Former President Donald Trump blasted most media outlets Tuesday for failing to cover reports that second gentleman Doug Emhoff physically abused a girlfriend in 2012, with the Republican nominee saying that if he’d been accused, it would have been “the greatest story in the last five years.”
Trump, 78, was asked during an interview with Daily Wire founder and podcaster Ben Shapiro about the lack of attention to Emhoff “forcefully slapping” a former flame following an event at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
“[Emhoff] was being interviewed on MSDNC, which is one of the worst, you know, really a terrible, terrible group of people,” Trump bemoaned, using his preferred nickname for MSNBC. “And it was like a love fest. Never asked him about that. Never asked him about the other one.”
“[They] were saying he’s like a symbol for all men, all over the world,” the 45th president added. “If that were me, it would be the greatest story in the last five years.”
Trump was apparently referring to an appearance by Emhoff on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki” which took place days before the Daily Mail broke the story of the abuse claim.
Trump was likely suggesting that “the other” Emhoff saga was the implosion of his first marriage after he impregnated his child’s nanny.
Emhoff did not deny that report, telling CNN in a statement that he and his first wife “went through some tough times on account of my actions.”
Psaki, who served as White House press secretary from 2021 to 2022, buttered Emhoff up and said he had “reshaped the perception of masculinity.”
But according to three sources cited by the Daily Mail, Emhoff, 59, smacked his then-girlfriend in the face with such force that she was spun around while waiting in the valet line after the Cannes event.
Two of those sources were informed of the late-night, booze-fueled assault contemporaneously — and another heard from the woman involved in 2014.
A spokesperson for Emhoff told Semafor the report was “untrue” and “[a]ny suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false.”
CBS News, ABC News, Time, Politico, the Washington Post, the New York Times, NPR, the Associated Press and MSNBC, among others, have yet to cover the Mail’s report.
Still, ex-CNN-turned-NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo said in a segment after the piece was published that “if the name were Trump instead of Emhoff it would be all over the news.”
Emhoff has also been accused of being too “flirty” with women while running the Los Angeles office of white-shoe law firm Venable LLC from 2006 to 2017, according to a Tuesday report by the Daily Mail and a 2019 lawsuit filed against the firm.
Former Venable staff spilled about Emhoff, who married future Vice President Kamala Harris in 2014, hiring a model as his “trophy secretary” and singling out other “young, pretty girls” at the firm to invite them for a ride with him in a limo.
Harris, 59, has been interviewed since the scandals surfaced, but has yet to be asked about the allegation against her husband.
On Sunday, the veep joined the “Call Her Daddy” podcast to discuss prosecuting sex and domestic violence perps — but host Alex Cooper, 30, did not raise the claims against Emhoff.
The second couple also appeared hand-in-hand outside their official residence at the Naval Observatory on Monday for a tree planting to commemorate the anniversary of Hamas’ terror attack on Israel.
Harris was one of the most outspoken critics of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation and urged her Senate colleagues to “believe women” like Christine Blasey Ford who claim they are survivors of sexual abuse.
Journalists have not pressed her about whether she would hold her husband to that same standard.
