Donald Trump tap-danced around his daughter's testimony before the House select committee, where she agreed with former attorney general Bill Barr's dismissal of election fraud claims.
Ivanka Trump told the panel that she respected Barr, who described the former president's fraud claims as "bullsh*t," and her father lashed out on his Truth Social by saying she had "long since checked out" after the election and did not know what she was talking about, but he awkwardly walked back that criticism in an interview with New York Magazine.
“Well, I think she wanted to be nice and respectful,” Trump said. “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.”
Reporter Olivia Nuzzi felt the former president was trying to convince himself of that, and then he added a bit more.
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“I’m not even sure she knew what my feelings were," Trump said. "[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.”
He declined to say whether he had talked to his daughter about his testimony and again praised her character.
"She’s a good person, and she doesn’t want to hurt people’s feelings," Trump said. "She has respect for everybody, and there’s something very nice about that, actually.”
"We’re a little different in that regard," he said with a laugh, after Nuzzi asked if his daughter took after him in that respect.
Nuzzi was unsatisfied with his explanations, so she reached out to a former adviser to help parse what he'd said about Ivanka.
"He’s just trying to protect her and also himself,” that former adviser said. “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 adviser didn't think Ivanka and her husband, who each served as White House advisers throughout the Trump administration, would take on similar roles in another campaign or presidency.
“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," that person said.
