The Most Scandalous Presidential Affairs In U.S. History!

It is not surprising that those in a position of power would want to enjoy all the perks and facilities that come with it. One of these perks is the overall charm that the position holds, making influential people the most desirable personalities across the country and worldwide. Throughout the history of the world, there have been powerful men taking on mistresses. And US presidents are no different. After all, they are the heads of the world’s superpower, so we can understand how desirable this aspect would make their personalities to be.

From upcoming to established starlets, celebrities, and famous people get attracted to powerful people to share their limelight and enhance their reputation. It could be greed, lust, or pure love, we never know, but there have been many presidents in the history of the USA who have had extramarital affairs with famous females. US presidents are known to have better public relations teams to manage all of their fall-outs or at least try their best to hide the affairs. Still, their efforts weren’t as effective many times, and people got to know about what their heads of state were up to. Today we scour through the USA’s history most scandalous presidential affairs. 

Monroe features in several movies but wasn’t even involved in such a heated scandal with any of her co-stars, but her affair with late US president John F Kennedy is still the talk of the town, even after so many decades. In fact, her role as JFK’s mistress in Palm Springs, where they both spent the weekend at the vacation house of Bing Crosby in California, is arguably her most famous to date. Reportedly, Monroe said that the night she spent with JFK in March was the only time they were together. People thought that their affair also subsided after that weekend, but that clearly wasn’t the case.

However, the JFK-Monroe affair quickly made headlines. It took the world by storm, and the news remained an issue of debate until both personalities encountered their untimely demise. The evidence surrounding this affair is scant, but at that time, rumors were ripe that JFK it all started when Monroe performed the famous rendition of Happy Birthday at Madison Square Garden in May 1962, days ahead of the then-US President’s 45th birthday. It is also believed that the two were already in a relationship, and the breathy rendition only sealed the deal. According to Monroe’s close friend Ralph Roberts, she informed the first lady, Jackie Kennedy, about their alleged affair, and given the playboy image of JFK, Jackie wasn’t shocked at all. Instead, she said to Marilyn that:” Marilyn, you’ll marry Jack, that’s great . . . and you’ll move into the White House and you’ll assume the responsibilities of the First Lady, and I’ll move out and you’ll have all the problems.”

Rumor has it that JFK’s affair with Judith Campbell started when Frank Sinatra introduced and acquainted the two after his show in Las Vegas. Slowly the pair developed a connection and ended up having a romantic relationship. Reportedly, Exner became the primary communication channel between mobster Sam Giancana and JFK. Later on, Judith recalled that JFK had this fantastic ability to get one engrossed in chatting with him. 

“When you talked to Jack (John F. Kennedy), he talked just to you. He was endlessly curious about everything and everybody. He loved gossip. That night he did not want me to leave his side,” she said in an interview. Judith was the first person to admit her affair with the late President openly and spilled the beans over whatever conspired between the two.  “Jack never in a million years thought he was doing anything that would hurt me, but that’s the way he conducted himself; the Kennedys have their own set of rules.” “Jack was reckless, so reckless,” Exner revealed. Their affair started in 1963 and lasted for two years. Judith later revealed that she had to abort the child that the President had fathered.

Who doesn’t know about ex-US president Donald Trump’s wayward personality and unorthodox style of leadership? However, his extramarital affairs have garnered more limelight than his decisions as a president and even before or after that. One such affair was with porn star Stormy Daniels. Their affair started in 2006 when Trump was married to Melania and they had just had Baron, their only son together. Daniel was quite open about her affair with the quirky President, even regarding their intimacy. She once wrote that Trump “knows he has an unusual penis. It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool …”

“I lay there, annoyed that I was getting fucked by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart … It may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had, but clearly, he didn’t share that opinion,” Daniels wrote about their time together. Trump’s attorney advised him to try to settle matters with Stormy privately and bury this story. That’s why in October 2016, he paid her $130,000 via Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer back then. Cohen remained his attorney from 2006 to 2018 and was later convicted of perjury and fraud. He is now disbarred from working as a lawyer.

Here we are with another one of the steamy, headlines churning affair that Donald Trump had with Karen McDougal. The ex-Playboy model, McDougal, revealed that both of them were engaged in an affair ten years back, while Trump was already married to Melania. Their affair lasted for close to ten months. In 2007, Karen shared that she broke up with Donald because she felt guilty for having an affair with a married man. She also stated that Donald tried to pay her after being intimate with each other, which shocked her as she wasn’t used to being offered money in this way.  One day before the election in 2016, she received a $150,000 installment by the National Enquirer to buy and bury the story.

