Megyn Kelly fires back on Trump’s marriage record

On the “Hodgetwins Podcast,” Megyn Kelly accused Donald Trump of cheating throughout his marriages, including during his relationship with Melania Trump. The remarks also tied into a broader fight after Trump criticized Joe Kent’s remarriage following his firs

Megyn Kelly didn’t ease into the topic on the “Hodgetwins Podcast.” She went straight for the most explosive thread in Donald Trump’s personal history, then snapped it to something happening right now.

Kelly sharply criticized Trump’s marital record, accusing the president of cheating “on every wife he’s had,” including First Lady Melania Trump.

She pointed to Trump’s affair with Marla Maples while he was still married to Ivana Trump. Kelly said the alleged tryst was widely covered in New York tabloids at the time, and she claimed Trump appeared “proud” of the relationship.

Kelly also referenced a rape allegation made by Ivana during their 1990 divorce proceedings. The allegation became public through Harry Hurt III’s 1993 biography “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump,” which cited a sealed deposition from the divorce case.

In Harry’s account, Trump became enraged after undergoing a painful “scalp reduction” procedure recommended by Ivana to address baldness. The book described a violent confrontation during which, according to the deposition, Trump sexually assaulted Ivana. Ivana used the word “rape” in the sworn testimony.

Before publication, Trump’s lawyers pushed publisher W.W. Norton to include a clarification from Ivana in every copy of the book. In the statement. Ivana acknowledged using the word “rape” but said she “did not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.” She added that she felt “violated” because “the love and tenderness. which he normally exhibited towards me. was absent.”.

Trump denied the allegation, telling Newsday in 1993 that it was “obviously false” and calling Harry “a vindictive and jealous person.”

Trump married Ivana in 1977, and divorced in 1992 after a public scandal involving Marla Maples. Marla Maples married Trump in 1993 and divorced in 1999, and they share daughter Tiffany Trump.

Kelly then pivoted to Trump’s current marriage, saying, “If you think Trump’s been faithful to Melania, that’s great. You’ve got bigger issues than I can solve here.”

Her remarks landed in the middle of another ongoing controversy Trump has been pushing outward. The discussion stemmed from Trump’s criticism of Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Kent’s first wife, Shannon Kent, a U.S. Navy officer, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019. Kent later married Heather Kaiser Kent in 2023, more than four years after Shannon’s death.

After Joe Kent resigned from the administration in March over the Iran war—arguing Iran posed “no imminent threat” and accusing Israel of pressuring Donald into military action—Trump told reporters he was “not a fan of” Kent. Trump also criticized Kent for remarrying “fairly quickly.”

Kelly responded by sharing her own family experience. She said her father died suddenly of a heart attack at age 45, leaving her mother to raise three children alone. Her mother later joined a widows’ support group and remarried a fellow widower after several years.

Kelly argued that four years was a reasonable amount of time to grieve and rebuild one’s life, defending Joe Kent’s remarriage timeline.

The through-line was hard to miss: Kelly tied together Trump’s accusations of others with what she sees as a larger mismatch in how he treats fidelity and judgment—using Trump’s past marriages and the remarriage of a grieving widow’s husband as the contrast point.

Megyn Kelly Donald Trump Hodgetwins Podcast Melania Trump Ivana Trump Marla Maples Tiffany Trump Joe Kent Shannon Kent Heather Kaiser Kent National Counterterrorism Center Iran war Harry Hurt III Lost Tycoon