Did Trump ask, ‘Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife’? There’s no proof

For years, people have shared memes and posts on social media alleging U.S. President Donald Trump once said of his daughter Ivanka Trump, “Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?”

In one example, on Aug. 24, 2026, a Facebook user posted (archived) a meme reading, “In 1993, Trump asked, ‘Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?’ At the time, Ivanka was 13 years old.” Other users recently shared the quote on Bluesky and Facebook.

(Image via Facebook page Should I run as the People’s President?)

A Snopes reader emailed about the meme and rumor, asking whether Donald Trump had truly made such a statement.

In sum, we did not locate enough evidence to independently verify or debunk the claim that Trump made the remark.

The rumor about the quote originated in a BuzzFeed News article from Nov. 22, 2016, days after Trump’s first presidential election victory. The story’s author claimed the quote appeared in an early, unpublished draft of an opinion column The Washington Post sent to news media outlets for syndication on Nov. 21. BuzzFeed News did not say its journalists personally reviewed the unpublished draft, instead citing one anonymous source.

When previously reporting on this rumor in 2024, we contacted the Post’s editors, the BuzzFeed News writer and Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign to inquire about the truth of this matter. We did not receive responses.

Britannica.com documents Ivanka Trump’s birthday as Oct. 30, 1981, meaning she would have been 13 years old in 1994 and 1995, not 1993 as the meme said.

The origins of the quote

The Post’s opinion column from Nov. 21, 2016, is titled “Our next president, the Godfather.” Richard Cohen, who worked for the Post from 1968 to 2019, wrote it.

According to BuzzFeed News, hours after outlets reportedly received the Post’s early draft for syndication, the Post published the column without the quote. That quote allegedly originally appeared in an early draft as follows:

Jared Kushner, our Tom Hagen, who married Trump’s stunning daughter Ivanka — “Can I ask you something?” Trump asked someone I know, about his then-13-year-old kid, “Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?” — has lately lost some of this Boy Scout aura. It turns out Kushner’s admission to Harvard was preceded by his father’s $2.5 million pledge.

The published paragraph reads like this:

Jared Kushner, our Tom Hagen, who married Trump’s daughter Ivanka, has lately lost some of this Boy Scout aura. It turns out Kushner’s admission to Harvard was preceded by his father’s $2.5 million pledge.

BuzzFeed News, after reporting the story, updated its article after receiving a statement from Fred Hiatt, at the time the Post’s editorial page editor.

“We (or the Washington Post Writers Group, our affiliated syndicate) edit every column to try to make it as good as it can be,” BuzzFeed News quoted Hiatt as saying. “We don’t think it would be fair to our writers to discuss the editing process, and don’t see what is to be gained by talking about things that are not published — there are countless drafts that never see the light of day.”

Trump’s past remarks about women, daughters

The New York Magazine YouTube channel featured some of Trump’s genuine past remarks about his daughters Ivanka and Tiffany Trump, shared in a video compilation from May 2016:

The video features Trump’s comment on “The View” from 2006 saying he’d date Ivanka Trump if she weren’t his daughter. A Donald Trump representative later reportedly told The Associated Press he “was absolutely joking. He was making fun of himself for his tendency to date younger women. It’s a sense of humor that people don’t see [from him] all the time.”

For further reading, we previously reported the truth of many other similar rumors involving Trump and younger women or girls, including whether he admitted to going into changing rooms of beauty pageant contestants, his remarks about 12-year-old Paris Hilton and his jocular agreement with “The Howard Stern Show” cohost Robin Quivers calling him a sexual predator.

Sources