A former Playboy model who is alleging an affair more than a decade ago with President Donald Trump apologized to his wife, first lady Melania Trump, in an interview Thursday evening.
“What can you say except, I’m sorry?” Karen McDougal said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
She continued, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want it done to me.”
The White House has denied the alleged affair, which came to light in a Wall Street Journal story shortly before the presidential election saying the parent company of The National Enquirer had paid for McDougal’s story and never published it.
A spokeswoman for the first lady did not respond to a request for comment.
McDougal is suing the company, American Media Inc., to get out of the contract and spoke about the affair to CNN on Thursday.
A corporate spokesman for American Media Inc. provided a statement to CNN in response to the suit, saying McDougal “has been free to respond to press inquiries about her relationship with President Trump since 2016” and that the company had not “silenced” her. McDougal’s complaint, meanwhile, says the company has threatened her with “financial ruin.”
McDougal said that during her relationship with Trump, he once showed her around his New York apartment in Trump Tower, pointing to Melania’s room in their home. That visit made her feel “guilty, very guilty,” she said.
“I just couldn’t wait to get out of the apartment,” she recalled.
McDougal said the guilt ultimately drove her to end the relationship.
“I was just feeling so guilty,” McDougal said. “It was just digging inside me.”