Bill Clinton is another one of the many US presidents who had several extramarital affairs during his tenure. One of the most famous ones being his affair with Paula Jones. Reportedly, they both got involved in an affair, and their first entanglement occurred in a hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas. Paula met Bill randomly as she wanted to discuss his campaign. Both were having a meeting in the room when suddenly Clinton attempted a pass at her, which surprised Jones, and she later sued the President for sexual harassment. If Bill had taken care of this issue some time back and apologized to her quietly, the matter would not have made such huge chaos eventually.

Paula was expecting an apology when that didn’t happen. She went to court. She even publicly announced that Bill Clinton was responsible for the route this issue had taken. “I felt like all of the American people did not believe me because of the things that were said about me, and said that people would say that it was just for the money, and it wasn’t about the money. It was about what he did to me. And I knew I was telling the truth,” Jones said. Eventually, Clinton paid $850,000 to Paula and her legal team to drop the claim. 

Former actress and model Gennifer Flowers admitted that she was involved in an extramarital affair with Bill Clinton before he was inaugurated. At that time, Flowers was working in Little Rock at a news station. The two accidentally met and fell for each other. In the court statement, Flowers stated that she met him in 1977 and their affair lasted for ten years.  “I met Bill Clinton in 1977 while I was working as a news reporter for KARK-TV in Little Rock, Arkansas. Shortly after we met, we began a sexual relationship that lasted for twelve years,” Gennifer revealed. She also stated that Bill kept in touch with her as recently as 2005. She often brought up the issue of media inquiries whenever they were together, and Bill asked her to deny their affair and everything will be alright.

“On several occasions, I discussed with Bill Clinton the subject of inquiries by the media about our relationship. He told me to continue to deny our relationship, that if we stuck together, everything would be okay,” she wrote in her book Passion and Betrayal, in which she shared many intimate details of her relationship with Bill Clinton. In 2004 his autobiography My Life, Bill Clinton finally acknowledged testifying under oath that he did indeed had a sexual relations with Gennifer Flowers. However he wrote that it happened once when they first met in 1977.

According to Rachel Crooks, Donald Trump once sexually harassed her, and that their relationship was unsolicited. She mentioned that she got intimate with her without her consent, so she decided to let people know about her experience.  “He started kissing me on one cheek, then the other cheek,” Crooks revealed and also mentioned that he kept talking to her in between kisses. Probably that’s how he used to indulge in sweet chit-chat with his muses. However, Rachel wasn’t the one to let him exploit her and made her experiences known to the public in some very graphic statements. 

“He was talking to me in between kisses, asking where I was from, or if I wanted to be a model. He wouldn’t let go of my hand, and then he went right in and started kissing me on the lips,” Rachel said. “I know there are many worse forms of sexual harassment, but doesn’t this still speak to character … I don’t want money. I don’t need a lawsuit. I just want people to listen. How many women have to come forward? What will it take to get a response?” asked Rachel. This particular incident lasted for a few minutes or even less, but its reporting haunted Donald throughout his tenure as President. Rachel though won the Ohio primary in 2018 for a congressional seat but couldn’t win in the general election.

Markie Post became a household name for her role in the TV series Night Court that aired between the late 1980 and early 90s. She got Bill Clinton involved to produce Seasame Street show to mark Clinton’s first administration inauguration in 1993. Gradually the two became good friends and then some. Markie Post was one of the first guests at the White House after Bill Clinton was inaugurated since she was also good friends with Hillary Clinton. Soon enough, gossip mongers started reporting about their relationship and spread all over Washington. Reportedly, the two met secretly during Clinton’s California tour. It was reported that the two held their secret get-togethers in hotels across California.

The Palo Alto, California, native Marjorie Armstrong Post, aka Markie Post, is best known for her role as Terri Michaels, a bail bondswoman in ABC’s The Fall Guy, which aired between 1982 and 1985. Then she appeared on NBC’s sitcom Night Court as a public defender Christine Sullivan. This show aired from 1985 to 1992. Between 1992 and 1995, Post was part of the CBS sitcom Hearts Afire in which she essayed the role of Georgia Anne Lahti Hartman.

Elizabeth Gracen was 1981’s Miss Arkansas, a famous model, and an actress. After winning the coveted Miss America title, she quickly became the talk of the town and that’s when she caught the attention of Mr. Clinton, who was a state politician at the time. The two eventually crossed paths. The two were attracted to each other and stayed in contact after their first meeting until Elizabeth moved to New York because of her professional commitments. A word about their steamy romance spread far and wide, and there were rumors that Clinton pressurized Gracen for having an intimate relationship with him. However, she denied it categorically and stated that it was a consensual act when they indulged in sexual activity.

