Today on “CBS This Morning,” Eric Trump defended his father’s recent statement that if his daughter, Ivanka, was facing sexual harassment at work, she should simply find another job.
“I would like to think she would find another career or find another company if that was the case,” Donald Trump told USA Today when asked what he would recommend his daughter do “if someone had treated Ivanka in the way [Roger] Ailes allegedly behaved.”
Several women have accused former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, but Trump has repeatedly defended Ailes, calling him a “very, very good person” who “helped” the women who have now come forward with harassment claims. “I feel very badly” for Ailes, Trump said after the former CEO left Fox over the allegations.
Eric said that his father made a great point on sexual harassment, adding that Ivanka “is a strong, powerful woman” who “wouldn’t allow herself to be subjected to that.”
Eric also misrepresented his father’s statements regarding his smear campaign against Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim-American parents of a fallen U.S. soldier who noted that if Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims had been in effect, their foreign-born son would never be allowed into the country.
“It’s not an anti-Muslim message,” Eric said. “It’s an anti-terror message.”
Eric falsely claimed that his father opposed the Iraq War and said that his father had apologized to the Khans. Trump, however, has not apologized, and recently suggested that Khizr Khan is a terrorist sympathizer. He went on to insist that his father’s refusal to back down is a leadership trait that America needs.
When Eric attacked the media for not giving more attention to the mother of a Benghazi victim who spoke at the Republican National Convention, CBS host Norah O’Donnell pointed out that his father called into Fox News during her speech to give an interview.