In the final weeks of the 2016, election, Donald Trump’s behavior toward women became a topic of national interest. The Access Hollywood tape had just been published, leading to a slew of allegations from more than a dozen women that Trump had engaged in unwanted touching and sexual advances. Amid the charged atmosphere, The Wall Street Journal reported that American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, paid $150,000 in August for exclusive rights to a story about a former Playboy model’s alleged affair with Trump, which it never ran. (A.M.I. C.E.O. David Pecker is a close friend of the president.) Now, details of the relationship have been made public, revealing a pattern of behavior when it comes to the sitting president of the United States.
While Karen McDougal story was buried, the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow obtained an eight-page handwritten document outlining her interactions with Trump, which McDougal confirmed she had written. According to Farrow’s report, McDougal and Trump first met at a party at the Playboy Mansion in June 2006, after a taping of The Apprentice. McDougal wrote that Trump “immediately took a liking to me, kept talking to me—telling me how beautiful I was, etc. It was so obvious that a Playmate Promotions exec said, ‘Wow, he was all over you—I think you could be his next wife.’” At the time, Trump had been married to Melania for less than two years, and his son, Barron, was months old.
After the party, McDougal said that she and Trump began an affair. Trump reportedly met McDougal at the Beverly Hills Hotel when he was in Los Angeles and regularly flew her to public events, but without leaving a paper trail. McDougal alleges that Trump once tried to pay her for sex: “He offered me money,” she wrote. “I looked at him (+ felt sad) + said, ‘No thanks—I’m not ‘that girl.’ I slept w/you because I like you—NOT for money’—He told me ‘you are special.’” McDougal is the second woman to make such allegations on the record. (In a statement, the White House called McDougal’s allegations “an old story that is just more fake news” and said the president denied there was a relationship.)
Though certain details of the report are more eyebrow-raising than others—McDougal allegedly ended the affair due in part to Trump’s “offensive” comments about African-Americans—the most serious ramifications are a matter of national security. While some of the seedier allegations in Christopher Steele’s Trump-Russia dossier have not been verified, the central thesis of the dossier seems increasingly likely: that Trump’s long history of alleged affairs make him uniquely susceptible to blackmail. Pecker’s A.M.I. told The New Yorker, “the suggestion that A.M.I. holds any influence over the President of the United States, while flattering, is laughable.” But the real worry isn’t whether the president’s friends, like Pecker or attorney Michael Cohen—who told the Hive he spent $130,000 to keep another alleged affair quiet—have power over the president. It’s whether additional alleged affairs and cover-ups are known to foreign governments, like Russia. If Rob Porter’s alleged history of domestic abuse and Jared Kushner’s mountains of debt were concerning enough to delay their ability to get permanent security clearances, then Trump’s history is a five-alarm fire.