“I had sex with Bill Clinton, but the important part to me is that I was never pressured. We had an intimate evening. Nothing was ever forced. It was completely consensual. The lies gain credibility every day that I don’t address them. I had to put a stop to it. This is something I don’t want to talk about at all. It’s no one’s business,” Gracen said. Gracen later revealed that their one-night stand happened much before Clinton became the President and was the Governor of Arkansas, that is, in 1983. It happened while she was in NYC. Ironically, both of them were married at the time. In 1992, Gracen’s affair with Bill Clinton made headlines. She dismissed the news upon the request of Bill’s campaign manager Mickey Kantor. For six years, she kept denying it. In 1998, she revealed details of her one-night stand with the President. 

Bill Clinton’s most notorious affair was with a 21-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky while he was the U.S. president. When the affair was exposed, Clinton tried to save his reputation and position as the President by denying the affair on public television. But, that turned out to be a flawed strategy because Lewinsky was armed with evidence of their relationship, proving to be a big blow for the President.

“I did though at least expect him to correct the false statements he made when he was trying to protect the Presidency. Instead, he talked about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking. I was the buffet and he just couldn’t resist the dessert. I certainly know that this relationship could not have continued the way it did, when I was at the Pentagon and the president was obviously at the White House, without Betty,” Lewinsky said. Clinton had no other choice but to admit his false statements after the Ken Star’s investigation exposed the lies he had been telling to the public. This led to his very disgraceful impeachment. Monica Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton’s affair started when she was working at the White House during 1995 and 1996. According to her testimony, they had 9 encounters in the Oval Office. 

President George H. W. Bush came from a strict household, and it was believed that he was a man of stringent family values. He appeared to many as a clean family man and an upright president. However, there’s something in this very powerful position of presidency that makes people do wayward things, and Mr. Bush couldn’t contain himself either. Reportedly, George Bush was involved in an intimate relationship with Jennifer Fitzgerald, his chief deputy officer of the protocol, when he was in the Oval Office. Fitzgerald landed in Beijing on 5 December 1974, and the very next day, George Bush took her on a twelve-day ‘diplomatic’ conference due to be held in Hawaii.

A memo was found in Ford’s Presidential Library that was dated 23 November, 1975. It read: “Please advise me as soon as you have completed office space arrangements for George Bush and Miss Fitzgerald.” This wasn’t the first time Bush has had an affair, and his wife Barbara Bush had ignored his many flings previously. But there was something with his affair with Jennifer that sent Mrs. Bush went into deep depression, and she burned all those love letters that her husband had written her when they were courting, and she had kept them safe since World War II. “It wasn’t just another woman. It was a woman who came to exert enormous influence over George for many, many years. … She became in essence his other wife … his office wife” a close family friend of the Bush clan revealed.

Abraham Lincoln is probably the most influential, inspirational, and famous of all US presidents to date. The public still admires him and looks up to his leadership style and mannerisms for guidance. However, even the legendary President Lincoln had some mysterious affairs. The one we know about is Abraham’s affair with his roommate Joshua Fry Speed. It may surprise you, but Ab had some peculiar sexual preferences, and many at the time claimed that he was gay.

Nevertheless, Abraham’s relationship with Joshua was quite evident as both were single and stayed together for four years. Joshua owned a general store in Illinois. In his 1962 biography, Carl Sandburg, who wrote the biography of Lincoln, did mention his good friend Joshua and wrote that he had “a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets.” That’s a controversial statement because a streak of lavender was actually a slang used in that era for an effeminate male. It was later changed to homosexuality. According to Sandburg, rumors were ripe that Abraham and Joshua were a couple. Sometime later, people started claiming that Ab was having an affair with Dad Derickson, his bodyguard.

Bill Clinton had quite a charming personality, and perhaps that’s what made him such an attractive figure for the rich and famous actresses back in the 1990s. Reportedly, Clinton had a romantic relationship with famous actress Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Hurley. Their affair lasted almost a year. It started in 1998 or maybe before that. There’s no definite information about it. However, in 1998 Clinton had sent a plane to pick up Liz Hurley and take her to the White House. This set the rumor mills rolling.

