The Wild And Sometimes Outrageous Sex Lives Of US Presidents
Should the president of the United States be held to a higher standard of behavior than the average person? As we’ve seen time and again, presidents are merely human; moreover, many humans have, to put it politely, unorthodox sexual interests.
You don’t have to look hard to find lascivious presidents in every century. Sex scandals involving John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton are well-known, but even ostensibly boring presidents like Grover Cleveland, Warren G. Harding, and Gerald Ford committed sex acts ranging from eyebrow-raising to unconscionable.
Prepare yourself for a trip through the annals of sexual presidential history.
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John F. Kennedy is one of the most well-remembered presidents in America's short history, primarily due to his tragic assassination in 1963. Yet his reportedly insatiable libido receives just as much attention in popular culture and historical accounts.
One of the first of Kennedy's mistresses to gain notoriety in the public eye was Judith Exner. She began her affair with the president not long after divorcing her first husband. She came forward with the affair in the 1970s, much to the public's dismay.
She did not choose to come forward at her own behest as the FBI was looking into mob dealings and needed to know her involvement.
Another of Kennedy's rumored mistresses was renowned actor Marilyn Monroe. Many believe Kennedy had a hush-hush affair with Marilyn Monroe, but while there is somewhat substantial evidence of such, we will never know for certain if the pair ever had any sexual contact.
Famous names aside, many reports indicate Kennedy would seduce just about any woman he met, so much so that today, medical professionals might diagnose him with having a sexual addiction.
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Born in 1864, Frances Folsom had a most undependable father. Oscar Folsom cared more about racing his carriage than raising and tending to his daughter's needs. But Folsom did have a male presence looking out for her well-being: Grover Cleveland, whom she affectionately called "Uncle Cleve."
Throughout Folsom's life, Cleveland sent her flowers and even arranged to get her into Wells College. They often corresponded with one another even after Cleveland became president.
A perennial bachelor, when asked why he wasn't married, Cleveland is believed to have often said, "I’m waiting for my bride to grow up.” Most assumed his reply was a joke. But he wasn't joking: Cleveland married Folsom in 1886 when she turned 21.
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According to Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, excerpted in The New York Review of Books, the president had a certain habit of exposing his genitalia to just about whomever he encountered:
[I]f a colleague came into a Capitol bathroom as he was finishing at the urinal there, he would sometimes swing around still holding his member, which he liked to call "Jumbo," hooting once, "Have you ever seen anything as big as this?" and shaking it in almost a brandishing manner as he began discoursing about some pending legislation... Even on the floors of the House and Senate, he would extravagantly rummage away at his groin, sometimes reaching his hand through a pocket and leaning with half-lifted leg for more thorough access.
Kate Anderson Brower, the author of The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, also reports that Johnson went to great lengths - much to the annoyance of White House staff members - to install a custom-fitted shower with nozzles that sprayed the president with the force of a fire hose. Moreover, he insisted that one nozzle hit him directly in the nether regions.
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Thomas Jefferson fathered numerous children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman who, at the age of 14, accompanied Jefferson to Paris to look after his daughter in 1787. Today, some voices insist their sexual relationship was consensual, but while it is impossible to know the exact nature of their relationship, it is more likely he forced himself on her as she was enslaved and therefore treated as his property.
Hemings used her close proximity to the president to eventually free herself and her family from servitude, something Jefferson did not do for any other families that he enslaved.
While Jefferson's family never believed that the president could have fathered Hemings's children, a 1998 DNA test proved that at least one of Hemings's children was fathered by Jefferson - and the results stated it was likely he was the father of her other children.
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Bill Clinton's philandering along with allegations of sexual assault and harassment had already made headlines - confirmation of his affair with state worker and singer Gennifer Flowers came during a sexual harassment suit made against the president by Paula Jones, for instance - but it was his Oval Office relationship with White House aide Monica Lewinsky that caused a media frenzy when it broke.
Spurred on by reports from a special investigation conducted by Ken Starr, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Clinton on the grounds he committed perjury when he denied having an affair with Lewinsky under oath. The damning evidence of the affair with Lewinsky nearly cost Clinton his presidency.
Ultimately, a grand jury cleared Clinton of all impeachment charges, and he remained in office for the remaining duration of his second term.
Shortly after, Clinton faced a sexual assault allegation from Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed that the then-Governor of Arkansas raped her in 1978. In 2016, Leslie Millwee accused the former president of groping her.
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LBJ Allegedly Was A Bit Kinky
According to Madeleine Brown, in 1948, she and Lyndon Johnson - then a Texas congressperson - began an affair when she was 23 years old. She met him at an event sponsored by KTBC, a radio station in Austin owned by the Johnson family.
Brown felt "dazzled" by Johnson, and they ignited their sexual relationship three weeks later at another event held at the Driskill Hotel, also in Austin. She revealed numerous details about this encounter in a 1987 People article by Montgomery Brown:
"He looked at me like I was an ice cream cone on a hot day," Madeleine recalls with a smile. "And he said after a while, 'Well, I’ll see you up in my apartment.'" Flushed and excited, but naively telling herself that the meeting was business, she went. "At that time, sex, because of my Victorian raising…well, there was a lot of suppression," she says. "Still, I was wild and full of fire. He had a certain amount of roughness about him, and maybe that’s what I liked, you know. He commanded. I’ve been told that every woman needs to act like a whore in bed, and I guess that’s what I did."
Additionally, the pair liked to experiment with a satin sleeping mask with an embroidered message on one side: "Wake me for sex or golf." "He was a little kinky," she said, "and I loved every second of it. So did he."
