Fact check: How did Ivana Trump describe the alleged incident in 1993 and in later interviews or memoirs?

1. How the allegation first appeared — a deposition that shocked readers

Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition included a statement that she said Donald Trump had “raped” her, language that became the focal point of later reporting and controversy. Contemporary accounts and later summaries show the word was recorded in legal filings and then published or recirculated in books and news stories, which amplified public attention to the claim ^[1]. The initial report matters because it was a formal legal statement recorded during divorce proceedings rather than an offhand media comment, and that legal context made the allegation newsworthy for decades after. The phrasing’s publication in books and media in the 1990s and again in 2016 and beyond framed subsequent debate about what Ivana meant and whether the term should be understood as literal criminal accusation or as an expression of emotional violation ^{[2] [1]}.

2. Ivana’s immediate clarifications — “not literal or criminal”

After the deposition was publicized, Ivana Trump clarified that she did not intend her use of “rape” to be taken in a strictly criminal or literal sense; she said she felt violated because the love and tenderness she expected was absent during the incident. Multiple accounts record her walking back the literal interpretation, framing the claim instead as a description of emotional betrayal within a marriage ^[1]. This nuance — distinguishing between the legal definition of rape and a personal feeling of violation — has been central to how journalists and legal analysts contextualized the statement, and it is repeatedly cited in reports that compare the deposition wording with Ivana’s later public statements rejecting a literal criminal reading ^[1].

3. Later public disavowals — “totally without merit” and supportive statements

In statements and interviews years later, Ivana Trump publicly disavowed the rape wording as “totally without merit” and described her relationship with Donald Trump as amicable, emphasizing they were “the best of friends” and had cooperatively raised three children. She issued a 2015 statement explicitly refuting the allegation and expressing support for Donald Trump’s political ambitions, and in subsequent interviews she referred to earlier comments as “lawyers’ talk” rather than an accusation of criminal conduct ^{[3] [4]}. These later public disavowals shifted the public record from an explicit deposition term toward reconciliatory personal statements, and they were widely reported during political controversies in 2016 and later.

4. How reporters and researchers reconciled conflicting accounts

Journalists and analysts noted the tension between the deposition’s language and Ivana’s later public comments, emphasizing that the legal record contained a stronger word while her later interviews and statements softened or denied a criminal meaning. Reporting in the mid-2010s republished deposition excerpts and paired them with Ivana’s clarifications, presenting both the original phrasing and her walkback to show how the claim evolved over time ^{[2] [1]}. Some accounts cite corroboration from friends or contemporaneous sources to support aspects of her initial account, while other coverage highlights the absence of criminal filings or prosecutions and Ivana’s own later denials as reasons to treat the allegation differently than a documented criminal charge ^[1].

5. The big picture — legal language, personal feelings, and public politics

The record shows three consistent facts: the deposition used the word “rape,” Ivana subsequently said she did not mean a literal criminal accusation and described feeling violated emotionally, and later public statements explicitly disavowed the allegation while expressing personal affection or support for Donald Trump. Reporting across different outlets in 2015–2017 reiterated these points and framed them within both legal and political contexts, noting that the shift in Ivana’s public wording reduced the likelihood of any criminal follow-up and altered public interpretation during political controversies ^{[1] [3] [4]}. Readers should note the competing agendas at play — legal records, personal reconciliation, and political timing — which together explain why the claim has been reported in different, sometimes conflicting, ways over time ^{[2] [1]}.