A History of Presidential Sex Scandals

Laura Loomer

I don't normally mention Bill Maher on principle (Maher is, by-and-large, one of the worst figures in political commentary circa 2024).  But Maher is the only major figure to publicly step into it with a rumor that has been permeating on social media for the past 72 hours about Donald Trump, and I wanted to do an article on it, so Bill, congrats, you're getting a mention here.  Maher said on his HBO television program Real Time with Bill Maher "I think maybe Laura Loomer's in an arranged relationship to influence the election because she's very close to Trump.  She's 31, looks like his type...who's Trump fucking?  Because as I said, it's not nobody.  He's been a dog for too long.  And it's not Melania.  I think we may have our answer this week."

For legal reasons, I want to point out that there is no evidence of this, and these are just allegations.  Neither Trump nor Loomer has publicly confirmed the rumors of an affair, and indeed Loomer has threatened legal action against Maher.  This, given Loomer's history of outlandish statements, feels a bit rich if we're being honest.  For those unfamiliar, Loomer is a white nationalist who nearly won a race for Congress in 2022 against incumbent Republican Dan Webster.  She has a history of making false and incendiary public statements, ranging from calling the Parkland shootings "staged" to claiming that Casey DeSantis faked her bout with breast cancer to gain sympathy for her husband's (Florida Governor Ron DeSantis) political future.  She is, by pretty much every measure, a terrible person, and whether or not she's having an affair with Trump, it's terrifying to think of her this close to a major presidential campaign.

But this invites us to discuss a topic I don't know that we've ever gotten into on the blog before despite 12 years of political discussions: a history of the presidential sex scandal.  Presidents, as you can imagine, have had mistresses since the very start (just google Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings), but the first public presidential sex scandal was Andrew Jackson, and was less about Jackson and more about his wife Rachel.  Rachel had been married to an abusive man (Captain Lewis Robards), and she had asked for a divorce.  But Robards never actually filed for the divorce, so when Rachel and Andrew Jackson wed in 1791, they were breaking the law, making Rachel an adulterer and a bigamist.  This was corrected (Robards eventually filed the divorce) and they were remarried in 1794, but this would come back to haunt the Jacksons in the election of 1828.  President John Quincy Adams used the bigamy attack as a way to call Jackson unfit for office, and while that didn't work (Jackson would win), the stress contributed to Rachel Jackson dying just a few months before she would've been First Lady.  Jackson never forgave Adams, whom he blamed for his wife's death.

Grover Cleveland was the next big sex scandal.  Cleveland, in 1884 during his first presidential campaign, was a bachelor and had dated a widower by the name of Maria Halpin.  Halpin got pregnant, and though it is not known whether or not Cleveland was the father of the child (historians differ on this, but it seems apparent there were multiple prospective fathers, and Cleveland took on the responsibility of claiming the boy because he was the only person associated with him that was unmarried...one of the alleged fathers, to make this even saucier, was Oscar Folsom, father of Cleveland's future wife Frances).  The James G. Blaine campaign used this illegitimate child against Cleveland, but again-it didn't work.  Cleveland won the election, though whether or not he was the father of the child is lost to history.  The boy in question, Oscar Folsom Cleveland, would be adopted and change his name to James E. King, Jr.  He had no children, and died in 1947, so there's no way of confirming if Cleveland fathered him or not.

After these two, to be honest, presidents got much better at covering their affairs.  Warren Harding did father a daughter (Elizabeth Ann Blaesing) out of wedlock with his mistress, but this wasn't revealed in his lifetime.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, & Lyndon B. Johnson were all known to have carried on affairs, but these were not known to the public until later.  Presidential candidate Ted Kennedy most probably had an affair with Mary Jo Kopechne (or at least had an inappropriate relationship with her, given he was married at the time), but by the time he ran for president in 1980, this was a non-entity in his campaign against Jimmy Carter.  Better control over newspapers and censor control likely precluded such things from reaching the public.  In fact, it wasn't until 1987 when Gary Hart stepped aboard Monkey Business (the name of a yacht) with Donna Rice that we had our first modern political sex scandal.

Hart's sex scandal was unique, because unlike Jackson or Cleveland before him, it did kill his presidential career.  Hart, at the time married to his wife Oletha, was the frontrunner for the nomination in 1988, and given polling at the time, was the heavy favorite to become America's next president...but this destroyed not just his career, it also destroyed the Democrats' chances.  I bemoan this a lot because Hart was much more liberal than Bill Clinton after him (i.e. if he'd just kept it in his pants we might have universal healthcare), but Hart's affair became what we think of when it comes to presidential sex scandals.  Tabloid-sensational, inappropriately personal, and splashy...very much both shocking and titillating in the same breath.

Gennifer Flowers

What's weird is that most presidential sex scandals in the years since are not exactly what you remember, so it's hard to know, like with Hart, how they might've impacted a campaign.  Bill Clinton adamantly denied having an affair with Gennifer Flowers in 1992 (he would only acknowledge they had a relationship in 1998, when he no longer was running for the White House), and the same is true for Monica Lewinsky.  Clinton has still not acknowledged inappropriate behavior with Kathleen Willey & Juanita Broaddrick, so the only sex scandal that might've impacted his reelection changes was Paula Jones, and even then, it was settled after the 1996 election was done and Clinton never acknowledged wrongdoing.  In fact, it was Jones' marriage that would end in divorce when the dust settled, not Clinton's.

The same can be said for Donald Trump.  Trump spent decades on Page Six, his marriages fodder for New York gossip.  It was common knowledge to anyone who looked at a supermarket tabloid rack in the 1990's that he started his relationship with Marla Maples before his marriage to Ivana Trump had ended.  But in terms of presidential campaigns, he pushed hard to cover up relationships with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, to the point where he is now a convicted felon for trying to conceal his affair with Daniels.  Obviously people know about the Daniels affair now, but it was eight years ago, and Trump's criminal indictments supercede it.  Honestly, the only recent presidential sex scandal to clearly impact a candidate was John Edwards, whose affair with Rielle Hunter (which resulted in a love child while his wife Elizabeth, beloved by the Democratic base, was dying of cancer).  Edwards' betrayal of Elizabeth (who by 2008 was arguably more popular than him) tanked his chances at the White House or ending up in the Obama administration.

All of this is to say, a potential sex scandal developing this late is unprecedented, mostly because campaigns are very, very good at keeping this sort of thing at bay until after votes are cast.  With 50 days left, the Harris camp won't want to touch this, even if it is true, given the lead that Harris has started to open up post-debate, and anyone in the Trump campaign that might want to release something (like, say, Loomer or Trump's wife Melania) would know the financial stakes of doing so before the election (i.e. I would imagine if this is actually true Melania's lawyers have just asked for adjustments in the prenup).  I sincerely doubt that Maher is going to face that lawsuit (because it seems insanely risky to draw attention to this scandal), but I will be honest-I doubt even if there is fire to this smoke that we'll hear more about it before Election Day if history is any blueprint.