Ivanka Trump: "Borderline impossible" to get a fair view of Trump based on "vicious" media portrayal
NEW YORK - Ivanka Trump, arguably her father’s most influential surrogate, suggested Wednesday that the Republican nominee will honor the results of the election if he loses.
Asked at Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit in California whether her father would concede to Hillary Clinton if he loses, Ivanka Trump said Donald Trump is “in it to win it.”
“And of course I think my father will always do the right thing,” she said. “That’s the type of person he is.”
Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the election is “rigged” against him, alleging without evidence that there is widespread voter fraud and a conspiracy between the political and media establishments to deny him the White House. And while he said he would honor the election result in his first debate against Hillary Clinton last month, he has since waffled on that vow.
Ivanka Trump also appeared to distance herself from her father’s claims of voter fraud, though she did claim that the media has been biased against the Republican nominee.
“I think from a media perspective, it’s very hard to get an accurate portrayal of who he is as a person or the business he’s built, his professional accomplishments,” she said. “It’s borderline impossible.”
Ivanka Trump did not weigh in on the multiple women who in recent days have accused her father of sexual abuse. Her father has denied the claims and, in some cases, belittled his accusers’ looks. But she reiterated that she, and her father, were upset by the 2005 leaked video of the celebrity businessman using vulgar language to describe women and appearing to condone sexual assault.
“He recognizes that it was crude language. He was embarrassed that he had said those things and he apologized,” she said. “That’s not language consistent with any conversation that I’ve ever had with him certainly or any conversation that I’ve overheard so it was a bit jarring for me to hear.”
She added that she was not “sheepish” in sharing her opinions with her father.
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, are perhaps the most powerful voices inside Trump’s inner circle, and his daughter has appeared on his behalf at key moments in the campaign, including introducing the nominee at this summer’s Republican National Convention. She also helped design the campaign’s child care and maternity leave policy.
But she downplayed her role in the campaign Wednesday in the hours before her father’s final debate with Clinton.
“I’m a daughter. I don’t express my views on policy, except child care,” she said. “I’m not the campaign mastermind as people love to portray and speculate.”