White House adviser Ivanka Trump, in an interview clip released Tuesday, rejected the notion that her father sides with those accused of sexual assault and domestic violence, rather than their accusers.
“What do you say to those who say your father routinely chooses to empathize with the accused over the accusers?” NBC News’s Peter Alexander asked Trump in the clip, listing former White House staff secretary Rob Porter and Republican Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore as examples.
“Well I don’t think that’s true,” Trump replied.
However, the President did side with both men even after the allegations against them were made public. Trump campaigned for Moore after multiple women accused him of making advances on them when they were minors, including women who said Moore groped and sexually assaulted them when they were teenagers.
“Let me just tell you, Roy Moore denies it,” Trump said at the time. “That’s all I can say. He denies it. And by the way, he totally denies it.”
And Porter was only fired after his ex-wives’ accusations of violence were made public; the FBI informed the White House months earlier of their claims, which came up in the course of Porter’s background check. Even after their stories broke publicly, Trump sided with the accused, not the accusers, in a tweet:
Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused – life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018
Ivanka Trump added that cases of domestic violence “cannot be condoned” and that “Nobody would condone that.”
“And I think there is a vast spectrum,” she said, without specifying what she meant.
“I think this is actually a really important conversation for us to be having as a society; about what is unacceptable unconditionally, what we have to be able to talk about and resolve moving forward,” Trump continued. “I actually think this is a really exciting and important moment in time.”
“I think many people are being exposed for doing some really awful things. And I’m proud of the women who are standing up in the face of accusers with credible evidence and credible stories, and we’ve seen a lot of those, a lot of them recently.”
In a separate clip released Monday from the same interview, Trump said that it was “pretty inappropriate” to ask her if she believes the women who have accused her father, President Donald Trump, of sexual misconduct. She ultimately said that she has “that right as a daughter to believe my father.”
Trump has been accused by numerous women of unwanted advances including sexual assault. The official position of the White House is that all of his accusers are lying.
Watch below:
President Trump has been criticized for routinely siding with men like Rob Porter and Roy Moore when they’re accused of misconduct.
Ivanka Trump tells @PeterAlexander: “I don’t think that’s true.” pic.twitter.com/G0gKfW2Vbs
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 27, 2018
