‘He’s not a groper’: Ivanka Trump defends father from harassment allegation

Ivanka Trump defended her father’s treatment of women in the face of a recent New York Times article detailing his habit of “unwelcome romantic advances,” among other alleged misbehavior.

“I’m not in every interaction my father has, but he’s not a groper. It’s not who he is,” she said in a “CBS This Morning” interview that aired Wednesday.

“And I’ve known my father obviously my whole life,” she continued. “And he has total respect for women.”

She was responding to last weekend’s front page Times profile of how women who have interacted with her father, Donald Trump, described the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

The paper reported that in a 1996 deposition, a woman who worked with Trump said he was “groping me under the table” at a dinner. “Let me just say, this was a very traumatic thing working for him,” she said.

But Ivanka Trump said during the Wednesday interview that her father had empowered women, not harassed them.

“I found it to be pretty disturbing based on the facts as I know them, and obviously I very much know them,” she told CBS’ Norah O’Donnell of the story. “I was bothered by it,” she added.

Her interview was just a small part of Donald Trump’s pushback against the Times article. Rowanne Brewer Lane, an ex-girlfriend quoted in the lead anecdote, claimed she had been portrayed inaccurately, and Trump has since been raging that the story was “discredited.”

On Tuesday night, Trump even called for the resignation of one of the reporters who wrote the story.

In various tweets since it was published, Trump also called the article “false,” “dishonest,” “malicious,” and “libelous,” as well as a “fraud,” a “lie” and a “hit piece.” The real estate tycoon is well known for lashing out after critical media coverage.

For its part, a Times spokesperson told Yahoo News on Monday that the paper stood by its reporting.

“Ms. Brewer Lane was quoted fairly, accurately and at length,” the spokesperson said. “The story provides context for the reader including that the swimsuit scene was the “start of a whirlwind romance” between Ms. Brewer Lane and Mr. Trump.”

View some of his tweets raging against the article below: