.”
The former beauty queen was singing a different tune Tuesday night, sticking up for Trump.
“So what did they do? They quoted something from my book,” Prejean said. “They took a tiny thing from my book and they twisted it. And if they actually read on, I talk very highly about Mr. Trump. I don’t say anything negative about him.”
Prejean finished second to Miss North Carolina in 2009, after drawing fire for her answer to a question on same-sex marriage. She appeared to take both sides of the issue before declaring her support for heterosexual unions.
“Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage,” she said back then.
“You know what, in my country, in my family, I think I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.”
Prejean became a favorite of groups opposed to marriage equality. She was later fired by Miss USA producers after racy photos of her came to light.
(via: New York Post)
