Ivanka Trump's Relationship With Donald: Why Daughter Says Presidential Run Is 'Complicated,' How Father May Have Offended Her

Asked how she felt about her father Donald's run for president, Ivanka Trump said Wednesday during Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit that she was proud, that she loved what he was doing, and that "as a daughter, it's obviously more complicated." But this isn't the first time the question of The Donald's presidential run appears to have caused some father-daughter tension, and it isn't fully clear to what extent Ivanka Trump, a successful businesswoman in her own right, supports a campaign that her father has punctuated with controversial and largely offensive remarks about women, immigrants and other presidential candidates.

"It's an incredibly difficult thing to do," Ivanka Trump said at Wednesday's summit of her father's run for president. "Whether you disagree or you agree, I think people appreciate the candor of his dialogue," she said, adding, "I think everybody can appreciate the fact that he's creating dialogue."

Trump has indeed stirred dialogue, but for reasons that have been hard for many, much less his daughter, to support. In June, when Donald Trump said Mexicans immigrating to the United States were rapists and criminals, his daughter reportedly submitted drafts of a statement for her father to retract what he said, but he rejected them, New York Magazine reported in August. Nevertheless, the magazine also reported that father and daughter were close.

Donald Trump's views on immigration are unlikely to be the sole source of discomfort, however.

Ivanka Trump, the executive vice president of development and acquisitions at The Trump Organization, has led multi-million dollar deals and in 2014 was named to Fortune magazine's 40 Under 40 list, according to her website. Her achievements might not seem to jibe with misogynistic remarks her father has made on the campaign trail that targeted Fox News host Megyn Kelly and Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. Those remarks add to a host of Donald Trump's other verbal attacks on women. In fact, in 2006, Donald Trump said, reportedly as a joke, that if Ivanka weren't his daughter, he would date her.

Even as Ivanka Trump defended her father Wednesday -- she said she could not be an executive at his company "if I wasn't able to excel in that environment." She stopped short of using the prompted word "happy" to describe her feeling about his run. Given her father's history, "complicated" was probably the safest word to use.