According to Tom Sizemore, Clinton asked him if he dated Hurley, to which he replied that he had. Then Clinton asked for her number. Initially, Sizemore resisted but had to give it to him when the President got angry and said, “Give it to me. You dumb motherfucker, I’m the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America. The buck stops here. Give me the damn number.” After getting the number, Clinton immediately dialed Hurley’s number, and it is alleged that he said, “Listen Elizabeth, this is the President. I don’t have any time for this shit. I’m keeping the world from nuclear war all the time. I’m sending a plane to pick you up.” And, she complied.

Here’s another pageant winner with whom Bill Clinton had an affair. The relationship between Clinton and Sally Perdue Miller or Sally Miller started in 1983 when he was the Governor of Arkansas and Sally was the former Miss Arkansas. Rumor has it that the governor used to serenade her by dancing around Sally with his saxophone. Their relationship quickly became physical. Revealing intimate details of their sexual encounters and the infamous pillow talk she used to have with the President in her memoir, she wrote that they used to talk about almost everything after making love. She even revealed some of the governor and the 42nd US president’s kinky sexual fantasies. The ex-beauty queen wrote in her book that:

Kennedy reportedly had an affair with Gunilla Von Post when he was a senator. Karin Adele Gunilla Von Post was a famous Swedish aristocrat, but her real claim to fame became her affair with the then-senator in the 1950s. She outlined details of her intimate relationship with the senator in her book titled Love, Jack, published in 1967. In this memoir, the Swedish socialite wrote that her affair with JFK lasted for around six years at the beginning in 1953. About their intimate encounters, Gunilla wrote: “He turned and kissed me tenderly, and my breath was taken away. The brightness of the moon and stars made his eyes appear bluer than the ocean beneath us.”

When their affair started, JFK’s wedding with Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was just one month away. According to Gunilla Von Post, she was 21 years old at the time she met the 36-year-old JFK for the first time. They met accidentally when both were vacationing on the French Riviera. In 2015, a senior chaplain of the King’s School, Canterbury, discovered a leather jacket that once belonged to JFK and was left with Gunilla. He used the jacket to film an episode of the Antiques Roadshow held in Walmer Castle, Kent. That jacket was valued at over 100,000 pounds sterling or USD 152,000 by Jon Baddeley, one of the show’s expert appraiser. 

John F. Kennedy’s intimate relations with his Washington coworkers and Hollywood socialites are no secret, as he had many affairs throughout his political career. One of the most reckless of them all is his relationship with the 27-year-old German prostitute Ellen Rometsch. It is reported that the reason JFK fell for her is that she had an uncanny resemblence to Elizabeth Taylor. Rometsch often visited the White House to attend events and used to be a frequent guest at the President’s scandalous parties at the poolside in 1963. Some insiders claim that she created trouble for JFK’s staff as well.

Robert Kennedy who was the Attorney General got so furious that he threatened to deport Ellen. There are speculations over her alleged behavior, and many experts believe that she was actually a spy planted in the White House to report about the President’s activities. Rumor has it that Ellen was a communist spy assigned under diplomatic cover to the West German embassy in the early 1960s. The embassy was located in Washington D.C. she was allegedly the girlfriend of JFK during the peak time of the Cold War. Due to her weird behavior, she was expelled from the USA in August 1963.

Ex-model Kathleen Helen Summersby aka Kay Summersby, was 18 years younger than the 51-years old president Eisenhower when their romantic relationship commenced. It was the era when World War II was in full swing, and President Eisenhower was jjust the General at the time. Interestingly, Summersby was his driver and right-hand person. Eisenhower and Summersby spend a considerable amount of time together even after WWII ended. Then he had to cut ties with her as he had to return to the USA. It is generally assumed that both of them were very close to each other throughout the war.

Summersby was quite open about their relationship. Regarding one of their intimate encounters, Summersby said that it was a mutual and consented act. “But this was not what I had expected. Wearily, we slowly calmed down. He snuggled his face into the hollow of my neck and shoulder and said: “Oh God, Kay, I am not going to be any good for you,” Kay explained. Once after making love, both struggled to get back into their clothes and were quite embarrassed, which she described as: “Finally we dressed. Ike looked troubled.” Kay said that Dwight told her that he didn’t want to let her go.  “I don’t want to let you go. God, I’m sorry.” Sometime later, she spilled the beans about their secretive affair in her book Past Forgetting: My Love Affair With Dwight D. Eisenhower.

When it came to illicit relationships, Bill Clinton didn’t fear anyone. He strayed casually even while being married to Hillary. One such relationship was with Eleanor Jane Mondale. She was the daughter of ex-Vice President Walter Mondale. Eleanor took time off from her studies in 1981 to pursue a career in Hollywood. She briefly worked as an extra, and one of her first appearances was in the TV show 240-Robert. Then she returned to her alma mater St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, and graduated in 1982. In January 1983, she tried her luck again in Hollywood and featured in TV shows like Matt Houston, Three’s Company, and Dynasty.

