Two Trump men are facing backlash after pundits turned the question of sexual harassment on them, wondering what they would think if it happened to Ivanka Trump.
The issue came up as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has defended Roger Ailes, the CEO who left Fox News amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment. Kirsten Powers of USA Today spoke with Trump Monday about his choice to defend Ailes, and asked him what he would think if someone sexually harassed his daughter, Ivanka Trump.
“I would like to think she would find another career or find another company if that was the case,” Trump told her.
Powers called the comment “startling, even by Trumpian standards.”
“Why should a woman be expected to upend her career just because she ended up in the crosshairs of some harasser?” she wrote.
Eric Trump appeared on “CBS This Morning” on Tuesday and was asked to explain his father’s comments. While doing so, he said his sister was a “strong person” who “wouldn’t allow herself to be” sexually harassed.
“Hey, listen, we all run a company, my father runs a company, we take this — that is an absolute no-go anywhere, and that’s very much the case,” Eric Trump said. “I think what he’s saying is, Ivanka is a strong, powerful woman, she wouldn’t allow herself to be objected to it, and by the way, you should take it up with Human Resources, and I think she would as a strong person, at the same time, I don’t think she would allow herself to be subjected to that. I think that’s a point he was making, and I think he did so well.”
Twitter users pointed to Eric Trump’s response as an example of victim blaming, with some saying the response was even worse than Donald Trump’s original statement.