Ivanka Trump Returns To Campaign Trail After Dad’s #TrumpTape Debacle
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Ivanka Trump took an unexplained break from the campaign trail that coincided with the release of a bombshell video in which her famous father bragged about assaulting women — and several women came forward to claim that Donald Trump groped them.
But now Donald Trump’s daughter and chief ambassador to women has returned to the stump, sounding familiar themes about faith and family that have made her an asset to the Republican nominee’s campaign.
“Politics is a vicious business,” Ivanka Trump told a crowd outside Philadelphia on Thursday. “It is certainly not for the faint of heart. It does sort of extend and there is sort of the collateral damage and implications to families as well.”
Ivanka Trump made three stops around the Pennsylvania city’s suburbs, a must-win area for her father in the fight for the state’s 20 votes in the electoral college. She did not mention the tape or the sexual abuse charges to the friendly voters she encountered, instead talking about her personal values and commitment to affordable child care, an issue that she touted at this summer’S Republican National Convention.
Speaking to the Atlantic before one of the events, she said that Judaism had sustained her along with friends and family through the trials of the campaign. “Faith is what I always turn to,” the mother of three said to the magazine. “Always.”
Along with the embarrassing tape, Donald Trump made headlines with a recently unearthed radio interview with Howard Stern in which he appeared to endorse the shock jock’s characterization of Ivanka as a “piece of ass.”
Ivanka Trump converted to Judaism in 2009 when she married Jared Kushner and is now a Sabbath-observant Modern Orthodox Jew.
Following the barrage of bad news for her father and his campaign, Ivanka Trump had retreated from the spotlight, keeping to posts on social media that omitted talk of the tape or the abuse claims. Her only public appearance in the wake of the allegations had been at last Sunday’s debate in St. Louis.
Still, she told the Atlantic, she stands 100% behind her father and his flagging presidential effort.
“He looks at the issues this country is facing and sees past the noise and knows he can change that… I wonder, will we ever be able to say that again about a candidate for president? It is such a unique circumstance we find ourselves in.”
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
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