Trump’s ex-girlfriend disputes NYT article: ‘I did not have a negative experience with Donald Trump’
One of Donald Trump’s former girlfriends says her comments were distorted in a New York Times piece alleging that the presumptive Republican nominee has a history of making “unwelcome advances” to women.
“I did not have a negative experience with Donald Trump,” Rowanne Brewer Lane told “Fox & Friends” on Monday, two days after the piece — titled “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private” — was published. “And I don’t appreciate them making it look like that.”
For its 5,000-word front-page story, the Times said, it interviewed dozens of women who had worked with or for Trump “in the worlds of real estate, modeling and pageants,” including “women who had dated him or interacted with him socially” and people “who had closely observed his conduct since his adolescence.”
Brewer Lane was quoted at the beginning of the article, which described her meeting him at a party at his Palm Beach, Fla., estate:
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.
“I went into the bathroom and tried one on,” Brewer Lane continued. “I came out, and he said, ‘Wow.’”
Trump, “then 44 and in the midst of his first divorce, decided to show her off to the crowd at Mar-a-Lago,” according to the Times.
“He brought me out to the pool and said, ‘That is a stunning Trump girl, isn’t it?’” Brewer Lane recounted to the Times.
Donald Trump poses for a photo with Miss USA competitors during a rehearsal in Las Vegas, June 15, 2013. (Photo: Miss Universe Organization/AP)
But Brewer Lane said that she was flattered by the gesture.
“It wasn’t creepy, it was actually polite,” Brewer Lane told Yahoo News on Monday. “I thought he was being, you know, considerate.”
“I’m actually surprised how big a deal is being made out of it,” she added. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
In an interview with “Fox & Friends” earlier Monday, Brewer Lane said that she “never felt demeaned in any way.”
“He was very gracious,” she said. “I saw him around all types of people, all types of women. He was very kind, thoughtful, generous. He was a gentleman.”
According to Brewer Lane, the Times assured her “that it would not be a hit piece and that my story would come across in the way I was telling it and accurately. It absolutely was not.”
“I made it clear many times that I had a very pleasant relationship with Donald,” she told CNN in yet another interview. “I never felt like I was being depicted as a piece of meat.”
Brewer Lane, who told CNN she has not spoken to Trump since 1991, said also said she wasn’t compelled to come forward by Trump or the campaign.
“I wanted to set the record straight,” she told Yahoo News. “Neither one of us did anything wrong. We didn’t do the improper reporting.”
On Sunday, Trump slammed the story as a “lame hit piece.” Following Brewer Lane’s Monday “Fox & Friends” appearance, Trump offered her story as proof that the Times “lied.”
Wow, Rowanne Brewer, the most prominently depicted woman in the failing @nytimes story yesterday, was on @foxandfriends saying Times lied
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
“Wow, Rowanne Brewer, the most prominently depicted woman in the failing @nytimes story yesterday, was on @foxandfriends saying Times lied,” he tweeted.
According to CNN, Trump called the network’s control room himself to highlight her “Fox & Friends” interview. (Trump also tweeted that he no longer watches CNN.)
Barbara Res — a former Trump executive who told the Times he referred to her as “Honey Bunch” and would often tease her about her weight — also rejected the tone of the story.
Must correct implication of Times article, Trump called me honey bunch as a term of endearment.never took it as a put down because it wasn’t
— Barbara Res (@BarbaraAResEsq)
“Must correct implication of Times article,” Res wrote on Twitter. “Trump called me honey bunch as a term of endearment. Never took it as a put down because it wasn’t.”
Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey, the reporters who authored the Times piece, are standing by their story.
“What we wanted to do was go behind the scenes and examine how Trump has behaved with women in private,” Twohey said Monday on “CBS This Morning.” “Themes emerged … unwelcome romantic advances, commentary on female form, allegations of aggression.”
“None of the facts are in dispute,” Barbaro said on CNN. “But the big picture here is the way Donald Trump interacts privately with women. … That was the purpose of our story.”
In a statement to Yahoo News, a Times spokesperson also defended the article in the face of Trump’s attacks.
“Ms. Brewer Lane was quoted fairly, accurately and at length,” the spokesperson said. “The story provides context for the reader including that the swimsuit scene was the ‘start of a whirlwind romance’ between Ms. Brewer Lane and Mr. Trump.”
