Few surnames stir up more controversy in the western world than Trump. And while the Trump family has managed to bring their divisive behaviors to the global stage, some of their most serious affairs may have occurred behind closed doors.
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00:00Few surnames stir up more controversy in the Western world than Trump. And while the Trump
00:05family has managed to bring their divisive behaviors to the global stage, some of their
00:09most serious affairs may have occurred behind closed doors.
00:13Melania Trump has had to deal with never-ending infidelity headlines. But she's not Donald
00:18Trump's first wife to face such rumors. In 1977, Donald married Ivana Trump. Not only was she the
00:24mother of his first three children, she was also an integral part of the Trump Organization. However,
00:29their seemingly perfect union came crashing down in 1989, when Ivana learned of her husband's
00:34alleged years-long affair with model Marla Maples. Donald met Maples at a 1985 celebrity
00:40tennis match, and according to a 1990 Vanity Fair feature, they became increasingly sloppy
00:45about hiding their reported romance.
00:47I just think the first moment I met him, I had a sense like I'd known him before. I think it
00:51was much deeper than just whatever you might feel."
00:54Donald and Maples were repeatedly spotted at the same events,
00:57and she allegedly moved into a suite at the since-defunct Trump Regency Hotel. However,
01:02their biggest misstep occurred in 1989, when both Ivana and Maples vacationed in Aspen,
01:07Colorado at the same time. The two women actually bumped into each other, and according to Ivana's
01:122017 memoir, Raising Trump, Maples boldly let the truth fly. Ivana wrote,
01:17"[This young blonde woman approached me out of the blue and said,
01:19I'm Marla, and I love your husband. Do you?"
01:22Ivana filed for divorce, and Donald married Maples in 1993. Despite the apparent overlap
01:27in their relationships, Donald later said in a 2022 deposition that he wasn't sure
01:32when he started seeing Maples. He mused,
01:34"[It was towards the end of the marriage.] It could be a lap over, but I don't really know."
01:39Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign was marred by controversy. But perhaps
01:44nothing stirred up as much talk as the legal trial tied to his alleged affair with Stormy Daniels.
01:49Trump first met the adult film star at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006,
01:53and as she told 60 Minutes in 2018, he invited her to dinner. She agreed
01:57and met him in his hotel room, where they ended up ordering room service.
02:00Daniels said she asked about Melania and Barron Trump, who was then just a few months old,
02:05and stated that Trump, quote, brushed it aside.
02:07"'It didn't even matter that he was rich. He was just another male, and
02:11I was in a little skimpy outfit and have huge boobs.'"
02:14She claimed they had sex that night, even though she wasn't attracted to Trump,
02:17but underscored,
02:18"'I didn't say no. I'm not a victim.'"
02:20According to Daniels, they continued speaking, and saw each other again but had no more physical
02:25encounters. In 2011, she sold her story to a newspaper for $15,000, but it was never published,
02:31and she received no money. Then, mere days before the 2016 election, Trump's lawyer,
02:35Michael Cohen, reportedly offered to pay her $130,000 in return for signing an NDA,
02:41which she says she accepted.
02:42The story eventually made news anyway when it was uncovered by The Wall Street Journal in 2018.
02:47Then, things got worse for Trump when all those press headlines gave way to 34 felony charges,
02:53including falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election. In 2024,
02:58Trump was found guilty on all charges, but denied the allegations and vowed to appeal.
03:03Before his alleged affair with Stormy Daniels,
03:05Donald Trump reportedly got cozy with former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal.
03:09Trump's alleged mistress spoke with The New Yorker in 2018,
03:12saying she met Trump when he filmed an episode of The Apprentice at the Playboy mansion in 2006.
03:17Melania had given birth to Barron just a few months prior,
03:20but McDougal said that didn't stop an affair from blooming. According to McDougal,
03:24they had their first date, dinner in a private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel soon after.
03:29The model later jotted down notes about their relationship on eight pages of paper,
03:33which The New Yorker obtained. Describing that first date, she recalled,
03:36We talked for a couple hours. Then it was on. We got naked and had sex."
03:40She also noted that he tried to pay her, but she refused. They kept meeting up,
03:43but secrecy was key. She reflected,
03:45Every time I flew to meet him, I booked paid for flight and hotel, and he reimbursed me.
03:50As time went on, she said she met some of Trump's family members and even visited his
03:54apartment in Trump Tower, where he notably pointed out that Melania had a separate bedroom.
03:58After nine months of sneaking around, McDougal ended the relationship in April 2007. Because
04:03she felt guilty, she told The Mag,
04:05If I could go back and do a lot of things differently, I definitely would."
04:09A Trump spokesperson clapped back at the allegations, saying,
04:12This is an old story. That is just more fake news.
