Trump And The Women That Could Finally Take Him Down

"People are really vicious, and no place are they more vicious than in their relationships with the opposite sex," Donald Trump wrote in his 1997 book Trump: The Art of the Comeback.

- KELLY RISSMAN

Based on his own personal, professional and private life, the former president may never have said a truer word.

A brief glance at the history of Donald Trump reveals a sometimes tricky (to put it mildly) relationship with women. He has been married three times – with his current wife Melania rarely seen with him even as he ramps up his latest presidential campaign for this year’s election.

He has been outed for having multiple alleged affairs – one, notably, with adult film star Stormy Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford). He has bragged about being able to “grab ’em by the pussy” – a phrase he later brushed off as “locker room” talk. And most seriously, he has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women, including one case where he was found liable by a jury of sexually assaulting former Elle columnist E Jean Carroll.

So it is perhaps unsurprising and fitting that, as he becomes the first current or former US president to go on criminal trial, his relationship with women is central to the case. Mr Trump’s first criminal trial, starting on Monday 15 April, sees him charged with 34 counts of falsifying business documents in a scheme to silence women he had alleged affairs with and hide his alleged reputation as a disloyal husband from voters ahead of the 2016 election. And this trial is just the beginning.

At the heart of many of the former president’s civil and criminal cases, and potentially holding the power to bring Trump down, are women.

Adult film star Stormy Daniels is at the centre of the hush money case, her and the $130,000 (£105,000) payment she received in exchange for her signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to stop her from speaking out about her alleged affair with Mr Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.