The National Enquirer paid $150,000 to a former Playboy playmate for exclusive rights to her story about having an affair with Donald Trump, but it never published the story, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Karen McDougal, Playboy’s 1998 playmate of the year, claims to have had an affair with Trump from 2006 to 2007, while he was married to his current wife, Melania Trump, according to the report. American Media Inc., which owns The National Enquirer, confirmed the payment, but said it was for a column.
Trump’s History of Infidelity
Trump said in his apology that “anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.”
But the Associated Press recently reported on employees of his NBC reality show, “The Apprentice,” saying Trump often spoke in very similar terms during the production of that show. From the AP’s report Monday:In his years as a reality TV boss on “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump repeatedly demeaned women with sexist language, according to show insiders who said he rated female contestants by the size of their breasts and talked about which ones he’d like to have sex with.
.. Eight former crew members recalled that he repeatedly made lewd comments about a camerawoman he said had a nice rear, comparing her beauty to that of his daughter, Ivanka.
Donald Trump is trying to claim the moral high ground?
Here’s the twist: Look at the man who threatens to pull the trigger on mentioning the Clinton scandals — a serial adulterer who is more removed from twinges of conscience than any figure in American political life. He boasts of his extra-marital affairs. He humiliated the mother of his children. He is the Playboy philosophy made flesh. He even found the time to mock Paula Jones as a “loser” and argue that Bill Clinton’s conduct was “totally unimportant.” His factotums, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, are also serial adulterers, though they didn’t boast about it. Still, their boss’s crudeness has now rubbed off.
Donald Trump and the Clinton’s Marriage
Trump interjected, “Heh, heh,” pronouncing each syllable in a way that validated the realism of countless cartoon voiceovers, and removed any doubt that he was talking about sexual, rather than political or financial, loyalty. But it was also a remarkable reminder of the proximity of all of those qualities in the Trumpian mind.
.. If properly executed, that sort of thing might have some resonance, although the ready answer is that, rather than mendaciously engaging in some woman-destroying scheme, she had simply trusted her husband.
.. Trump also told the Times that there was “never a problem” with his own marriages, which makes one wonder what, exactly, his wife at the time, Ivana, and soon-to-be second wife, Marla, were so upset about when they confronted each other at a ski resort in Aspen. (“It was very unladylike,” Ivana later told Barbara Walters.) When the Times pressed him on the Marla question, he said, “I wasn’t President of the United States.”
.. There is a need to speak more thoughtfully about the corrosive effect of money in politics and the uneven costs and benefits of free trade, and, indeed, about political dynasties. But Trump’s not doing that. When his bigotry and his speculations about sex aren’t at the center of his speeches, his narcissism is.
.. After all, the explanation for her wanting to be President couldn’t simply be that she has policy goals of her own. (Trump, at another point in the speech, said of Clinton, “She’s never done anything meaningful.”) In this scenario, there must be something else going on, something involving money and men who were out of sight—foreigners, too.
.. At the rally, Trump called her, effectively, a traitor—disloyalty to country being of a piece with disloyalty to husband.
.. Lester Holt asked both candidates if they would accept the results of the election, and Trump, after some hedging and insinuations about immigrants voting, said yes. (Clinton did so quickly and clearly.) In an interview with the Times, though, he suggested that he was rethinking that position; he should be asked the question at every debate. In Manheim, he was preparing his civil-society-slashing excuses.