Claim:
In 1994 or 1995, donald trump said about his 13-year-old daughter Ivanka“Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than to your wife?”
Assessment:
On April 10, 2024, an X user posted a meme showing a photo of Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka. The meme read: “In 1993, Trump asked, ‘Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than to your wife?’ At the time, Ivanka was 13 years old.”
Remember when Biden went on national television saying that he and Ashley Biden have shared sex?
Oh wait. That was Trump.
Trump asked if it’s wrong to be more sexually attracted to his 13-year-old daughter than his wife.
If you agree that you are wrong, #VoteForBiden. pic.twitter.com/FY59xJyYpt
– Shelly R Kirchoff (@ShellyRKirchoff) April 10, 2024
We first tracked this quote to 2020 book “Trump: The Chosen One: Road to Perdition.” The book referenced as a source an article published by Cosmopolitan on November 22, 2016. The Cosmopolitan article cited original reporting by BuzzFeed News.
According to the BuzzFeed News article – which was also published on November 22, 2016 – Trump’s alleged quote appeared only in an early, unpublished draft of an opinion column in The Washington Post. The initial draft was sent to media outlets that would syndicate the story, BuzzFeed News said. The BuzzFeed News report did not say that its journalists personally reviewed the unpublished draft. Instead, it cited an unnamed source as evidence.
Snopes contacted the editors of the Post, the writer of the BuzzFeed News article and Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign to ask about the veracity of this matter. This story will be updated if we receive more details.
The origins of the quote
The opinion column of the Post was titled “Our Next President, the Godfather” and was written by Richard Cohen, who worked for the Post from 1968 to 2019. Hours after news outlets reportedly received the first draft, the column was published without the quote on the evening of November 21, 2016.
The BuzzFeed News story, citing its only unnamed source, said that an early draft of Cohen’s Post column included the following paragraph:
Jared Kushner, our Tom Hagen, who married Trump’s stunning daughter Ivanka – “Can I ask you something?” Trump asked someone I know, about his 13-year-old son, “Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?” – has recently lost some of that boy scout aura. It turns out that Kushner’s admission to Harvard was preceded by his father’s promise of $2.5 million.
The following text appears in the published version of the story on the Post’s website, without the quote allegedly included in an earlier draft:
Jared Kushner, our Tom Hagen, who married Trump’s daughter Ivanka, has recently lost some of that Boy Scout aura. It turns out that Kushner’s admission to Harvard was preceded by his father’s promise of $2.5 million.
Some memes and online posts erroneously claimed that the Post’s report said Trump had spoken the comment directly to Cohen, while other users included a year for Ivanka that did not correspond to when she was 13.
To be clear, the supposed early draft of the Post column said that Trump had asked the question to an unidentified person with whom Cohen was familiar. Additionally, Ivanka was born on October 30, 1981. She turned 13 on October 30, 1994, and the comment was said to have been said by Trump in 1994 or 1995, not 1993, as the meme claimed. In 1994 and 1995, Trump was at the beginning of his second married with Marla Maples.
After publishing its story about the quote, BuzzFeed News received a statement from Fred Hiattwho at the time was the Post’s editorial page editor.
“We (or the Washington Post Writers Group, our affiliated syndicate) edit each column to try to make it the best it can be,” Hiatt told BuzzFeed News. “We don’t think it’s fair to our writers to discuss the editing process, and we don’t see what’s to be gained by talking about things that don’t get published – there are countless drafts that never see the light of day. “
Other ‘questionable’ remarks about Ivanka Trump
Returning to the 2016 Cosmopolitan article, the report noted that the comment mentioned by BuzzFeed News was not “the first time questionable references from Trump to his daughter have surfaced.”
“He said on the Howard Stern Show in 2003 that ‘she has the best body,’” Cosmopolitan wrote. “The following year, he was back on Stern agreeing with the radio host that she was ‘a piece of a**.’ He also admitted on ‘The View’ that, “I said if Ivanka wasn’t my daughter, maybe I would be dating her.”
These observations and others were previously included in a compilation of comments posted to a YouTube video by New York magazine.
Conclusion
It’s possible that Trump made the comment about being more sexually attracted to his daughter Ivanka than his wife, considering the fact that video and audio exists of him making other similar comments. For example, after Trump made a comment on “The View” in 2006 that he would date Ivanka if she weren’t his daughter, a Trump representative later counted The Associated Press said Trump “was absolutely joking. He was poking fun at himself for his tendency to date younger women. It’s a sense of humor that people don’t see [from him] all the time.”
Without further evidence, we are still unable to definitively confirm the veracity of the quote published by BuzzFeed News. A rating of “Not Proven” was selected for this fact check. This classification does not mean that the rumor is true or false. Instead, it simply means that we have not yet been able to independently find and analyze enough evidence to make a firmer decision.
For further reading, we previously reported more details on Trump’s remark about considering falling in love his daughter and the rumor that he once admitted to entering beauty pageant contestants’ locker rooms. We also publish a history in 2019 over a complaint about the same “sexual attraction to his own daughter” quote.
Sources:
Cohen, Ricardo. “Opinion | Our next president, the Godfather.” Washington PostApril 12, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-next-president-the-godfather/2016/11/21/c5040e82-b012-11e6-8616-52b15787add0_story.html.
“Donald Trump.” British, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Trump.
Evon, Dan. “Did Donald Trump Say He’d Like to Date His Daughter?” SnopesJuly 10, 2015, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/donald-trump-date-daughter/.
Alright, Bruce and Hank Lewin. Trump: The Chosen One: Road to Perdition. Gatekeeper Press, 2020.
Griffin, Tamerra. “Draft Washington Post column claims Trump said he was ‘sexually attracted’ to his teenage daughter.” BuzzFeed NewsNovember 22, 2016, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tamerragriffin/trump-asked-if-its-wrong-to-be-attracted-to-his-daughter.
“Disgusting Things Donald Trump Said About His Daughters.” YouTubeNew York Magazine, May 13, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EPEkk6qWkg.
Ibrahim, Nur. “Trump admitted to going into beauty pageant contestants’ locker room?”. SnopesMarch 26, 2024, https://www.snopes.com//news/2024/03/26/trump-pageant-dressing-rooms/.
Jung, Helin. “Donald Trump Once Reportedly Asked If It Was ‘Wrong’ to Feel ‘Sexually Attracted’ to Ivanka.” CosmopolitanNovember 22, 2016, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a8353161/donald-trump-sexual-attraction-ivanka-trump/.
Kasprak, Alex. “Donald Trump Said Two Lovers Reminded Him of Daughter Ivanka?”. SnopesJuly 16, 2019, https://www.snopes.com//news/2019/07/16/trump-mcdougal-stormy-ivanka/.
“Richard Cohen.” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/richard-cohen/.
Schudel, Matt. “Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt dies at 66.” The Washington PostDecember 6, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2021/12/06/fred-hiatt-dies/.
“Trump Jokes That He Would Date His Daughter.” TODAY.com via Associated PressMarch 7, 2006, https://www.today.com/popculture/trump-jokes-he-d-date-daughter-wbna11714379.
