Politics

How many times has Trump cheated on Melania? Another allegation and more hush money emerges

The New Yorker has a bombshell story about Donald Trump and another alleged affair he had in 2006, the same year he allegedly cheated on his newlywed Melania. In fact, according to the detailed reporting of Ronan Farrow, he paid for former Playboy “Playmate of the Year” Karen McDougal to fly to Lake Tahoe to attend a celebrity golf tournament. If that sounds familiar, that is the very same weekend he is alleged to have started an affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels. Same weekend he offered another porn actress $10,000 to have sex with him. All while Melania Trump was home with baby Barron Trump.

According to Farrow’s reporting, McDougal’s story follows a clearly emerging pattern of secret hotel rendezvous and back channel hush money payoffs. Picking up after McDougal’s first alleged sexual encounter with the married Donald Trump in 2006, after they met at the Playboy mansion:

Afterward, McDougal wrote, she “went to see him every time he was in LA (which was a lot).” Trump, she said, always stayed in the same bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and ordered the same meal—steak and mashed potatoes—and never drank. McDougal’s account is consistent with other descriptions of Trump’s behavior. Last month, In Touch Weekly published an interview conducted in 2011 with Stephanie Clifford in which she revealed that during a relationship with Trump she met him for dinner at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Trump insisted they watch “Shark Week” on the Discovery Channel. Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” alleged that Trump assaulted her at a private dinner meeting, in December of 2007, at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Trump, Zervos has claimed, kissed her, groped her breast, and suggested that they lie down to “watch some telly-telly.” After Zervos rebuffed Trump’s advances, she said that he “began thrusting his genitals” against her. (Zervos recently sued Trump for defamation after he denied her account.) All three women say that they were escorted to a bungalow at the hotel by a Trump bodyguard, whom two of the women have identified as Keith Schiller. After Trump was elected, Schiller was appointed director of Oval Office Operations and deputy assistant to the President. Last September, John Kelly, acting as the new chief of staff, removed Schiller from the White House posts. (Schiller did not respond to a request for comment.)

Trump was extremely brazen, bringing McDougal to meet his family at events.