Ivanka Trump last year drafted a statement for Donald Trump to walk back his remarks about Mexico sending “rapists” into the United States, the daughter of the Republican presidential nominee revealed in a deposition earlier this summer.
“I had suggested a clarification because I felt that his comments were being misconstrued,” Ms. Trump said in the deposition that was first reported Saturday by BuzzFeed.
The deposition is part of lawsuit involving a chef who dropped out of Mr. Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel project because of the New York real-estate developer’s remark about Mexicans.
Ms. Trump’s deposition also shed light on the reaction inside Team Trump to the candidate’s announcement speech, which was widely interpreted in the news media as an attack on Mexicans and Hispanics.
Ms. Trump stressed that statement she drafted was intended as a clarification, not a retraction.
The statement was never used by Mr. Trump.
In announcing his White House run in June 2015, the New York billionaire said: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Ms. Trump said in the deposition that the remarks “were mischaracterized as being a categorical attack on Hispanics.”
“I felt that it was very important that he clarified the fact that that was not the case. He had not said that. He had not attacked Hispanic people. But that was the immediate narrative that had been spun,” she said.
“Basically I was playing around with the idea of the fact that the media was spinning what he said to be about Hispanic people generally, as opposed to illegal immigrants, which he subsequently clarified on his own in countless interviews. And the fact that my father has a tremendous relationship with people of Hispanic descent,” Ms. Trump said in the deposition.
“You know, this is — this is something that personally was very hard for me because I know how many friends my father has who are Hispanics, how many people work at our company who are Hispanic,” she said. “So when the media took the narrative in a bad direction it was upsetting to me, because I know it to not be true. So I thought it would be helpful to — to articulate that. But ultimately he did. I mean, he’s — he’s very articulate and very capable of sort of speaking his opinion. And he said that numerous times.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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