A former Playboy model has given her first televised account of the affair that she alleges she sustained with Donald Trump for almost a year, beginning just three months after the birth of his and Melania’s son Barron.
By going public, Karen McDougal disregarded legal risks relating to a $150,000 deal she had signed shortly before the November 2016 election that in effect bought her silence. In an hour-long interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, she gave intimate details of the alleged affair that involved her having sex with the then New York businessman “many dozens of times”.
In details that could prove especially discomforting for Trump and the First Lady, McDougal said that in the course of the relationship he took her into the couple’s Manhattan home in Trump Tower. Trump pointed out a room which he described as “Melania’s room”, saying “she likes to have her alone time” there.
The rights to McDougal’s story were bought in August 2016, just three months before the election, by American Media Inc (AMI), owner of the National Enquirer, though no article was ever published. AMI’s chairman David Pecker and Trump are longstanding friends, and McDougal said she thought that the deal had been a “catch and kill” – in other words an attempt to protect the then Republican presidential candidate by burying the tale.
Earlier this week AMI contacted CNN denying that there had been any attempt to silence McDougal. “She has been free to respond to press inquiries about her relationship with President Trump since 2016,” the company claimed.
Trump has denied the alleged affair.
McDougal’s appearance on CNN is something of a test run for what is expected to be a more incendiary broadcast on Sunday when the adult film actor Stormy Daniels – real name Stephanie Clifford – is scheduled to be interviewed, also by Cooper, on CBS’s 60 Minutes. She was paid $130,000 to keep her silence about an alleged affair with Trump by his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who says he made the payment out of his own funds.
Three women – Daniels, McDougal, and Summer Zervos, an Apprentice contestant who says she was sexually harassed by Trump – are all suing the president.
In her CNN interview, McDougal said that Trump had conducted the affair in many locations, including at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, in his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, as well as in Trump Tower where she was brought in through the back entrance. Their first date in June 2006 was in his bungalow rooms at the Beverly Hills hotel.
After they had sex, she alleged, he had offered her money. She said that hurt, and she told him: “I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Oh, you’re really special,” Trump replied.