All The Members Of Trump's Second Term Who Have Been Plagued By Cheating Rumors

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In the late '90s, America was rocked by a scandal that armed giddy Republicans with an arsenal of political ammo to use against their Democratic opponents: Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. For a time, it gave the Grand Old Party something to point to when arguing that they were ethically superior to their foes on the other side of the aisle (maritally, at least). But then came the MAGA era, which resurfaced a scandalous affair Donald Trump had with a Playboy model, and during his second term as president, the GOP was forced to cede its moral high ground. His administration officials' rumored extramarital activities earned a politician a serious scolding from his momma, triggered an internal investigation, and subjected us to erotic poetry purportedly penned by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump had at least two rumored mistresses while married to Melania Trump: adult film star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. The women spoke about their alleged affairs during Trump's first term, and a 2018 Quinnipiac poll found that 56% of American voters believed that he had been unfaithful (via The Hill). However, many voters shrugged at his infidelity in 2024, as they invited him back to the White House. Once there, Trump staffed his cabinet with a few rumored fellow philanderers who are threatening the GOP's "party of family values" branding. He even sparked speculation that he might be sweet on some of his picks himself.

We know Trump loves to gossip — remember when he weighed in on Robert Pattinson's love life on Twitter? But what he cannot abide is gossip about his family. In 2019, Politico reported that Madeleine Westerhout, a 20-something assistant, had told reporters off the record that Trump disliked being photographed with his youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump. Westerhout also reportedly claimed she was closer to the president than his apparent favorite child, Ivanka Trump, which revived favoritism rumors about Trump and his kids. 

Despite Trump insisting that Westerhout was great, he fired the aide, and she faded into obscurity until the 2025 release of the Epstein files. One document dump included a 2019 email from author Michael Wolff, who wanted Jeffrey Epstein to read some draft material for a book about the Trump administration. Wolff claimed that Westerhout remained at the White House with a Melania-less Trump during the 2018 Christmas holiday, and he once greeted her in his tighty-whities. "Now the president was telling friends that he wasn't staying at the White House because of the shutdown – he was staying because he was 'banging' Madeleine," Wolff wrote (via the Mirror). Westerhout and the White House insisted that no such thing ever happened.

The rumor resurfaced in early 2026 when another file release revealed a text exchange between Epstein and Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. At one point, Bannon joked about what Trump supposedly used to say about Westerhout: "She has a way about her" (via Newsweek). Despite being fired by Trump, Westerhout remained a fan. "Donald Trump does not always say the right things, but his heart is good," she told The Conservateur in 2020.

Michael Wolff doesn't corroborate the rumors that Donald Trump had a full-blown affair with his aide Natalie Harp in "All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America," instead describing them as having a "flirtatious" relationship. Harp is a former OAN host who ingratiated herself with Trump during his 2024 campaign by stroking his ego at his favorite place: the golf course. She reportedly tagged along on the links, using a mini-printer to print positive stories about her boss. She also expressed how much she adored him. "No one knows or cares about me more. Thank you for always being there for me," showed one of the many letters she supposedly wrote to him (via Newsweek). Per The New York Times, she gushed in others, "You are all that matters to me," and "I want to bring you joy."

The president reportedly called Harp a term of endearment, but others in his orbit mocked her habit of carrying a portable printer for Trump's reading convenience. Alex Isenstadt writes in his book "Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power" that some also likened Harp to Glenn Close's rabbit-murdering character in "Fatal Attraction." Wolff claimed that "Even the Secret Service had now weighed in: Natalie was a security consideration. But no one was going to tell Trump that" (via The Telegraph).

As an example of the liberties Harp felt comfortable taking with Trump, Isenstadt writes (via Daily Mail), "There was the time when a surprised Melania Trump stumbled upon Harp late at night in Trump's private quarters at Mar-a-Lago." However, Harp was just dropping off some papers, but some social media users believe her behavior points to an affair.

Donald Trump's Department of Health and Human Services secretary doesn't have the healthiest relationship history; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been dogged by affair rumors for years before his alleged amorous interactions with Olivia Nuzzi killed the reporter's career. Nuzzi claimed that she and RFK Jr. began sexting after she profiled him for New York magazine in 2023, and shared details of their digital dalliance in her book "American Canto." According to Nuzzi, the topics they discussed included RFK Jr.'s parasitic brain worm. "I loved his brain," she writes (via HuffPost). "I hated the idea of an intruder therein. I winced when he joked about the worm."

