A semen-stained dress. A suggestive rendition of “Happy Birthday to You.” A penis that resembles a mushroom. What connects them? They’re all notable details from the most sensational and infamous sex scandals involving US Presidents. Politics and sex mix as perfectly as vodka and Martini: The satisfyingly dry flavor that results from pairing ostensibly upstanding, trustworthy, dependable, conscientious servants of the state with squalid and debased pleasures of the flesh has gratified the public for… well, take a look yourself. Ellis Cashmore traces sex scandals involving American presidents (and one presidential candidate) over the centuries.
Many think that America’s third president is having a relationship with a slave 20 years his junior. Some accounts hold that he fathers several children with her. The relationship is rumored to have started in France where he was an envoy and where Sally Hemings, the enslaved girl, served his daughter. Jefferson is widowed. Returning to Jefferson’s Monticello estate in Virginia, they apparently continue their relationship, even after he moves to the White House (1801–1809). There is no mass media and thus no widespread scandal; just gossip and innuendo.
During the 1884 presidential campaign, a journalist claims that, ten years before, New York Democrat Cleveland raped and made pregnant Maria Halpin, who was forcibly taken to what was then called a mental asylum. Her child was adopted. Cleveland doesn’t deny the relationship, but insists it was consensual. On being released, Halpin announces her intent to charge Cleveland with assault and abduction, though nothing materializes. Cleveland rides out the scandal, marrying a woman 27 years his junior and serving two terms as president through 1885–1889 and 1893–1897.
Republican Harding’s amorous affairs are overshadowed by his proximity to the Teapot Dome scandal, a federal oil bribery case, but he has at least two extramarital relationships: one with Nan Britton, a much younger woman who bears him a child, and the other with Carrie Fulton Phillips, the wife of an Ohio store owner. Even his marriage has the whiff of scandal: he wed a divorcee in 1891, a time when many did not consider divorced women marriageable. Harding dies in 1923 and, in 1964, love letters he wrote to Phillips are found. He is president through 1921–1923.
By the time he takes office in 1933, FDR’s relationship with his wife Eleanor is more a partnership of convenience than a traditional marriage, perpetuated for the sake of both their careers. He is known to have had companionships with a number of other women, though his friendship with his secretary Lucy Mercer is considered romantic. Even after she leaves her job in 1917, she and Roosevelt continue to rendezvous. She marries a wealthy New Yorker in 1920, though her relationship with FDR endures.
On May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe famously sings “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” at a Madison Square Garden event celebrating JFK’s 45th birthday. It fuels rumors of a romance between them, later supported in several biographies and seemingly corroborated by phone records. Yet the most celebrated of all presidential infidelities (both were married to others) is never substantiated by definitive proof. The alleged relationship feeds public fascination with two glamorous figures and shapes a mystique that will endure for decades. Kennedy serves from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.
Presidential candidate and devout Christian Carter, who teaches Sunday School and prays profusely, gives an interview to “men’s magazine” Playboy in which he confesses: “I have looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” There’s no evidence that he’s actually committed adultery, but the admission that he’d done it, even in his “heart,” occasions surprise. Adultery is voluntary sex between a married person and someone who isn’t their spouse. “God forgives me for it,” claims Carter. So does the electorate: He wins the presidency in 1977.
The Governor of Arkansas is campaigning for the Democratic nomination for the presidency when Gennifer Flowers publicly claims she had a 12-year relationship with Clinton who had been married since 1975. Flowers says their affair started before he was married and continued until the early 1980s. Clinton’s wife Hillary goes on national television’s 60 Minutes and supports her husband, famously affirming: “I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here because I love him and I respect him.”
Clinton is in the second year of his presidency when Paula Jones files a lawsuit alleging he sexually harassed her in 1991. The case is initially dismissed, but then the dismissal is overturned, leading to many discoveries and depositions in which both parties are questioned. In November 1998, Clinton settles, paying Jones $850,000 without admitting wrongdoing. Months before the settlement, Clinton faces another allegation and the release of a report containing explicit descriptions of an affair that will have serious consequences on his reputation, political and personal.
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” insists Clinton on January 26, 1998. Lewinsky begins working as an intern at the White House in 1995 and soon starts an affair with the president. She is 22 and he is 49. Lewinsky at first denies having an affair but later accepts immunity in exchange for full disclosure and testifies before a grand jury. She provides physical evidence of her sexual relations with Clinton: a dress stained with his ejaculate. A report produced after investigation leads to Clinton’s impeachment. Clinton is acquitted in 1999.
With youthful looks to compare with JFK’s, Edwards seems a rising star of the Democrats. A vice-presidential nominee in 2004, he returns in 2008, aged 55, in the gaze of an inquisitive media broadened by the likes of Twitter, which is launched in 2006. The National Enquirer discovers he is having an affair with Rielle Hunter, while his wife has cancer. Edwards’ shame is compounded when Hunter reveals she is having his child. After initially denying paternity, Edwards owns up but then faces a federal investigation. He is cleared, though his political career is shattered.
Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, claims she met Trump in 2006, when he was filming the TV show The Apprentice and began a ten-month affair. McDougal provides details of the relationship in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in March 2018. Trump denies it all. McDougal claims she was offered $150,000 from the publishers of the National Enquirer for her story in 2016, though the story never appeared — part of a “catch-and-kill” arrangement to protect the then-presidential candidate from potential embarrassment that might hurt his presidential chances.
E Jean Carroll, a magazine columnist, publishes an excerpt from her memoirs that alleges Trump raped her in a department store changing room in 1996. Trump denies this, calling her a liar. Carroll sues successfully for the sexual abuse and defamation. A jury awards $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages and more than $83 million for defamation. Trump appeals. In 2024, a judge approves Trump’s $92 million bond, this being a type of financial guarantee to ensure that the money is available to pay the judgment if Trump’s appeal fails.
Porn star Stormy Daniels takes the stand to testify in a case in which Trump is accused of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, pertaining to an alleged $130,000 hush money payment made to silence Daniels aka Stephanie Clifford. In a 2018 book, she claimed she had an affair with the Republican leader in 2006. She compared Trump’s genitalia to a mushroom. Trump’s refutation echoes Bill Clinton: “I did not have sex with a porn star.” In July 2024, the US supreme court holds that presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution in connection with their actions in office. Trump held the presidency through 2017–2021.
Credits
Written by Ellis
Cashmore
Edited by Will Sheriff, Anton Schauble and Lee
Thompson-Kolar
Produced by Lokendra Singh
Images courtesy of Creative Commons
[Ellis Cashmore’s latest book is
Celebrity Culture, 3rd Edition (Routledge).]