"Oh, it's daddy": George Conway overheard Trump's call to Ivanka revealing fears about affair claims

According to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, Trump said she was "beautiful" like his daughter

By Charles R. Davis

Deputy News Editor

Published April 18, 2024 11:22AM (EDT)

US President Donald Trump and daughter Senior Advisor Ivanka Trump make their way to board Air Force One before departing from Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia on January 4, 2021. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
US President Donald Trump and daughter Senior Advisor Ivanka Trump make their way to board Air Force One before departing from Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia on January 4, 2021. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

When former Playboy model Karen McDougal went public about her alleged affair with former President Donald Trump, she claimed that the Republican candidate compared her to his daughter, Ivanka.

"He said I was beautiful like her," McDougal recalled in a 2018 interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

While that conversation aired, Trump placed a call, according to conservative attorney George Conway, whose former wife, Kellyanne, was working for the Trump White House at the time.

“I was sitting at dinner with my ex-wife, with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump and the phone rings,” Conway told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday. “And Ivanka goes into the kitchen and answers the phone. ‘Oh, it’s daddy.’ And what did daddy want to know? Whether they were watching Karen McDougal. So, he was very, very concerned about it.”

McDougal is one of the women that Trump is reported to have paid off via his connection with the National Enquirer, which purchased the rights to her story for $150,000 and then never published anything about it. Another such payment, to adult film star Stormy Daniels, is the subject of Trump's criminal trial in Manhattan, where he is charged with falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election.


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