Karen McDougal apologizes Melania Trump for alleged affair with Donald Trump in resurfaced interview

After alleging an affair with Donald Trump in 2006 and 2007, former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal once conveyed regret to Melania Trump.

In a 2018 interview with CNN, McDougal expressed her remorse to Anderson Cooper, saying, "What can you say except, I’m sorry? I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want it done to me, I’m sorry."

McDougal mentioned that she felt "guilty, very guilty" when Trump once showed her around his Trump Tower apartment in New York, pointing out Melania's room.

She said, "Going through it when I look back where I was back then, I know it’s wrong, I am really sorry for that. I know it’s the wrong thing to do. There was a real relationship there. There were real feelings between the two of us, not just myself, not just him … Deep inside, I did have a lot of guilt but I still continued."

After their encounter, McDougal said Trump tried to pay her, "After we had been intimate, he tried to pay me, and I actually didn’t know how to take that. “I don’t even know how to describe the look on my face. It must have been so sad. That’s not me. I’m not that kind of girl."

In a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, McDougal seeks public acknowledgment from the National Enquirer’s parent company regarding her silence about an alleged 2006 affair with Trump. She claims she was paid $150,000 to suppress her story, which was never published. McDougal is the second woman allegedly paid to hide a Trump romance before the election. She and Stormy Daniels settled their cases through lawyer Keith Davidson, who McDougal accuses of conspiring with Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen, to silence her. The affair was first reported by The New Yorker.

She said in the interview, "I voted for the President. I voted for Donald. Why would I want to damage him? That’s my party, Republican Party. That’s my president. I did not want to damage him or hurt him in any way, shape or form, but I also didn’t want to put out the story because I didn’t want my reputation to be damaged."

McDougal thought her deal with American Media Inc. would be mutually beneficial, allowing her to pursue a career in health and fitness while keeping her Trump affair private. However, she claimed the company failed to meet their promises, paying only half of the $150,000 owed and not fulfilling their contract. She offered to return the money just to regain her story rights.