Eleanor wrote in her journal about her relationship with Bill Clinton that they once made out on the Map Room table when Eleanor was E! Network’s host and he was the President. The affair, as per sources, made Monica Lewinsky furious because she considered herself the only mistress of the President. There was a time when Monica was asked to wait outside the security booth while the President was busy with Eleanor. Clinton’s secret service officer George Byrne claimed that when Lewinsky came to meet Clinton, an officer told her, “You have to wait. He’s with his other piece of a-. Wait till he’s finished.”

Pamela Turnure was Jackie Kennedy’s press secretary, and she was only 21 years old when she started a romantic relationship with JFK. Their affair went on from 1961 to 1963. Reportedly, she used to stay over and spend nights with the President when Jackie was not in town. She was initially the secretary to the President when JFK was a senator. Thanks to his position as the head of the state, Turnure got the chance to enter the White House as the President himself lobbied to hire her. Perhaps JFK felt attracted to her because she had a striking resemblance to Jackie Kennedy. 

In 1997, author Seymour Hersh published The Dark Side of Camelot. He alleged that the then-senator JFK had an extramarital affair with Pamela in 1958. The same year, her landlady Florence Kater took a photo of the senator leaving her apartment building in the middle of the night. Kater repeatedly tried to use this photo to tarnish the image of JFK during his presidential campaign. Along with her husband, Kater rigged a tape recorder to record sounds of the two making love and even got the photo enlarged in which the senator can be seen leaving the building. However, The Dark Side of Camelot was criticized heavily soon after its publication because the book contained some harsh allegations. 

Faddle, the nickname given to Jill Cowan, and Pricilla Wear both were the White House press secretaries when John F. Kennedy was the President of the United States. Both the interns were known as “Fiddle and Faddle”. Interestingly, both were involved with the President of the USA romantically. Ironically, the First Lady was well aware of her husband’s many relationships with other women and his infidelity. However, she felt helpless because JFK had this strange penchant to court young, pretty girls. As a president, there were many at his disposal. The first lady also knew about her husband’s relationship with Ware.

According to Barbara Gamarekian, Kennedy’s press aide, Jackie Kennedy told her in French that “this is the girl that’s sleeping with my husband.” On the other hand, Jill never admitted her affair with the President and always maintained that JFK was very fond of the first lady.”[He was] very proud of the fact Mrs. Kennedy had kept a book of all the place settings and pictures of the flowers, the whole sort of personal touches in the White House,” Cowan said in an interview in 1965. Reportedly, Cowan was found frequently by the poolside with JFK and fellow staffer Priscilla Wear.

There is no other political dynasty in the USA that can match the level of fascination that the public holds for the Kennedys. In our opinion, none can also match the sexual appetite of some of this clan’s male members, especially JFK, or the amount of personal tragedy the family has undergone. JFK was quite a playboy and had many affairs. At a summit in Bermuda, which JFK attended with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, he confessed that he got ill if he didn’t have sex frequently. “If I don’t have a woman for three days, I get terrible headaches,” President Kennedy told Macmillan.

In fact, his sexual appetite in the Oval Office was legendary, and it is alleged that he shamelessly pursued his friends’ wives, White House aides, and Washington socialites. Once at a reception, he propositioned a close friend’s wife, and when she replied that she was already married, JFK said, “So am I. What of it?” He had an affair with Hollywood superstar Marilyn Monroe and actress Angie Dickinson when he was the President. Both were introduced in Santa Monica at Pat Kennedy’s party before the 1960 Democratic convention. Dickinson never admitted that she had a secret affair with the President, but Hollywood insiders knew very well about their relationship and openly gossiped about it. Jed Mercurio, the author of a book about JFK’s sexual escapades, the President was a hurried lover, and Dickinson had once complained that JFK climaxed within 20 seconds. 

On his first trip to Bermuda, in 1907, President Woodrow Wilson met a charming 41-year-old widow Mrs. Mary Allen Hulbert Peck. Both of them spent the winters in Bermuda and began an affair. Their relationship was often described as flirtatious and as a dalliance as it left him guilt-stricken. Back in the days, as per the Victorian standards having an illicit affair while being married was against society’s standards of decent behavior. Wilson was married to Ellen. However, their relationship became somewhat troublesome after a death in their family the same year he traveled to Bermuda. Ellen later stated that this affair was the only misery that her husband made her endure. That’s what really affected Wilson, and he broke up with Mrs. Peck.