04:15Nikki Haley has publicly dissed Donald Trump more than once,
04:19which made rumors of a clandestine fling all the more surprising. In 2017,
04:23Haley was appointed as the ambassador to the United Nations under the Trump presidency. In
04:282018, journalist Michael Wolff published his headline-making book Fire & Fury, in which he
04:33wrote, The president had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One
04:38and was seen to be grooming her for a national political future. While he made no outright
04:42claims of an affair, it didn't stop others from doing so after they read that passage.
04:46Well, Haley was having none of it. Speaking with Politico in 2018, she called the speculation
04:52highly offensive and disgusting, noting that people will always try to find a way to tear
04:56down a successful woman. She went on to debunk Wolff's claims one by one, saying,
05:00I have literally been on Air Force One once, and there were several people in the room when I was
05:05there. I've never talked once to the president about my future, and I am never alone with him."
05:09Indeed, not only would Haley go on to campaign against Trump in 2023,
05:13but the two would regularly exchange jibes.
05:16Our country's in disarray, the world is on fire, and chaos follows him."
05:20Meanwhile, Trump giddily boasted about her eventual campaign suspension in 2024,
05:26writing on Truth Social, Nikki Haley got trounced last night.
05:30While Donald has faced an endless barrage of cheating allegations,
05:33Melania has also made a few headlines of her own. It all started in 2017 when an author named Monica
05:39Byrne took to Twitter to claim that a secret source had told her Melania was having an
05:43affair that Donald knew about. In the since-deleted tweets, Byrne alleged,
05:47Word is, for many years, Melania's been having an affair with the head of security at Tiffany's in
05:51the Trump Tower lobby. She went on to claim that when Donald moved into the White House,
05:55Melania prolonged her stay in New York not because Byrne Trump had to finish school,
05:59as she'd officially claimed, but because she wanted to be with her lover.
06:03Jump to 2019, and podcaster Noel Kassler, who once worked on The Apprentice,
06:08appeared to corroborate those claims. He tweeted,
06:10Melania didn't live with him in Trump Tower, either. She lived with her boyfriend. We had
06:14to book the transport on Apprentice finales, and her pickup was not on Fifth Ave.
06:18Political flair later identified the mystery man as Henry
06:22Hank Seamers, the vice president of global retail security for Tiffany & Co.
06:27Like father, like son. In 2011, Donald Trump Jr. allegedly began an affair with singer
06:33Aubrey O'Day while his then-wife, Vanessa Trump, was pregnant with their third child.
06:37The pair met while O'Day was a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice,
06:40and Don Jr. was acting as an advisor on the show. A fling soon began,
06:44and while an insider later told Page Six, Don's marriage to Vanessa was
06:48effectively over before he got involved with O'Day, that may not have been entirely true.
06:53Not only did Vanessa and Don Jr. remain married until 2018, but they even had two more kids
06:58together. Indeed, one source told People that when Vanessa found out about the affair in 2012,
07:03Don Jr. quickly ended it. The source claimed,
07:05Aubrey was very, very into Don. He liked her, but she was definitely more keen on him.
07:10The drama first made headlines during the 2018 divorce, then resurfaced in 2022,
07:15when O'Day decided to share her side of the story, telling People,
07:18"...we both thought we were each other's soulmates."
07:20She shared a similar sentiment to Page Six, professing,
07:23"...I'll always have love for him."
07:25The singer said the breakup was difficult, and it didn't happen because of a lack of affection.
07:28She explained,
07:29"...I saw him choose a life that was inauthentic. For status,
07:33power, whatever it is. I'm so disappointed in what he became."
07:36"'You know I couldn't be with someone like that. I'm as liberal as it gets.'"
07:39Controversy hasn't just been reserved for the most well-known members of the Trump family.
07:44In 2021, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Carol Lennig published a book
07:49titled Zero Fail, The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, in which she made some serious
07:54allegations against Vanessa and Tiffany Trump. According to insider sources, both Trump's
07:59youngest daughter and Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-wife had gotten, quote,
08:02"...inappropriately and perhaps dangerously close to Secret Service agents."
08:06This reportedly occurred while Donald Trump was in office between 2017 and 2021.
08:11First, there was Vanessa, who is said to have started dating one of the agents assigned to
08:15protect her family. It's not known when their supposed union would have started,
08:18but she only filed for divorce from Don Jr. in March 2018, and it wasn't finalized until February
08:242019, so there is the possibility of an overlap. As for Tiffany, Lennig wrote,
08:29"...she began spending an unusual amount of time alone with a Secret Service agent on her detail."
08:34It's unclear if they would have still been a thing when she met her future husband,
08:37Michael Boulos, in 2018, but a spokesperson for Tiffany denied the reports altogether.
08:42They told The Washington Post,
08:43"...this is nothing more than gossip and is simply not true.
08:47Tiffany's experience with the Secret Service was entirely professional."