Donald Trump told an interviewer on Monday that if his daughter Ivanka Trump were sexually harassed at work, “I would like to think she would find another career or find another company if that was the case” – an answer that provoked anger from commentators who said that the onus of ending workplace harassment should not be on the victim.



This morning, Ivanka’s younger brother Eric doubled down on his father’s remarks, telling CNBC’s John Harwood that a “strong, powerful woman” like his sister wouldn’t allow such harassment to occur in the first place.

Eric Trump on handling workplace sexual harassment: "Ivanka is a strong, powerful woman. She wouldn’t allow herself to be subjected to it" — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 2, 2016

The implication that victims of workplace sexual harassment are, unlike Ivanka, not strong or powerful, or somehow “allow” themselves to be subjected to such treatment, sparked a single-word response from Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.

The issue of workplace sexual harassment was raised after allegations surfaced against Kelly’s former boss, the former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who has been accused of sexual harassment by more than 20 women since former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit against him in July. One former booker for the network revealed to New York magazine that she had been paid a $3.5m settlement by the network to maintain silence about a decades-long cycle of sexual harassment and blackmail. Kelly has also told investigators Ailes sexually harassed her, New York magazine reported, although she has been silent on the subject in public.

Ailes has denied all allegations of sexual misconduct.

Trump, a longtime friend of Ailes, defended the ousted news chief in an interview with Chuck Todd on the Meet the Press on 24 July. “All of a sudden they’re saying these horrible things about him. It’s very sad,” Trump said. “Because he’s a very good person. I’ve always found him to be just a very, very good person. And by the way, a very, very talented person. Look what he’s done. So I feel very badly.”

Donald and Eric Trump’s comments on the nature of sexual harassment in the workplace come as a poll indicates abysmal numbers for the Republican nominee with female voters: the CNN/ORC survey released Monday showed Trump trailing Clinton among women by a margin of 57%-34%.

Eric Trump later attempted to clarify his remarks, tweeting:

I said sexual harassment is a "no go" and should be addressed by Human Resources. It's totally unacceptable behavior https://t.co/nttmptuc4M — Eric Trump (@EricTrump) August 2, 2016

Ivanka Trump has not yet spoken about her father’s and brother’s comments regarding workplace sexual harassment, but she did discuss the issue in her 2009 book, The Trump Card.

In the autobiography/business guide, Ivanka described having a “recurring nightmare” about the possibility of sexual harassment on the job, which she said she had experienced “many times” on her father’s construction sites over the course of her childhood.

“But in those cases,” Ivanka wrote, “the workers never realized I was the boss’s daughter when they started hooting and hollering, and it didn’t much matter how I responded.” Once the workers were informed and they apologized, Ivanka wrote, “I’d laugh it off and act as it it were no big deal.”

But as an adult, Ivanka described the “no-win situation” of being sexually harassed in front of her boss. “If I ignored the inappropriate remarks, I might come across as weak. If I responded too harshly, I’d be a tightly wound witch.”

Despite her breezy reaction to construction-site jeering as a teenager, Ivanka wrote in The Trump Card that “sexual harassment is never acceptable, and we must stand against it.”

“At the same time,” however, “we must recognize that our coworkers come in all shapes, stripes, and sizes. What might be offensive to one person might appear harmless to another.”

Ivanka urged readers to “learn to figure out when a hoot or a holler is indeed a form of harassment and when it’s merely a good-natured tease that you can give back in kind.”

To ward off remarks, Ivanka, a former fashion model, “concealed my femininity” by wearing her hair in a bun and dressing in plain black pantsuits, she said.

