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If you think Donald Trump is a headache for GOP chairman Reince Priebus, who frequently has to clean up after Trump’s inflammatory comments, just imagine what former Reform Party chairman Russ Verney had to go through. Verney led the party during the 2000 election, when Donald Trump briefly jumped into the race for the Reform nomination for president. But that didn’t stop Candidate Trump from going on Howard Stern’s radio show and putting his then-girlfriend and now-wife Melania on air with the host for a bizarre, creepy, and totally misogynistic interview about life and sex with Trump.
When Trump called in to Stern’s show on November 9, 1999, the conversation turned to Melania (“a potential first lady,” Trump said) and her looks. “Let me talk to that broad in your bed,” Stern demanded. So Trump summoned Melania, who was apparently scantily clad and conveniently sitting nearby, to come to the phone. With Stern oozing his creepiest charm, things rapidly got weird.
After demanding that Melania “put on your hottest outfit” for a Stern-Trump night on the town, Stern asked Melania what she was wearing right then. “Uh, not much,” she replied.
Stern pressed on: “Are you naked? Are you nude?” Melania laughed. “Almost,” she said.
“Ahhh, I’ve got my pants off already,” Stern groaned.
Dropping his voice, Stern asked about how often Melania and Trump had sex and how good it was. “We have a great, great time,” she said, claiming that she and Donald did the deed “even more” than daily. “I can tell you need love,” Stern told her. Other topics of the interview included whether Melania stole cash from Trump’s wallet, what she wore to the beach, and her “very nice chest for a model.”
Trump apparently had no problems with Stern’s racy questioning of his then girlfriend. “Oh man, she’s naked there, isn’t she?” Stern asked when Trump got back on the phone. “She is actually naked,” Trump said. “It’s a thing of beauty.”
In a version of the interview clipped by BuzzFeed News, Stern begged Trump to have sex with Melania on air to boost his ratings. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Trump replied. Someone in Stern’s studio then launched into a crude impression of Melania having sex with Trump. “Please, Donald, don’t put it there!” he cried in a fake accent as Stern’s crew—and Trump—collapsed into laughter. The New York Post also reported that, during the interview, Trump told Stern he frequently “mentally” felt up Melania in public.
But the sex- and harassment-filled radio appearance didn’t exactly strike Trump as a bad move. “Is this your average interview, Robin, for a presidential candidate?” he proudly asked Stern’s co-host before weighing on the role of hotness in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. “There are those that say that if President Clinton was caught with a supermodel, he would have been everyone’s hero. Now, of course, I would never say a thing like that, but there are those that say that.”
“President Trump will be a reality,” Stern said as Trump signed off. “Thank you, Mr. President.”
Verney, the Reform Party chairman, was nonplussed by the sexually charged Stern interview. “The very first principle of the Reform Party is to set the highest ethical standards for the White House and Congress,” he told the Post, “not the most base, crass attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Whatever their private life is, it should be exactly that—their private life.”
Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:
- Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
- Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
- Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
- Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
- Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
- Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
- Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
- Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
- Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
- Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
- Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man
- Trump Files #12: Donald Can’t Multiply 17 and 6
- Trump Files #13: Watch Donald Sing the “Green Acres” Theme Song in Overalls
- Trump Files #14: The Time Donald Trump Pulled Over His Limo to Stop a Beating
- Trump Files #15: When Donald Wanted to Help the Clintons Buy Their House
- Trump Files #16: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word “Trump”
- Trump Files #17: He Dumped Wine on an “Unattractive Reporter”
- Trump Files #18: Behold the Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In Manhattan
- Trump Files #19: When Donald Was “Principal for a Day” and Confronted by a Fifth-Grader
- Trump Files #20: In 2012, Trump Begged GOP Presidential Candidates to Be Civil
- Trump Files #21: When Donald Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Gorbachev and an Impersonator
- Trump Files #22: His Football Team Treated Its Cheerleaders “Like Hookers”
- Trump Files #23: The Trump Files: Donald Tried to Shut Down a Bike Race Named “Rump”
- Trump Files #24: When Donald Called Out Pat Buchanan for Bigotry
- Trump Files #25: Donald’s Most Ridiculous Appearance on Howard Stern’s Show
- Trump Files #26: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal
- Trump Files #27: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible
- Trump Files #28: When Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
- Trump Files #29: Donald Wanted to Build an Insane Castle on Madison Avenue
- Trump Files #30: Donald’s Near-Death Experience (That He Invented)
- Trump Files #31: When Donald Struck Oil on the Upper West Side
- Trump Files #32: When Donald Massacred Trees in the Trump Tower Lobby
- Trump Files #33: When Donald Demanded Other People Pay for His Overpriced Quarterback
- Trump Files #34: The Time Donald Sued Someone Who Made Fun of Him for $500 Million
- Trump Files #35: Donald Tried to Make His Ghostwriter Pay for His Book Party
- Trump Files #36: Watch Donald Shave a Man’s Head on Television
- Trump Files #37: How Donald Helped Make It Harder to Get Football Tickets
- Trump Files #38: Donald Was Curious About His Baby Daughter’s Breasts
- Trump Files #39: When Democrats Courted Donald
- Trump Files #40: Watch the Trump Vodka Ad Designed for a Russian Audience
- Trump Files #41: Donald’s Cologne Smelled of Jamba Juice and Strip Clubs
- Trump Files #42: Donald Sued Other People Named Trump for Using Their Own Name
- Trump Files #43: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers
- Trump Files #44: Why Donald Threw a Fit Over His “Trump Tree” in Central Park
- Trump Files #45: Watch Trump Endorse Slim Shady for President
- Trump Files #46: The Easiest 13 Cents He Ever Made
- Trump Files #47: The Time Donald Burned a Widow’s Mortgage
- Trump Files #48: Donald’s Recurring Sex Dreams
- Trump Files #49: Trump’s Epic Insult Fight With Ed Koch
- Trump Files #50: Donald Has Some Advice for Citizen Kane
- Trump Files #51: Donald Once Turned Down a Million-Dollar Bet on “Trump: The Game”
- Trump Files #52: When Donald Tried to Shake Down Mike Tyson for $2 Million