In recent weeks, Donald Trump’s own eldest daughter finally made an appearance before the January 6th House Select Committee, where she delivered her under-oath testimony to the panel regarding her knowledge surrounding the events leading up to and on January 6th, 2020, as the House Committee continues to investigate her father’s role in inciting the deadly violence at the Capitol on that fateful day.
Ultimately, Ivanka’s testimony to the Committee was rather damning to her father’s cause, after she told the Panel that she respected her father’s former Attorney General Bill Barr, who called Trump’s election claims “bullsh*t.” Trump knew how hurtful his daughter’s testimony was to his case, so much so that it spurred him to take to his Truth Social platform in a seemingly angry post, where he said his own daughter essentially didn’t have a clue what she was talking about because she had “long since checked out.”
But now he seems to be tap dancing his way around that criticism against his own daughter during his pathetic new interview with Olivia Nuzzi for New York Magazine.
On the topic of his daughter’s damning testimony, Trump tried to excuse it all away by saying, “Well, I think she wanted to be nice and respectful. She’s a very high-quality person, and I don’t think she wanted to hurt anybody’s feelings. I thought that Barr was weak and pathetic, and I think that she doesn’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings.”
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Nuzzi noted that it felt to her as though Trump was quite literally trying to convince himself of what he was saying.
“I’m not even sure she knew what my feelings were,” Trump went on to say. “[Barr] didn’t want to be impeached, so he didn’t do his job in order to not get impeached. I don’t think she knew that.”
Ultimately, Trump wouldn’t confirm whether he had personally spoken with his daughter about the testimony and instead again praised her good character.
“She’s a good person, and she doesn’t want to hurt people’s feelings,” the ex-president said of Ivanka. “She has respect for everybody, and there’s something very nice about that, actually.”
“We’re a little different in that regard,” Trump added with a laugh when Nuzzi asked if that was a quality she inherited from him.
At the end of the day, Olivia found herself rather dissatisfied with Trump’s answers overall, so she went in search of some deeper clarification from a former Trump adviser, who helped her decipher what the former guy had to say about his daughter and her brutal testimony.
“He’s just trying to protect her and also himself,” the former adviser explained. “It’s similar to when he would suggest [Jared Kushner and Ivanka] move back to New York. He didn’t want them to, and it wasn’t a dig, it really was him trying to think of them.”
However, that former Trump insider did note that they don’t expect to see such involved White House roles from the former First Daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, the next time around, should Donald Trump secure a second term.
“I think their involvement would resemble their November 2015 to January 2016 involvement — ‘supportive family members’ on occasion, but not involved in any decisions or process day-to-day,” the insider said.
Read Nuzzi’s full article on her interview with Trump in New York Magazine here.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
