Michael Moore Claims Ivanka Trump 'May Have Been a Victim' of Child Abuse by Donald Trump

Filmmaker Michael Moore—whose new documentary, Fahrenheit: 11/9 includes a look at President Donald Trump's comments toward his daughter Ivanka Trump—suggests that she "may have been a victim" of child abuse at the hands of her father.

Moore was asked by Entertainment Tonight Canada's Roz Weston if he knew more than the public about the president's relationship with his daughter, given the memes of Donald Trump putting his hands on her hips, among other questionable images of the two.

"Are you just seeing what we see? And it bothers you as well?" Weston asked in the interview Saturday, in light of the documentary debuting at the Toronto Film Festival.

"I'm seeing what you see, except I'm not making a joke out of it. I don't think child abuse is a joke," Moore replied. "And I don't understand the meme and the comedians and the jokes about this. If anything, Ivanka may have been a victim here."

"You believe that?" Weston asked about Moore's bold claim.

"I don't know what to believe," Moore said, but offered a scenario.

"If I were a teacher in a public school, and a 13-year-old student of mine, a girl, came to me and said, 'You know, I wanted to talk to somebody a little bit about this. My dad, every time he describes me, he says I'm voluptuous, and he tells people if I wasn't his daughter he'd be dating me,'" Moore said.

"And when someone asked him what's the thing he most had in common with Ivanka and he said, 'Sex,' if a 13-year-old student in the United States—and I'm pretty sure you have the same laws in Canada—came and told you that as a teacher," Moore continued, "Or showed you a picture of her on his lap where she's having to kiss him, as a minor, you are required by the law to turn that over to Child Protective Services, to law enforcement."

Moore said that teachers could be arrested for not reporting such incidents and questioned why Donald Trump "was given a pass" on being "handsy" with his eldest daughter on television and having pictures taken for magazines with her on his lap kissing him. Moore said Donald Trump's hands were "always too low on the hips and always too high on the chest" of Ivanka Trump when she was younger.

Donald Trump, when asked in 2013 on The Wendy Williams Show what he and his daughter had in common, did say "sex," but not in the way Moore implied. "Well, I was going to say 'sex,' but I can't relate that to her," the future president joked at the time. There is no evidence that Donald Trump abused his daughter.

The filmmaker of Fahrenheit 9/11—which questioned President George W. Bush's motives for entering the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and stands as the highest-grossing documentary of all time—named his new documentary Fahrenheit: 11/9 in reference to the day that Donald Trump was elected president.

Moore said he's not expecting a comment from the president on his new film's exploration of the father-daughter relationship, but added, "I hope he has a response because I think it's one piece of what makes him a truly evil person."

A left-wing activist, Moore took a picture with a smiling Jared Kushner in 2007, when Kushner threw an after-party for Moore's documentary Sicko. That was before Kushner married Ivanka Trump and before he ditched his Democratic roots to join Donald Trump's presidential campaign.