Nuzzi denied having a physical relationship with RFK Jr. However, the salacious stories were enough to destroy her relationship with her now-ex-fiance, Ryan Lizza, who claimed that he obtained some erotic poetry from RFK Jr. to Nuzzi. The picture it painted likely made some readers more squeamish than the thought of a worm munching on RFK Jr.'s brain. In his Telos News Substack, Lizza revealed that there were messy metaphors, with canyons and rivers serving as anatomical stand-ins. There was also a reference to a farming activity that was unrelated to RFK Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again initiative.

Nuzzi claimed that RFK Jr. said he loved her, but a spokesperson for the politician told Status he was never romantically involved with the journalist. While Nuzzi writes that RFK Jr.'s wife, Cheryl Hines, was at first "hysterical" over the affair rumors, the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star stood by her man. Yet, in her book "Unscripted," Hines admits that she felt unimportant to her husband in the wake of the scandalous story.

In March 2026, Kristi Noem got the Kimberly Guilfoyle treatment. But instead of being demoted from Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancée to Grecian ambassador, the ex-DHS head was named special envoy for the Shield of the Americas. Her lowered rank in the MAGA hierarchy came after her humiliating congressional hearings. At one point, Rep. Jamie Raskin referenced a report about an incident involving Noem and her rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski — as her husband, Bryon Noem, sat behind her. "When your special blanket, your blankie, was left on one of the government jets and not transported over the new one, your special government employee, Corey Lewandowski, chivalrously stepped forward to fire the pilot mid-air," he said in a video.

Noem dismissed rumors that she was having an affair with Corey — "I am shocked we are peddling tabloid garbage" — but she has been unable to shake their stench for years. "There are members of Congress close to Mar-a-Lago who have called the affair 'an open secret,'" a source told American Greatness in 2021. Insiders made similar remarks to the New York Post two years later. Recalling how flirtatious Lewandowski and Noem got at a 2020 Mar-a-Lago event, one eyewitness said, "I saw her on his lap. ... They were all over each other."

As of this writing, Noem and Lewandowski remain married to their spouses. Alison Lewandowski is a 9/11 widow and teacher, and Bryon is the owner of an insurance company in South Dakota. Some of Bryon's family members have suggested his faith has kept his marriage to Noem intact. "I think it's him honoring the calling from God," a relative told the New York Post in March 2026. "But it seems like there would be some limit to that."

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer might not have the name recognition of other MAGA players, but she's been working hard to become just as notorious as the likes of Kristi Noem and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In January 2026, the New York Post reported that Chavez-DeRemer was the target of a probe to determine if she was "abusing her position." Among the misconduct allegations the Department of Labor inspector general was investigating was whether Chavez-DeRemer and one of her security guards were romantically involved.

Chavez-DeRemer reportedly ditched the rest of her security team multiple times to secretly meet with her rumored lover, and in October 2025, they attended a birthday celebration in Las Vegas at Red Rocks Casino Resort. A White House spokesperson denied the allegations, while Chavez-DeRemer's husband, anesthesiologist Shawn DeRemer, released a statement insisting, "There's not an ounce of truth to this, and anyone who knows my wife would know that." DeRemer has faced some even more serious allegations of his own. According to a February 2026 report by The New York Times, he was accused of sexually assaulting two women and was prohibited from entering DOL headquarters. However, a police investigation into the claims found no wrongdoing on his part.

Amid the investigation into the behavior of Chavez-DeRemer and other members of her department, multiple staffers resigned or were temporarily suspended. Chavez-DeRemer's rumored security guard lover was placed on leave, while her chief of staff, Jihun Han, resigned under pressure from the White House after being accused of facilitating Chavez-DeRemer's misuse of funds for personal trips. According to the New York Post, Han had also warned staffers to keep their lips zipped about the rumored infidelity.

According to a 2024 Vanity Fair report, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, the man who advocated for the Department of Defense's rebrand as the Department of War, didn't try to defend his actions the first time he came clean about cheating on his first wife, Meredith Schwarz. A source revealed that he told her, "I'm a f***ed up individual."

Before things started falling apart for the couple, they had the type of trad life love story that a Republican politician would be proud to have in their biography; they dated in high school and got married before Hegseth's Army National Guard deployment in 2004. Even after her husband's infidelity confession destroyed any pretense of a picture-perfect marriage, Schwarz stood by her man. Her loyalty was rewarded with another affair with a woman named Samantha Deering, and upon learning that Hegseth had cheated on her with four other women, Schwarz decided to divorce him in December 2008.

