By Lisa de Moraes
Anderson Cooper spoke exclusively with Karen McDougal in her first TV interview since she filed a lawsuit earlier this week against American Media Inc., to be released from an agreement with the company. McDougal claims she had a 10-month affair with President Donald Trump, and was paid $150,000 for a tabloid maneuver known as “catch and kill” which compelled McDougal’s silence.
Former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal tells Anderson Cooper tonight that, after she had sex with Donald Trump the first time, he tried to pay her and it made her cry to think he thought of her in that way.
“After we had been intimate, he tried to pay me. And I actually did not take that,” said McDougal in her first TV interview since she filed a lawsuit earlier this week against American Media Inc. McDougal is seeking to be released from an NDA with the publishing house she claims she was duped into signing shortly before the election. McDougal says she thought she was selling exclusive rights to her story to the National Enquirer owner for $150K, but discovered she had been misled into signing was was essentially a “catch and kill” to squelch her story in order to help the GOP candidate.
“Did he actually try to hand you money?” Cooper asked of her alleged sexual encounter with the then reality TV star/real estate developer.
McDougal said she got a “look on my face” when he offered her the cash, which “must have been so sad, because I never have been offered money like that No. 1, and, No. 2, does he think I’m in this for money, and that’s why I’m here tonight? or is this a normal thing. I don’t know.”
“I looked at him and said, ‘That’s not me, I’m not that kind of girl.’ He looked at me and said, ‘oh,’ and he said, ‘You’re really special. And I said ‘Thank you’.”
McDougal said she got into a car provided to take her home “and started crying. I was really sad.
“It really hurt me – but I went back,” she said. She told Cooper she had multiple sexual encounters with Trump in a relationship that lasted more than a year.
Cooper wondered if she was hurt that he “saw you in that way.”
“Hurt me that he saw me in that light, and he obviously assumed that’s the kind of girl I was,” she answered, speculating, “maybe because I was a playmate. I don’t know.”
“I was crying in the backseat of the car…I got home and I was crying a lot. I felt terrible about myself,” McDougal said.
McDougal told Cooper she felt guilty about fact Trump was married to Melania Trump at the time of her affair and that caused her to end the relationship