He was attracted Mary because she was the opposite of Ellen. She was fashionable, frivolous, and admired Woodrow a lot. In her memoir, Mary Peck wrote that ” found him longing to make up as best he might for play long denied. That, I think, is why he turned to me, who had never lost my zest for the joy of living.” In August 1914. Ellen died, leaving the President devastated. He declared that he never dreamed of facing such “loneliness and desolation of heart.” His physician helped him cope with the grief and arranged a meeting with Edith Bolling Galt. She was from Washington and a wealthy widow. The two got married after a year. When Wilson became disabled after experiencing a stroke in 1919, Edith took over his responsibilities as the head of the state. And regarding Mary Peck, she was crushed that Wilson didn’t ask her hand in marriage and preferred to marry Edith. She died in California in 1939.

America’s founder and first president, George Washington, were rumored to have a sexual relationship with his African-American slave Venus. When he was 11, George inherited ten slaves and 280 acres of land. Over the next couple of decades, he purchased over 100 additional slaves. He was a strict plantation manager and was deemed a harsh slave owner. His neighbor Richard Parkinson noted that “it was the sense of all his [Washington’s] neighbors that he treated [his slaves] with more severity than any other man.”

Later on, Washington started treating his slaves with more humanity than many other owners and even started sympathizing with them. Around the same time, there were rumors about his affair with one of his slaves, Venus, and an illegitimated son born to Venus, his name was West Ford. It is alleged that George Washington was his father. Some historians claim that the rumors are true, but the descendants of Washington and Ford deny the rumors and even refused to take DNA tests. In Linda Allen Bryant’s I Cannot Tell A Lie, a book published in 2004. It was revealed that Washington had a sexual relationship with Venus during 1784 and stated that Washington’s family afforded special treatment to West Ford and that George Washington would frequently play with and take his son West Ford to church but as soon as he became the first President of the United States, those activities stopped. West Ford’s direct descendent Bryant claimed that George did visit his brother’s plantation in 1784.

JFK’s affairs aren’t mere rumors because his entanglements with other females are no longer a secret. His affair with Mimi Alford lasted eighteen months. At the time, Mimi was 19 years old and was an intern at the White House. He used his charm and magnetic personality to lure young women towards himself, but he never wanted to replace his wife with any of the women he had an affair with. In Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath, Mimi wrote that “Jack was magnetic. However, he wasn’t looking for a relationship to replace his marriage.”

Their relationship started in 1962 and was ended by the President himself. However, the affair influenced her life at the time a lot. She kept her illicit trysts a secret for over four decades and eventually decided to expose it all in her book published in 2011. She wrote that after a year or so, the President’s behavior towards her became cold, and he used to humiliate her a lot. She became depressed by this double life and left college after her sophomore year. Alford further revealed that they didn’t have sexual relations after August 1963, but she still retained her position in the White House. The last time she saw JFK was when he left for the trip to Dallas with the first lady on 15 November 1963.

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s affair with Madeleine Brown is controversial as there were numerous claims and just as many counterclaims. Brown was an American businesswoman who worked for Glenn Advertising, Dallas. Madeleine Brown claimed to have an affair with the then-US President Lyndon Johnson. She openly stated that she was a longtime mistress of the President, and he also fathered a son. Moreover, Brown claimed that Johnson was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate US president John F. Kennedy and she was his accomplice. According to Brown, she heard Johnson say the following statement on 21 November 1963. “After tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again – that’s no threat – that’s a promise.”

Ms. Brown also revealed some details of her affair with Lyndon Johnson when she publicly announced it in 1997. She stated that their affair was an ‘open secret’ at that time in Texas and that Steven Mark Brown was his son. Regarding the details of JFK’s assassination conspiracy, Brown said that in 1963, on New Year’s Eve, she met Johnson at the Driskill Hotel, Austin, Texas. that day, she said Johnson knew about the assassination plan and insisted that “Texas oil and … renegade intelligence bastards in Washington” were responsible. She further alleged that Johnson deliberately didn’t prevent the assassination because he hated JFK and wanted to become the President. In addition to this, Brown claimed to have witnessed Oswald meeting Ruby in the Carousel Club right before the assassination. However, she didn’t specify at what time and how long before the killing this meeting took place. Naturally, her story was circulated worldwide and received overwhelming national/international attention. May conspiracy authors cited her allegations as proof that JFK assassination was planned.

