Over the weekend, the New York Times finally figured out that Donald Trump needed to be seriously vetted by the media, because that really hasn’t happened. The media has been fascinated by the “Trump phenomenon,” obviously, and they dutifully report on his daily craziness, but he hasn’t been “vetted” in the way typical presidential candidates have been in the past. The NY Times tried to rectify that by doing a long-read piece about Trump’s history of problematic, creepy and gross interactions with women. You can read the piece here.

Beyond the specifically problematic interactions with women, a picture of Trump begins to emerge: he is a man who sees all women as merely ornamental, there for his pleasure and nothing more. The exception to that might be Ivanka Trump, who I believe is Donald’s favorite child. One of the many stories featured in the piece is a tale about how Donald Trump groped a woman (who was not into it) in the 1990s, and now Donald’s favorite child is trying to ride to her father’s defense.

The New York Times cited a deposition from a woman who claimed that Donald Trump groped her under the table decades ago, but the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is certainly not a groper, his daughter said Wednesday.

“Look, I’m not in every interaction my father has, but he’s not a groper,” Ivanka Trump said in an interview broadcast Wednesday on “CBS This Morning.” “It’s not who he is. And I’ve known my father obviously my whole life and he has total respect for women.”

Ivanka Trump said she read the Sunday cover story and “found it to be pretty disturbing, based on the facts as I know them, and obviously I very much know them” as a daughter and an executive who’s worked alongside him for more than a decade.

“I was bothered by it, but it’s largely been discredited since,” she said, referring to Brewer Lane’s criticism of the report. Brewer Lane, the ex-girlfriend whose first run-in with Donald Trump was used as the lead anecdote for the article, titled “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private,” accused the newspaper of putting a negative connotation on her words.

“Most of the time when stories are inaccurate they’re not discredited, and I will be frustrated by that, but in this case I think they went so far,” Ivanka Trump continued. “They had such a strong thesis and created facts to reinforce it and, you know, I think that narrative has been playing out now and there’s backlash in that regard.”

[From Politico]

I’m sure Trump’s advisors thought this was a good play: having his daughter defend Trump’s history of gross interactions with women. Maybe it was a good play, because now I just feel sorry for Ivanka. The words coming out of Ivanka and Melania’s mouths these days, it’s like no one ever told them that they should never speak in pullquotes using the words “Hitler” or “groper.” As for Ivanka’s defense of her father… no, the NYT story has not been “largely discredited.” One of the fifty women said the NYT used her quotes in a negative way when that was not her intention. And the NY Times is sticking by their story too, because why wouldn’t they? Everyone has known about Trump’s problematic history with women for a long, long time.

Photos courtesy of WENN.