Love or hate Trump, he wasn't the first President to play around

By Tom Emery

For weeks, the airwaves have been consumed by alleged payoffs by former President Donald Trump to cover up affairs, leading to his arraignment on April 4.

Whether he will be found guilty or innocent remains to be seen. But whether you love or hate Trump and the charges against him, one thing is clear; he was hardly the first chief executive to play around at some point.

Throughout American history, Presidents have been accused of extramarital activity, and in many cases, the rumors were true. The best-known examples of philandering Presidents are John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, and there are plenty of lesser-known ones.

In some cases, sex scandals nearly derailed successful Presidential campaigns. In his first bid for the Presidency in 1884, Grover Cleveland was dogged with the revelation that he had fathered an illegitimate child a decade before.

The child’s mother, Maria Halpin, was a widowed mother of two who had enjoyed the company of several leading men in Buffalo, including Cleveland, then a bachelor. She bore a son in September 1874 whom she named for a close friend of Cleveland’s.

Though Cleveland was less certain of the child’s paternity than Maria, he claimed responsibility, believing he had less to risk than the other possibilities, who were each married.

A Buffalo newspaper broke the story during the campaign, and Cleveland chose to admit to the story. His course of action won him widespread support as many admired his honesty and candor, despite the fact that discussion of sexual activity at the time was a taboo subject.

Still, the campaign was symbolized by a popular catchphrase, “Ma, ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!” Cleveland prevailed in a close election, and is remembered as a middle-of-the-pack chief executive today.

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Forty years later, another President’s wanderings left more of a mark on his legacy. Warren G. Harding, married for 29 years when elected in 1920, fathered a child with a mistress, Nan Britton, who was thirty-one years his junior.

Britton had harbored an obsessive crush on Harding since a schoolgirl and later requested his help in landing a secretarial job. The affair began in 1917, and in January 1919, the couple conceived a daughter on a couch in Harding’s U.S. Senate office. Harding only saw pictures of the girl but faithfully paid child support, often hand-delivered by Secret Service agents during his Presidency.

The affair continued in the White House, sometimes in a five-by-five antechamber to Harding’s office. He died in office on Aug. 2, 1923, and his wife followed in death sixteen months later.

In 1927, Britton wrote an expose that sold 90,000 copies. She died in 1991, twenty-four years before DNA evidence confirmed that Harding was the father of her child.

Britton was not Harding’s only mistress. In 1905, he had begun an intermittent fifteen-year affair with Carrie Phillips, who, along with her husband James, were frequent social companions of the Hardings. The affair began in their hometown of Marion, Ohio, while Florence Harding was being treated for a kidney ailment and James was recovering from a nervous breakdown in a Michigan sanitarium.

During the 1920 campaign, the Republican National Committee became aware of the affair and sent the Phillipses on a lengthy trip to Asia with a payoff. In 2014, R-rated love letters between Harding and Carrie Phillips, with raunchy descriptions of sexual encounters and genitalia, were revealed to the public.

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As Harding kept busy, future President Franklin D. Roosevelt was embroiled in a marriage crisis over an affair with Lucy Mercer, a social secretary to wife Eleanor.

The affair came to light in 1918 and became a permanent strain on the marriage. Though Mercer wedded in 1920 and Roosevelt had promised Eleanor he would break the affair, the relationship continued intermittently for decades, sometimes in meetings arranged by Roosevelt’s daughter, Anna. Various reports state that FDR provided a car to bring Lucy to at least one of his four inaugurations.

Lucy was visiting the President in the hours before his death at Warm Springs, Ga. on April 12, 1945. She was spirited away before Eleanor’s arrival.

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In several instances, Presidents were accused of philandering before their time in Washington. One example is James A. Garfield, who had a fling with a married woman in October 1862, eighteen years before his election.

His angry wife found out and said her husband had succumbed to “lawless passion.” Garfield apologized, and the marriage survived.

More recently, Dwight David Eisenhower is frequently connected to Kay Summersby, his chauffeur during his World War II service. Many who were close to Eisenhower during his time in the Army, however, dispute those claims. Researchers continue to debate the validity of the allegations.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was also tied to various women over the course of his adult life. In later decades both of the Bushes, 41 and 43, touted their character and strength of their marriages despite allegations that both had outside relationships.

On the other side, some Presidents became the “other man,” so to speak. During his extended time in France, Thomas Jefferson formed some type of relationship with a married woman in 1786, four years after the death of his wife, Martha.

Jefferson’s long and legendary affair with Sally Hemmings, a slave, also occurred after Martha’s death.

Many Presidents survive sexual escapades with their popularity intact. Following his impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton’s approval rating stood at 73 percent, the highest of his Presidency. By contrast, his successors have rarely reached that mark during their administrations.

Roosevelt ranks in the top three in most Presidential polls, while Kennedy remains among the most beloved of former Presidents, particularly recent ones.

Along with Roosevelt, Cleveland -- he of the “where’s my pa” chant -- is one of only two chief executives to win the popular vote in three or more consecutive elections.

Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Ill. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or [email protected].