When Lyndon Johnson was campaigning, his wife Lady Bird was working with Alice Glass. At that time, Johnson was already having an extramarital affair with Madeline Brown. However, he also got involved in a romantic relationship with Alice Glass. This relationship lasted for decades until Lady Bird caught them in the act and threatened Glass to leave her husband. According to Brown and Root Construction lobbyist Frank Oltorf, who knew the Johnsons and Glass reasonably well, she was a tall, slim, smart, and immensely charming lady. “Alice had a great presence, when she walked into a room, everyone looked at her. She was tall, slim, good-looking, and extremely smart. She had a voice that was both sexy and soothing.” Sometime later, Lady Bird confessed that she had attacked Alice after finding out about their relationship and admitted that she was fed up with the lies Johnson was telling her for years to hide his extramarital affairs.

Not much is known about this short-lived affair, but Oltorf claimed that Alice was unlike any other woman in Austin, and that’s why Johnson couldn’t resist getting into a relationship with her. Oltorf got to know Alice Glass while working for Brown and Root and said that she was a beautiful young lady and looked like a Viking princess.  “Austin had never seen anything like her… Her blond hair had a red overlay… Usually, it was long enough so that she could sit on it, and it shimmered and gleamed like nothing you ever saw… There was something about the way she walked and sat that was elegant and aloof. And with her height, and that creamy skin and that incredible hair, she looked like a Viking princess.”

Prior to becoming the head of the state, Lyndon Johnson had a reputation of being a womanizer. His affairs lasted several years and stayed hidden from the public eye. However, Lady Bird, Johnson’s wife, knew about his affairs, including the affair with former actress Helen G. Douglas. She was a California Democratic congresswoman when she met Johnson and later got involved with him in an intimate affair. Her relationship with Johnson was also an ‘open secret’ according to Washington and Capitol Hill insiders.

Douglas served in the House of Representatives for six years and later moved to NYC after her political career ended. Later, she started acting and appeared in two Broadway plays. She was a multi-talented woman as she was a politician, a touring opera singer, and an actress. She starred in the movie “She,” released in 1935. In the movie, her negative role was appreciated so much that it became the inspiration behind the Evil Queen’s character in Disney’s 1937 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As a politician, she was the first Democrat and third female from California to get elected to Congress. After her election, California became the second state after Illinois to elect female members from both parties to the House. In 1950, Helen ran for the US Senate but lost to Republican candidate Richard Nixon.

Grover Cleveland was an American politician and lawyer. He served as the 22nd and 24th president of the US from 1885-1889 and 1893-1897. In American history, Cleveland is the only President ever to serve two non-consecutive terms in office. Cleveland won the popular vote for 3 presidential elections- in 1884, 1888, and 1892. Moreover, he was one of the two Democrats, the other being Woodrow Wilson, to get elected as President during the Republican presidential domination era that lasted from 1861 to 1933. When he was elected the President in 1884, Cleveland already had an affair with Maria Halpin, and the two had a child.

Maria Crofts Halpin was a prostitute at that time and visited Cleveland’s office quite frequently. According to James Blane, Halpin was not sure whether Cleveland was the father of her child or not. She claimed that Cleveland pursued her relentlessly, and she had to give consent to join him for dinner at the Ocean Dining Hall and Oyster House, after which Cleveland drove her back to the boarding house where she lived. In 1874, she implied that Cleveland entered her room and forced himself on her. She vehemently claimed that whatever transpired between the two that not was non-consensual, forced, and violent. She also alleged that Cleveland threatened to ruin her if she informed the authorities but later helped her raise the child.

James Buchanan was a live-in partner of his good friend and future Vice President, William Rufus King when James’ wife died. At an event where the two appeared together, they stated that their affair was just a Communion. According to Andrew Jackson, James and William were Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy. Buchanan had a desire to be with King and the Roosevelts, about which he wrote these lines: “I envy Colonel King the pleasure of meeting you & would give any thing in reason to be of the party for a single week. I am now “solitary & alone,” having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well & not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”

Buchanan became the President after King died. He recorded his personal life and service-related events in a journal in which he shared that he became involved with King in 1834 when both were serving in the US Senate. They were from different parts of the country as Buchanan was from Pennsylvania and King came from North Carolina. But, they shared common interests and aspirations. During the 1830s, both of them were pulled into Andrew Jackson’s political orbit and the Democratic Party.

Just like JFK and Bill Clinton, US President Harding also had a reputation of having numerous affairs while he was in the Oval Office. He spent three years in the office and had several infamous relationships, one of which was with Nan Britton. It was the talk of the town during the 1920s, and they even had a child together before Harding became the President. Nanna Popham Britton was born in 1896 and was an American secretary who became famous for being the mistress of the 29th president of the US, Warren Harding.

