Throughout the Republican presidential primaries, Donald Trump has had a strained relationship with female voters — thanks in part to his derogatory comments about women. He has called his critic Rosie O’Donnell a fat pig, disparaged Carly Fiorina’s looks and seemingly attributed Megyn Kelly’s hard questioning during a debate to her menstrual cycle. But during a Tuesday night CNN town hall discussion with the New York mogul’s family, his wife and daughters argued that these insults meant nothing in comparison to their own positive experiences with him.



Asked by an audience member what they think about the media’s portrayal of Trump as insensitive to women, his daughters Ivanka and Tiffany and wife, Melania, came to his defense.

“I think the facts speak for themselves,” Ivanka, who is the daughter of Trump’s first wife, said. “I’ve witnessed these incredible female role models that he’s employed in the highest executive positions at the Trump organization my entire life. And in an industry that has been dominated by men — is still dominated by men, but certainly was when he was starting out in his career —he was employing some of these women, and raising them through the ranks.”

Tiffany, Trump’s 22-year-old daughter from his second marriage, to Marla Maples, said that she felt her father made no gender distinctions in offering encouragement.

“Every time I speak to him on the phone, whether it be at school or when I’m with him in his office or in Palm Beach, he wants us to do the best,” she said. “He has the utmost faith that we can accomplish whatever we set our minds to, just as well as men, if not better.”

As for Melania, she offered a much more cut-and-dried story of Trump’s approach to women.

“He treats everyone equally,” she said. “If you’re a woman and they attack him, he will attack back, no matter who you are. We are all human, and he treats them equal as men.”

