The pair's first date was in 2006 in a secluded bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, after which Trump allegedly offered her money.
There is intense reaction to Karen McDougal’s revealing CNN interview about her alleged affair with Donald Trump.
“It's just so tawdry,” Gayle King said on CBS This Morning Friday. “The president, a porn star, a Playboy model.”
“I feel like I almost want to take a shower," ex-Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said on CNN.
The interview, which ran for an hour and 40 minutes, made for riveting television.
McDougal said she and Trump were intimate dozens of times and he never used protection.
She says their affair began in June 2006 at a party at the Playboy Mansion during the filming of The Apprentice.
"The Playboy bunny, she's like the house mom, is what we call her. She actually made a comment like, 'Wow, this guy is really into you. And that's kind of when I started like paying attention. And he was," McDougal recalled.
"I kind of smiled at it, I thought it was kind of cute and funny," she added. "And then at the end of the night, you know, after striking up many conversations, we exchanged — he actually asked me to write... my phone number down for him to keep."
Their first date allegedly took place 12 days later, when McDougal says she was picked up by Trump's longtime personal bodyguard Keith Schiller, who would later serve as director of Oval Office operations in the White House.
Schiller drove her to The Beverly Hills Hotel.
"Keith said, 'We have to go around to the back. We don't want to walk through the hotel,'" she recalled.
Trump was staying in a $15,000-per-night bungalow that was a mini-mansion set behind the main hotel building, offering privacy and discretion.
"We had dinner, had a good time," she said. "As the night ended, we were intimate."
Afterward, she says, she said she felt humiliated when Trump offered her money.
"I didn't know how to take that," she said. "I had a look. The look must have been so sad. I told him, 'I’m not that kind of girl.'"
She says the affair continued for 10 months. They met at the bungalow whenever he was in Los Angeles. She recorded all their meetings in her diary, referring to trump only by his initials, "DT."
She said she referred to him by "DT" because she "didn't want to expose myself or him."
She admits she has no other documentation to prove her story.
McDougal also revealed that she was in love with Trump and claims he told her he was in love with her.
In January 2007, she ended the affair, saying she felt guilty.
"It was tearing me apart," she said. "I knew I had to get out."
She says they remained on friendly terms, but were never intimate again.
Two years after the break-up, he invited her to the Miss USA Pageant in Las Vegas, but she didn’t go because she was dating someone else — actor Bruce Willis.
There was no reaction Friday to the interview from the White House and not a single tweet about it from the president.
Some believe Trump tried to divert attention away from the interview by firing his national security adviser H.R. McMaster.
Even McMaster's replacement, John Bolton, says he was taken by surprise, telling Fox News he "didn't expect that announcement this afternoon."
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