WASHINGTON: Is it out of bounds to ask a White House advisor about the US president's behaviour, when that advisor also happens to be his daughter? Ivanka Trump says yes.
Donald Trump's eldest daughter was confronted with that situation when a journalist asked her about the women who accuse her father of sexual misconduct before he became president.
"Do you believe your father's accusers?" an NBC News journalist asked her in an interview that aired Monday.
"I think it's a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes the accusers of her father when he's affirmatively stated there's no truth to it," she replied.
"I don't think that's a question you would ask many other daughters."
"I believe my father. I know my father. I think I have that right as a daughter to believe my father," she said.
More than a dozen women have come forward with claims of past misconduct by Trump, who infamously boasted in a tape that surfaced during his 2016 campaign that his celebrity allowed him to kiss and grope women with impunity.
The White House has consistently dismissed the allegations, saying the president denied them before he was elected.
In a divergence from the White House line, however, Nikki Haley, Washington's ambassador to the United Nations and the highest-profile woman in the administration, has said any woman claiming to be the victim of sexual harassment -- including the ones implicating Trump -- "should be heard."