An attorney for the Trump Organization demanded that the New York Times apologize for a Sunday front-page story exploring the Republican front-runner’s relationships with women, though he walked back the possibility the camapign might sue over the coverage. The newspaper said it has no plans to retract the story, which includes interviews with over 50 women who worked with or knew Trump socially over a period spanning four decades. The demands come after one woman — whose anecdote about meeting Trump at a Mar-a-Lago pool party in 1990 are in the story’s introduction —reportedly said she was unhappy with the characterization of her interview in the story. From the Times piece:
Trump campaign to New York Times: Apologize for Sunday article
REUTERS
Donald was having a pool party at Mar-a-Lago. There were about 50 models and 30 men. There were girls in the pools, splashing around. For some reason Donald seemed a little smitten with me. He just started talking to me and nobody else.
He suddenly took me by the hand, and he started to show me around the mansion. He asked me if I had a swimsuit with me. I said no. I hadn’t intended to swim. He took me into a room and opened drawers and asked me to put on a swimsuit.
Ms. Brewer Lane, at the time a 26-year-old model, did as Mr. Trump asked. “I went into the bathroom and tried one on,” she recalled. It was a bikini. “I came out, and he said, ‘Wow.’ ”
Mr. Trump, then 44 and in the midst of his first divorce, decided to show her off to the crowd at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
“He brought me out to the pool and said, ‘That is a stunning Trump girl, isn’t it?’ ” Ms. Brewer Lane said.”
“Actually, it was very upsetting. I was not happy to read it at all,” Brewer Lane reportedlytold “Fox & Friends” Monday morning. “Well, because the New York Times told us several times that they would make sure that my story that I was telling came across. They promised several times that they would do it accurately. They told me several times and my manager several times that it would not be a hit piece and that my story would come across the way that I was telling it and honestly, and it absolutely was not.”
Lane reportedly said reporters took her quotes and “put a negative connotation on it” that she did not intend.
“He never made me feel like I was being demeaned in any way,” she told the hosts. “He never offended me in any way. He was very gracious. I saw him around all types of people, all types of women. He was very kind, thoughtful, generous, you know. He was a gentleman.”
A statement from the paper provided to Politico said that Lane was “quoted fairly, accurately and at length.”
