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Watergate, FBI investigations, Teapot Dome - for nearly as long as there has been an American presidency, scandals have rocked the office. Though presidents have found themselves in hot water for all manner of reasons, many of the most interesting presidential scandals are also some of the most salacious. Presidents have been embroiled in sex scandals since the 19th century.
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The person elected to the highest office in the land holds a sacred duty to protect and serve the people of the Republic
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That being said, good luck finding a person who doesn't have some kind of proverbial skeleton in their closet
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Today, we're taking a deep dive into some of the most bizarre and politically damaging sex scandals surrounding the highest office in the land
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Okay, let's investigate. When Grover Cleveland was running for president in 1884
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his political rivals wasted no time in slinging all the mud they could at him
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Years later, they alleged Cleveland had a mistress and a love child
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They capped off the rumors with the anti-Cleveland chant, Ma, ma, where's my pa
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Oh, that's catchy. However, unlike some other nasty rumors that have plagued various presidents
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There was truth to these rumors. Cleveland really did have a lover for many years, Maria Helpen
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In 1874, she had given birth to a son she called Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Cleveland refused to marry
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Helpen. Instead, he arranged for Oscar to go to an orphanage and for Helpen to go to an institution
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The scandal made news when it went national in 1884, but it didn't derail Cleveland's campaign
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He won the election, and since, he's been mostly remembered as one of those presidents who has a very memorable name
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but you don't really know anything specific about. But now you do. John F. Kennedy is as famous for his alleged affairs as he was for his politics
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As recently as 2013, decades after his assassination, new details about his clandestine romantic life have emerged
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One woman who claims to have had an affair with him is Mimi Alford, who first met the president in 1962
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Alford was a 19-year-old college student when she and Kennedy began an 18-month affair
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It wasn't a romantic affair, she told NBC. I don't really remember the president ever kissing me
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I certainly didn't learn how to have a real relationship through that relationship. Some of Kennedy's other lovers had troubling ties
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One of them, Judith Exner, even claimed that she acted as a go-between for Kennedy and Sam Giancana, a mobster
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And of course, we've all heard the rumors about the figurehead of Camelot and a breathy blonde movie starlet
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Needless to say, JFK was the most prolific serial philanderer. However, the scale of his sex scandals never reached the highest of some of the other individuals on this list
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due to the fact that he was gunned down well before his time. The tragedy of his passing undoubtedly quelled the potential for public embarrassment
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt met Lucy Mercer in 1913 when she began working as a secretary for his wife Eleanor
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Her job meant that she was frequently in the Roosevelt's family circle. By 1918, Roosevelt and Mercer's relationship had turned romantic
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much to Eleanor's devastation. She learned of the affair when she discovered love letters that Mercer had written to FDR
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The Roosevelts decided divorce wasn't on the table with FDR's political career
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So they continued their marriage and a new kind of partnership. In exchange, FDR agreed to stop seeing Mercer
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By the end of Roosevelt's presidency, however, Mercer had re-entered his life
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She was visiting him when he died in 1945. The affair remained a secret until 1966
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when writer Jonathan Daniels revealed it in his book, The Time Between the Wars
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When Warren G. Harding married Florence Kling in 1891, he became the stepfather of Kling's son from her first marriage
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The couple never had children together, but Harding had one with a lover
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In 1917, he began an affair with Nan Britton, a teenager who was 30 years younger than him
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Three years later, Britton gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. Though Harding did not officially recognize Elizabeth as his child
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he nonetheless sent payments to Britain for the baby. The payment stopped with Harding's death in 1923
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Harding's family refused to validate Britain's allegations about Harding, so she published a tell-all book in 1927
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to generate some money for her daughter. In 2015, questions of Elizabeth's paternity
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were finally put to rest when scientists tested her son's DNA and confirmed
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that he was Harding's descendant. Thomas Jefferson's marriage to Martha Wales Skelton in 1772
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began a decade of what he called uncheckered happiness. Her death in 1782 devastated him
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Jefferson never remarried. That doesn't mean he never had relationships with other women
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Most notably, Jefferson maintained a liaison with Sally Hemings, an enslaved worker at Monticello, his Virginia estate
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Since Hemings was an enslaved woman, it's hard to discern if she consented to Jefferson's advances
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and it's difficult to qualify their relationship beyond that. Over their 38-year relationship, Jefferson fathered Hemings' six children
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Hemings had another connection to Jefferson's family. She was his wife's half-sister
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They shared a father who had impregnated Hemings' enslaved mother. Jefferson's relationship with Hemings has long been a source of controversy, even in his own lifetime
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In 1802 during Jefferson presidency journalist James Callender published a series of articles about Jefferson and Heming relationship This all being said President Jefferson never publicly acknowledged these stories or took responsibility for these actions
