Power

Donald Trump: Daughter Should ‘Find Another Career’ if She Faces Sexual Harassment

Donal Trump's son, Eric Trump, suggested that his sister Ivanka wouldn’t be harassed in the workplace because she is “strong.”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested that if his daughter were to face sexual harassment in the workplace, she should just get a new job. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested that if his daughter were to face sexual harassment in the workplace, she should just get a new job.

The GOP nominee made the comments during an interview with Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers.

Trump had glossed over a lawsuit alleging that Fox News CEO and chairman Roger Ailes had repeatedly sexually harassed women employees at the network. When asked about his relationship with Ailes during a July 24 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump said the longtime network executive had “been a friend of mine for a long time, and I can tell you that some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he’s helped them.”

Powers later asked Trump about his comments about Ailes on NBC, inquiring about whether “a woman could both have been promoted by a boss and harassed by him,” and pointing out that women “are often forced to maintain good relations with men who abuse them precisely because those men have power.”

“There was quite a bit of fabulous things said [about Ailes by Gretchen Carlson],” Trump told Powers, according to the op-ed, published Tuesday in USA Today. “It would be easier for me and more politically correct for me to say you are right. But you would think she wouldn’t say those things,” he added, casting doubts on Carlson’s claims.

Trump told Powers that if it was his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who had been harassed at work, he “would like to think she would find another career or find another company.”

Speaking to Charlie Rose Tuesday on CBS This Morning, the Republican nominee’s son, Eric Trump, suggested that his sister wouldn’t be harassed in the workplace because she is “strong.”

“Ivanka is a strong, powerful woman,” said Eric Trump. “She wouldn’t allow herself to be objected [sic] to it.”

“And by the way, you should certainly take it up with human resources,” he added. “And I think she definitely would, as a strong person. At the same time, I don’t think she would allow herself to be subjected to that.”

As many as one in four women experience sexual harassment at work and those who work “in low-wage jobs often have little bargaining power and can least afford to risk their livelihoods by reporting harassment,” according to a 2015 testimony from Fatima Goss Graves, vice president of the National Women’s Law Center. Graves in 2015 addressed the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Donald Trump’s commitment to helping women in the workplace was questioned in July after Ivanka Trump claimed he had been a champion for women at his company and cared about issues such as equal pay, pregnancy in the workplace, and child care.

However, as Rewire reported, Trump once called pregnancy an “inconvenience” for employers, has not released an agenda on child care, and is facing a discrimination complaint alleging that his campaign failed to pay a female employee the same amount men were paid.