March 23, 2018

Karen McDougal Discusses Alleged Affair With Donald Trump

“There was a real relationship there.”

On Thursday, CNN aired the first interview with Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who alleges she had an affair with President Donald Trump. The conversation with Anderson Cooper contained several revelations, including Trump’s alleged attempt to pay McDougal for sex and the claim that Trump told McDougal she was beautiful, just like his daughter Ivanka.

Much of what McDougal disclosed fits into previous reports involving Trump and women.

In fact, the interview’s lack of bombshells makes the possibility that Trump chose to light the world on fire with his national security adviser shake-up just to distract from McDougal seem like a rather silly decision on Trump’s part.

But one revelation did stand out above the rest.

“When I got with him, there was a relationship there,” McDougal told Cooper. “There were real feelings between the two of us—not just myself, not just him—there was a real relationship there.”

“Were you in love with him?” Cooper later asked.

“I was yeah,” McDougal replied.

Watch the interview below:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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