When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made his recent, incendiary comments linking Mexican immigrants with rape, it apparently wasn’t the first time the real estate mogul, reality TV star and outsize personality had been embroiled in controversy surrounding the word.
A report published Monday night in The Daily Beast brought back into the spotlight allegations hurled at Trump by former wife Ivana in the 90s. In both a deposition and the subsequent book “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump” by journalist Harry Hurt III, Ivana Trump accused Trump of rape. According to the Daily Beast report she later backpedaled, saying instead she felt “violated” by Trump during a sexual encounter with him.
The details involve hair pulling and scalp reduction surgery, read more at the Daily Beast. All allegations have been denied by Trump, according to the report.
But the story does more than remind readers of that incident, it shows the Trump PR machine in action. Reporters from the Daily Beast spoke at length with Trump Organization Special Council Michael Cohen who not only threatened them but used language akin to what one might hear in a locker room as opposed to in civil, political discourse.
“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still dont have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very [expletive] lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be [expletive] disgusting…”
Cohen also told the Daily Beast that Ivana felt raped “emotionally,” not literally, adding that “You cannot rape your spouse.”
“That is not true. In New York there used to be a so-called marital rape exemption to the law,” the article reads. “It was struck down in 1984.”
A representative for Trump told Business Insider the story was reporting “old news” that “never happened.”
