Donald Trump’s other “other woman”
You might say Stormy Daniels’ 15 minutes of fame took a lot less time to create than that. For Donald Trump’s other, ah, other woman, it took 10 months to incubate her famous quarter hour, and she isn’t half as famous as Stormy.
Her name is Karen McDougal and jurors in Trump’s first criminal trial (oh yes, I will never tire of writing that) will hear about her too. They will hear that Trump had a ten month affair with her. They will hear that she was paid off to the tune of $150,000 in a “catch and kill” scheme by America’s preeminent sleaze rag, the National Enquirer. They will hear that the “family man” Trump very briefly cheated on McDougal with Stormy Daniels while he was simultaneously cheating on his wife.
Karen McDougal’s story goes like this. Days before the 2016 election, The Wall Street Journal reported that McDougal told a friend that she had an affair with Donald Trump from 2006 to 2007 while he was married to Melania. The WSJ also reported that American Media, Inc (AMI), the owner of the National Enquirer, paid McDougal $150,000 for exclusive rights to her story but never published it. AMI lied to the WSJ and said that it paid the amount to McDougal not “to kill damaging stories about” Trump, but for “exclusive life rights to any relationship she has had with a then-married man.” That they never published that story was, cough cough, a “coincidence.”
McDougal says she finally ended her affair with Trump because of feelings of guilt that she was defrauding Melania, and because Trump often treated her disrespectfully. Trump also occasionally referred to McDougal’s mother as “an old hag.” Trump, of course, denies that he had an affair with McDougal.
McDougal’s story isn’t part of the 34-count indictment against Trump, but it is part of the body of evidence showing Trump’s proclivity for cover-up. It will be used in support of allegations that Trump employed unlawful means and falsified business and tax records to disguise his sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels. It will be used to show that he did so in a bid to interfere with the 2016 election, thereby defrauding the American people of a complete picture of the man they were voting for. Karen McDougal represents yet another symptom of Donald Trump’s runaway corruption.
Naturally, I don’t mean to suggest that these were the only women Trump cheated on Melania with. These are just the two that we know about. I don’t know how many other women there were. Possibly many, possibly none. We will never learn the truth from Trump himself, of course, because Trump is a pathological liar. That his lies are obvious to thinking people is entirely invisible to Trump.
There are eight million stories in the naked city of sleaze, lies and corruption that is the life of Donald Trump. This has been one of them. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.