While president, Donald Trump made sexual comments about his daughter Ivanka in front of his employees that were so lewd and disturbing that he was rebuked by his one-time chief of staff John Kelly, a former Trump official writes in a new book.
“Aides said he talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her, remarks that prompted Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter,” writes Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, in his new book, according to Newsweek.
Taylor is the official who penned the blistering 2018 New York Times op-ed about the former president under the pen name “Anonymous.” In his new book, “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump,” Taylor uses Trump’s alleged comments about his beloved oldest daughter, who worked as his senior presidential adviser, to illustrate the almost daily instances of “naked sexism” in the Trump White House, Newsweek reported.
The sexism was so bad that one senior female official told Taylor: “This is not a healthy workplace for women.”
Taylor also writes that Kelly told him about Trump’s comments about his daughter. Kelly “retold that story to me in visible disgust,” Taylor wrote, according to Newsweek. Kelly also said that Trump was “a very, very evil man,” Taylor said.
“There still are quite a few female leaders from the Trump administration who have held their tongues about the unequal treatment they faced in the administration at best, and the absolute naked sexism they experienced at the hands of Donald Trump at worst,” Taylor said in an interview with Newsweek.
Taylor’s book comes as Ivanka Trump has publicly distanced herself from her father’s third run for president in 2024, as well as from his myriad legal difficulties. He faces two separate criminal indictments. One is in New York City and is related to his alleged hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels and another case is in Miami, involving charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department over his hoarding of classified documents after he left the White House.
Trump has a history of making comments about Ivanka Trump that critics have deemed disturbing, as Newsweek said. Trump often mused in the past about what it would be like to be romantically involved with her. When Trump was the star of the reality TV show “The Apprentice,” he appeared on the ABC talk show “The View” with his daughter in 2006 and said, “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her. Isn’t that terrible? How terrible? Is that terrible?”
In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Trump reportedly celebrated Ivanka Trump’s “beauty” and said, “If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father…”
Last month, several former White House staffers opened up about Trump’s pattern of behaving inappropriately around female colleagues when he was president, Newsweek reported.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who quit as White House communications director in December 2020, told CNN that there were “countless cases of what I considered impropriety in the White House that I brought to the chief of staff because I thought the way he engaged with women was dangerous.” In the CNN interview, Farah Griffin urged voters to “pay attention” and for Republicans to “stop making apologies” for Trump.
Farah Griffin spoke to CNN after a federal jury in New York City found the former Manhattan real estate developer liable for sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan 30 years ago. The jury also ruled that Trump defamed Carroll by insisting that her assault allegation was “totally false” because she was not his “type.”
Trump has long denied any wrongdoing when it comes to the treatment of women. He also has denied ever abusing Carroll and on Wednesday launched a countersuit against her, accusing her of defaming him by repeating the allegation that he raped her, the New York Times reported.
Taylor told Newsweek and writes in his book that he had witnessed multiple instances of Trump’s inappropriate behavior around women while he worked for Kirstjen Nielsen, who was secretary of homeland security from 2017 to 2019.
“When we were with him, Kirstjen did her best to ignore the president’s inappropriate behavior,” Taylor writes in his book, according to Newsweek. “He called her ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey,’ and critiqued her makeup and outfits.”
After an inappropriate comment from Trump, Taylor said Nielsen whispered to him: “Trust me, this is not a healthy workplace for women.” Taylor, a longtime Republican who left the party in 2022, also alleges that Kellyanne Conway, who served as Trump’s senior counselor, referred to Trump as a “misogynistic bully” after a meeting during which he “berated” several female officials.
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