In 1927, Nanna revealed that he was the father of her daughter Elizabeth. At that time, Harding was serving in the US Senate one year before entering the Oval Office. Harding’s family denied this claim throughout her life, but in 2015, it was confirmed through DNA testing. Nan’s father, Samuel H. Britton painted Harding as a crude womanizer in his book Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, published in 1931. Later, Frederick Lewis Allen confirmed the statements made by Britton in his book that Harding’s private life was quite colorful and like one of those “cheap sex videos” that compels one to understand the inherent ordinariness of the man.

The 29th president of the US, Warren G. Harding, traveled Europe with Caroline Fulton Phillips and their respective spouses as a senator. Still, eventually, the two got involved in a romantic relationship on that tour. This affair lasted a very long time, and Carrie herself informed Harding’s wife Florence about it. However, she wasn’t surprised because it wasn’t the first time Harding had been involved in an extramarital affair. Though Warren Harding tried to avoid having a relationship with Carrie, it did happen, and she made it public to blackmail him when he was running for office. Reportedly, Carrie was a gorgeous woman who her admirers regarded as the epitome of the Gibson Girl’s portrait of beauty. It was a popular look back in that era. She is the only woman to have successfully blackmailed a US president.

Dorothy Parker wrote in her The New Yorker magazine article titled An American DuBarry that over 250 love letters written by Harding to Carrie Fulton were discovered in 1964. The letters were written between 1909 and 1920 when she was living in Chicago. When Harding was accepted for Republican Party’s nomination in the mid-1920s, he told the officials that Phillips possessed hundreds of love letters written by him using Senate stationery. The part officials urged Mr. and Mrs. Phillips to keep this matter private, but Carrie dictated her terms to fulfill their wishes. To ensure she remains silent on the matter, the Republican Party paid for the couple’s extended tour of Asia and the Pacific Islands. It provided an annual stipend to Carrie Phillips until her death.

Perhaps one of the most talked-about and legendary affairs ever to hit the White House was between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. At that time, inter-racial relations were unheard of and very uncommon. Hemings was a slave, and that’s what made their affair so controversial. Rumor has it that Thomas and Sally had six children together, four of which lived and were freed from slavery. Interestingly, Jefferson was against slavery, but he did own slaves.

Franklin Roosevelt’s affair with Lucy Mercer is another one of the most scandalous affairs of the US presidents. His wife Eleanor Roosevelt hired Mercer as a secretary, and that’s how Franklin got introduced to her. In 1918, when the presidency seemed a distant ambition, Eleanor found love letters exchanged between Mercer and Franklin. However, Franklin asked his wife not to separate with him for the sale of his political career. He also promised her that he would stop seeing Mercer, and they would sleep in different rooms. Eleanor agreed, but Franklin didn’t keep his promise and continued to meet Mercer through his daughter. Mercer was in Springs when Franklin died, and surprisingly, Eleanor wasn’t present there. Mercer died in South Carolina in 1948.

James Garfield had an extramarital affair with Lucia Calhoun. She was 18 years old at that time and working as a reporter. It is reported that James was a big fan of her and was romantically involved with her. When his wife learned about their affair, she gave James a choice to either stay with her or his mistress. Garfield chose to stay with his wife and left Lucia.

United States President John Tyler got married twice and had fathered fifteen legitimate children. He holds the record of the only President of the country who had the most number of children. Rumor has it that many of his children were born out of wedlock and that Tyler was involved in numerous illegitimate relationships with his slaves. Since most of the slaves were sold, it became impossible to trace Tyler’s family tree. 

It is not surprising that those in a position of power would want to enjoy all the perks and facilities that come with it. One of these perks is the overall charm that the position holds, making influential people the most desirable personalities across the country and worldwide. Throughout the history of the world, there have been powerful men taking on mistresses. And US presidents are no different. After all, they are the heads of the world’s superpower, so we can understand how desirable this aspect would make their personalities to be. From upcoming to established starlets, celebrities, and famous people get attracted to powerful people to share their limelight and enhance their reputation. It could be greed, lust, or pure love, we never know, but there have been many presidents in the history of the USA who have had extramarital affairs with famous females. US presidents are known to have better public relations teams to manage all of their fall-outs or at least try their best to hide the affairs. Still, their efforts weren’t as effective many times, and people got to know about what their heads of state were up to. Today we scour through the USA’s history most scandalous presidential affairs.