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Woodrow Wilson is remembered as one of the few presidents who got married during his term in office
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In 1915, he married Edith Galt. Only a year earlier, Wilson's first wife, Ellen
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had passed away. But another intimate relationship defined much of Wilson's career
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His friendship, and perhaps something more, with Mary Peck, a socialite and divorcee
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Wilson and Peck met in Bermuda, a playground for the American elite, in 1907
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when he was still married to his first wife, Ellen. The pair exchanged letters, and the president was remarkably candid with her
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He openly discussed everything with her, from politics to indigestion to dental ailments to his hopes and dreams
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Ellen Wilson was apparently hurt by her husband's attachment to Peck, though she did nothing to curtail the relationship
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When she died in 1914, the president regretted the pain his friendship with Peck had caused her
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Wilson soon became engaged to Edith Galt. His friends and advisors, eager to make him reconsider remarrying so soon after his first wife's death
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began rumors about an affair between Peck and the president. Wilson was privately able to clear the air with his fiancée, and the marriage went on as planned
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Several people tried to pay Mary Peck for access to Wilson's letters to her
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but ever a devoted friend, she refused, holding on to them until after Wilson's death in 1924
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The Vietnam War cast a dark shadow over Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency
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After all, his administration accelerated and intensified the United States' involvement in
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the war, a decision that polarized the nation. The war even polarized parts of Johnson's private
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life. His wife, Lady Bird Johnson, was an incredibly influential first lady, and it seemed that the
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couple had a strong marriage. Despite this, the president pursued many extramarital affairs
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One of them was a decades-long relationship with Alice Glass. From the late 1930s into the 1960s
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Glass was a presence in Johnson's life and even provided political counsel. But the Vietnam War
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got in the way of their relationship. Glass was against the war, and this became one of the reasons
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the affair finally ended. Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign had a potential problem
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in Stormy Daniels. Daniels, an adult film star, alleged that she and a Republican candidate had
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engaged in a sexual encounter in 2006 while he was married to his third wife, Melania. Moreover
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Melania had recently given birth to Trump fifth child at the time of the alleged encounter Concerned that voters would drop their support of Trump if Daniels went public with her claim he and his team offered Daniels as part of a non agreement
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commonly called hush money. Those payments were classified in business records as legal fees, which led in 2024
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to Trump being convicted of multiple felonies currently under appeal by a jury in a New York state court
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for falsifying records in furtherance of another unspecified crime. When Andrew Jackson married Rachel Donaldson in 1791
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he became his new bride's second husband. She had previously been married to Louis Robards
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In 1806, the subject of his wife's first marriage unexpectedly came up
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Charles Dickinson, a horse breeder in Tennessee, accused Jackson of refusing to pay a bet
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He upped the ante by calling the future president a number of names, including calling him a bigamist
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Rachel Donaldson, Dickinson claimed, had still been married to her first husband when Jackson went her
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Enraged that Dickinson dragged his wife's good name into their conflict, Jackson challenged the man to a duel
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He silenced Dickinson by killing him. Truly the most extreme way of resolving an argument
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What do most people remember now? That Andrew Jackson shot someone. Do they remember why
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No, no, not at all. The most scandalous was saved for last
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In 1995, 21-year-old Monica Lewinsky obtained an internship at the White House
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which put her in close proximity to President Bill Clinton. Soon enough, Clinton and Lewinsky had a number of sexual encounters
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before she transferred to the Pentagon the next year. Three years later, news of the encounters broke
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Clinton, then in his second term, denied any involvement with Lewinsky. Accusations against him mounted
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suggesting that he had lied under oath and obstructed justice about his relationship with Lewinsky
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during the discovery phase in a sexual harassment lawsuit lodged against Clinton by Paula Jones
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He even went so far as to publicly claim, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky
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In a grand jury, Clinton finally admitted the truth. He had, in fact, been involved with Monica Lewinsky
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but depending on how one defined sexual relations, he claims he had been technically telling the truth
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Not satisfied, the House launched an impeachment investigation against the president in 1998
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though the Senate ultimately acquitted him. The previously mentioned scandals show just how difficult it is to be president
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All of your flaws, shortcomings, and moments of weaknesses are broadcast for the world to see
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The sexual dalliances of the president are definitely of interest to the greater American public
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However, what they truly underline is that the human condition is riddled with inconsistencies and weakness
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And that makes news