Their trysts more or less petered out, however, after Brown became pregnant. She gave birth to her son, Steven Brown, in 1950, and the boy grew up never knowing the real identity of his father. Brown also insists that while Johnson assured her he would always take care of her and their child, regular child support payments ended in 1973, after Johnson's passing.
Steven Brown eventually sued Lady Bird Johnson, LBJ's widow, for millions of dollars after discovering the true identity of his father, insisting she denied him his birthright. A judge later threw out this suit when Steven Brown failed to show up in court.
However due to the case being dismissed and because investigators found inconsistencies in several of Madeleine Brown's other claims, namely those implicating Johnson in John F. Kennedy's assassination - the affair between Brown and Johnson should be taken with a grain of salt.
The 29th president of the United States wrote numerous letters to his mistress Carrie Fulton Phillips, with whom he kept his affair a secret for nearly a decade. Many of these correspondences, which finally came to public light in 2014, featured code words and language, including that Harding referred to his penis as Jerry.
He writes:
Jerry - you recall Jerry... came in while I was pondering your notes in glad reflection, and we talked about it. He was strongly interested, and elated and clung to discussion. He told me to say that you are the best and darlingest in the world, and if he could have but one wish, it would be to be held in your darling embrace and be thrilled by your pink lips that convey the surpassing rapture of human touch and the unspeakable joy of love’s surpassing embrace. I cordially agree with all he said. Perhaps it is not important maybe it is not even interesting, but he is devotedly, exclusively, for you.
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Reports of an affair between staff aide Jennifer Fitzgerald and George H.W. Bush during his tenure as vice president to Ronald Reagan sprang up like wildfire in 1992 but quickly petered out after numerous news organizations investigated the matter and found no substantial evidence of any such sexual encounters ever occurring.
Bush - who denied all accusations at the time - managed to keep his reputation more or less clean until 2017, when allegations of sexual misconduct against the former president once again made headlines. The only difference here is that Bush admitted the allegations were true.
In two separate reported incidents, Bush groped women non-consensually while posing for group photos with his wife, the late Barbara Bush. From actors Heather Lind and Jordana Grolnick, respectively, each account attested that Bush grabbed the women's buttocks as a punchline to a dirty joke.
A spokesperson for the former president issued a statement confirming that Bush frequently pulls this stunt to "put people at ease" and that he apologizes to anyone he offended. The statement also tried to claim Bush's age and the fact he was wheelchair-bound were potential explanations for his behavior, adding insult to injury.
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The 10th president, John Tyler fathered more children than any other US president. With his first wife, Letitia Christian, Tyler fathered eight children; with his second wife, Julia Gardner, he fathered another seven before passing at the age of 72. That's a total of 15 children.
Abolitionists of the day also accused Tyler of fathering at least one child, if not more, with people he enslaved, though historians can find no proof of these claims one way or another. Interestingly, as a testament to how many children he fathered, one of his grandchildren is still alive today.
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While by all accounts he never strayed from his beloved wife Rachel Jackson, Andrew Jackson did have a cruel streak against certain people.
It is widely known Jackson's relationship with the Indigenous people of North America was atrocious, as he is responsible for the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the Trail of Tears. But Jackson's cruelty also extended to sex workers, specifically regarding an incident during his youthful years spent in Salisbury, NC.
The story goes, Jackson approached "the only two white prostitutes in town, a mother and daughter," according to Michael Paul Rogin, author of Fathers And Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian. Jackson did not solicit these women for their services, however; instead, he invited them to a well-to-do Christmas ball as a joke.
The prank succeeded admirably, according to Presidential Anecdotes author Paul F. Boller:
On the evening of the ball, the two women appeared on the dance floor in gaudy clothing, bringing the festivities to a startled halt. While all the ladies withdrew, giggling, to one side of the room, the two prostitutes were quickly ushered out.
Jackson eventually apologized to the "socially acceptable" women, though it isn't known whether or not the sex workers received the same courtesy.
According to Robert Gene Baker, a Washington "fixer" and political adviser to LBJ, President Ford had a behind-doors sexual relationship with Ellen Rometsch, the wife of a West German Army officer and a possible spy.
Baker claims Rometsch was a favorite fling of both Presidents JFK and Ford, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover allegedly had evidence of the latter's affair, which he threatened to blackmail him with.
For the record, sources are quite slim on this allegation, so it's best taken with a grain of salt. In the book Nixon's Darkest Secrets, author and former White House reporter Don Fulsom cites anecdotal observations from other journalists that Nixon had an affair with his friend Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, a mafia-connected businessman.
One of the biggest pieces of evidence provided by the book is from a Time reporter who allegedly saw Nixon and Rebozo holding hands for a lengthy period of time. Other stories allege that Nixon would "cuddle" with Rebozo when he was drunk.
Finally, while his wife Pat Nixon stayed in another house altogether on their Florida resort property, Rebozo reportedly slept right next door to the president.
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James Garfield may be better remembered for his assassination than his presidency, which only lasted six months. But the life of Garfield seems to be one of constant self-torture, and according to Robert P. Watson, this included his own sexual urges.
From Affairs of State: The Untold History of Presidential Love, Sex, and Scandal, 1789–1900:As a young man, he was zealous in his religious convictions and believed that godliness required him to refrain from any sinful thoughts or actions. Yet Garfield was consumed by lust and sexual temptation and was both awkward around and deeply attracted to young women. In both cases, such traits were a recipe for trouble. He agonized over his thoughts and punished himself emotionally each time he indulged his sexual needs.