Hegseth married Deering in 2010 and had three children with her. His fourth child was born in 2017, but his second wife was not the mother — he had impregnated his married Fox News colleague Jennifer Rauchet while having another affair that resulted in a divorce. The following year, his mother, Penelope Hegseth, wrote a scathing email to him that read in part, "I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years), according to The New York Times. When the publication published the email's contents in 2024, Hegseth was married to Rauchet, and Penelope tried to take back her words, insisting, "[Pete] is a good father, husband." But would his exes agree?

In MAGA Land, there are affair rumors that come courtesy of multiple eyewitnesses and insiders. Then there are those that come from internet speculation that's more tongue-in-cheek than sincere. Such is the case with the narrative that sprang around a 2019 photograph of a beaming Melania Trump giving Justin Trudeau an air kiss at the G7 summit. The image had netizens joking that Melania appeared to be as sweet on the former Canadian prime minister as maple syrup. The hashtag "MelaniaLovesTrudeau" even trended on X, where one user joked, "The main reason @realDonaldTrump hates @JustinTrudeau is the fact [that] Melania Trump has the hots for him."

The internet continued shipping Melania and Trudeau for years, and a conspiracy theory that Trudeau is Barron Trump's real father even gained some traction on social media in 2024. "Now I know why Trump, MAGA, and Maple MAGA hate PM Trudeau so much. He's obviously the real father of Barron Trump," an X user wrote. Their post included side-by-side photos of Barron and Trudeau meant to support their claim about Barron's true parentage. However, in follow-up posts, the user made it clear that they were just joking and that the images had been altered.

Still, social media users just can't seem to get enough of this particular bit. The Melania-Trudeau photo became a topic of discussion on Reddit in 2025 when Trump began toying with the idea of forcing The Great White North to become part of The Great Experiment. "Does this have anything to do with the tariffs and '51st state' talk?" a Redditor wrote in r/AskCanada. Another replied: "Since Justin and Sophie are no longer together, and nobody has seen Melania around Trump for a while, stranger things have happened."

Even a grieving widow isn't safe from the vivid imaginations of armchair body language experts. Just a month after the murder of her husband, Charlie Kirk, Erika Kirk shared a cozy embrace with JD Vance that sparked a messy rumor. When Erika introduced the vice president at an October 2025 Turning Point USA event (via USA Today), she greeted him with a hug that felt a little overly familiar to some observers. It didn't help that she decided to place her hand on the back of his head, or that she said to the crowd, "No one will ever replace my husband. No, but I do see some similarities of my husband in JD."

The interaction set the internet ablaze with affair speculation. "Literally the ONLY women that have ever placed their hand on the back of my head in an embrace like that was a woman I was in an intimate relationship with," wrote one Redditor in r/politics. "He will divorce his wife and marry her by 2028," another predicted. "No doubt in my mind." JD and Usha Vance's marriage was already being haunted by divorce rumors at the time, but JD insisted that it was doing just fine in a December 2025 NBC News interview. "Our marriage is as strong as it's ever been," he said.

On "The Megyn Kelly Show," Erika suggested that people were reading way too much into her embrace with JD, revealing that she often deploys that same hugging technique. "My love language is touch," she explained. An incredulous Megyn Kelly jumped in to say, "They were acting like you touched the back of his a**," to which Erika replied, "I feel like I wouldn't get as much hate if I did that."

Some people think Donald Trump seems a little too passionate about Karoline Leavitt's pout. In an August 2025 Newsmax interview, he said of his press secretary, "She's become a star. It's that face, it's that brain, it's those lips, the way they move — they move like she's a machine gun." He gushed over Leavitt again during a December 2025 rally. "When she goes on television, Fox, like, I mean, they dominate, they dominate when she gets up there with that beautiful face. And those lips that don't stop — pop-pop-pop like a little machine gun," he said.

Many social media users found Trump's remarks gross, inappropriate, and creepy, while others speculated that they were indicative of the president and press secretary having something more than a working relationship. To bolster their conjecture, they pointed to Leavitt's sizable age gap with her husband, Nicholas Riccio. "She has major daddy issues and likes them old AF. They're def having an affair, and I'd also bet her husband approves. It's a cult," read one particularly creative theory on X. 

The affair truthers also opined that Leavitt and Trump seemed to look rather cozy in social media photos from their July 2025 trip to Scotland. When Leavitt shared the images on Instagram, one commenter's reaction read, "Yeah, she's def sleeping with trump. Gross!" Another person wrote, "You really have a thing for dirty old men don't you." But the pair seemed to find at least one fan in the Instagrammer who commented, "What a cute couple." Of course, this could have been a case of sarcasm not translating well on social media.