Rumors Donald Trump Tried To Deny That Won't Go Away

President Donald Trump has been called "Teflon Don" for his unique ability to survive scandal after scandal, but there are nonetheless lingering rumors that simply won't go away no matter the extent of Donald's denials. As seen in the film "The Apprentice," Trump learned from his mentor, controversial lawyer Roy Cohn, to admit nothing and deny everything; one of his PR rules is and has always been, as Cohn stated, "No matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat." During Trump's first term in office, The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented over 30,000 misleading or false claims from the president, but not a single one led to an apology or admission of guilt or ignorance. As such, without hard evidence, few rumors about Trump ever become outright facts.

Trump is simply fact-resistant, and if Trump says it isn't true, many MAGA Republicans believe him. Granted, the opposite is also true, as a 2016 poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University revealed; if you're opposed to Trump, then you're much more susceptible to conspiracy theories and dubious rumors that paint him in a bad light. Suffice it to say (and it has been said ad nauseam), politics precedes perception in post-truth America, and one's ideological makeup often determines one's reality. But no matter your political persuasion, there are some persistent rumors about Trump that seem impossible to shake — from the damning and believable to the somewhat silly and suspicious.

An allegation regarding Donald Trump's history with Jeffrey Epstein is perhaps the most significant and unceasing rumor about the president — both because of its criminally scandalous implications and the fact that there's so much legitimate evidence behind it. The nexus of countless conspiracy theories, Epstein was of course the New York financier, pedophile, and sex trafficker who had connections with some of the world's most powerful people, from Bill Gates and Bill Clinton to Prince Andrew and, yes, Donald Trump. Despite his insistence that he never participated in any of the acts Epstein became known for, their friendship has been widely substantiated.

While Epstein died in 2019, the rumor that Trump closely associated with Epstein and engaged in illegal activities alongside him has not gone away, much to Trump's chagrin. That's because of a slow leak of evidence over the years that connects the two. Trump is listed in the flight logs for Epstein's notorious plane, "The Lolita Express," and there are many images of the two together, including one of Epstein at Trump's 1993 wedding to Marla Maples. Along with an infamous video of the pair laughing together at a party in 1992, there is video of the two together at a 1999 Victoria's Secret fashion show. There is also an audio recording of Epstein calling Trump his "closest friend" and a bizarre birthday card Trump made for Epstein in 2003, featuring a poem of sorts within a drawing of a naked woman. The rumors have led even some of Trump's most faithful MAGA loyalists to question him.

While on its surface, the rumor that Donald Trump is functionally illiterate might seem ridiculous. Regardless, there are embarrassing videos over the years that lend credence to the rumor, many of which were featured on "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee," in a segment titled "Trump Can't Read."

In one interview with Pat Buchanan, Trump struggled to name a book aside from his own ("The Art of the Deal"). He stated that Tom Wolfe was his favorite author, but when asked, he admitted he hadn't read "Bonfire of the Vanities," instead claiming that he was reading Wolfe's "current book" — which was "Bonfire of the Vanities."

Former "Saturday Night Live" star Pete Davidson said on "Opie with Jim Norton" that Trump doesn't know how to read, recalling the time that Trump hosted the sketch comedy show and couldn't follow along during the table read, preferring to improvise. And then there's a deposition video in which Trump refuses to read a document he is given, claiming not to have his glasses (despite never being seen wearing glasses).

Trump's rumored illiteracy has led him to ignore daily presidential briefings that his staff prepares, with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard considering using video briefings rather than written information. "The problem with Trump is that he doesn't read," one source told NBC. So how does he tweet? During court testimony, his former aide Madeleine Westerhout stated that he dictated his tweets, something Trump himself has admitted.

For decades, the tabloids have wasted oceans of ink on endless rumors about Donald Trump's marriages. This has continued into his two presidencies, with the biggest rumors swirling about his marriage to Melania. Compared to previous women in her position, this First Lady has been seldom seen, and spends more time away from the White House than in it with Donald. Historian Katherine Jellison told The New York Times, "We haven't seen such a low-profile first lady since Bess Truman, and that's going way back in living human memory, nearly 80 years ago." Melania was rarely seen throughout the two years of Trump's 2024 campaign; her only speech at a rally lasted less than five minutes on Oct. 27, 2024.

Some believe that Melania downright despises Donald by now. Social media occasionally lit up with video of Melania batting away Donald's hand as he reaches to hold hers, or turning her face when he goes in for a kiss. "She hates him," Anthony Scaramucci, Trump's short-lived communications director, told "Meidas Touch." "I judge the hatred of Donald Trump by the Melania standard," he said, also revealing, "I've met one person that actually hates Trump more than Melania, that's Gen. [Mark] Milley." Journalist Michael Wolff put it simply, telling The Daily Beast podcast, "The president of the United States and the first lady are separated." After all, her husband was found guilty of 34 felony counts involving his hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, so it's hard to blame her if the rumors are true.

It isn't just the Stormy Daniels affair that Melania Trump may be disgusted by; there is a long list of women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual impropriety. Trump's half-confession to this, revealed in the "Access Hollywood" tape scandal, almost sank his campaign. In it, he told Billy Bush (per BBC), "You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the p****. You can do anything." This kind of molestation and groping has been alleged by at least 15 women, according to Vox and countless other outlets.

Additionally, in 1989, Ivana Trump told friends that Trump had raped her. She later stated (per NPR), "As a woman, I felt violated ... I referred to this as a 'rape,' but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense." While most sexual allegations against Trump are just that, a 2023 jury found Trump liable of sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll, dating back to a time in late 1995 when he forced himself upon her in a dressing room. Though Trump denied this, he was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million, and then $83 million for defaming her — money he has yet to surrender.

Donald Trump's purported sexual behavior has led to the notorious rumor that Russia, or perhaps Israel, has blackmail material on him. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton paid Fusion GPS for opposition research against Trump, which resulted in an investigation headed by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. Leaked while unfinished, the so-called "Steele Dossier" contains a litany of bombshell allegations regarding Trump's relationship with Russia, though many are uncorroborated and some are simply unfalsifiable. Nonetheless, rumors of a certain scandalous "pee tape" has plagued Trump for nearly a decade.

Russia collected information in order "to exploit Trump's personal obsessions and sexual perversions in order to obtain suitable 'kompromat' (compromising material) on him," according to the dossier (via The Atlantic). The most notorious of all the allegations, Report 80, involved Donald Trump paying several sex workers to urinate on a bed in the Ritz Carlton suite that previous president Barack Obama once slept in. "The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to," the report added (via GQ). "Trump's unorthodox behavior in Russia over the years had provided the authorities there with enough embarrassing material on the now Republican presidential candidate to be able to blackmail him if they so wished."

There are rumors that even Israel has kompromat on Trump, something which ties into the president's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Some have accused Epstein of being a Mossad agent for Israel, claiming his pedophile ring was used to create blackmail on various powerful figures, Trump included.

One of the weirdest rumors regarding Donald Trump accuses him of taking on fake names and pretending to be different people when speaking to reporters. Those names included "John Miller" and "John Baron" (sometimes "Barron"), personalities that Trump created to be his own sort of spokesman. According to Fortune, Trump may have gotten the idea from his dad, Fred Trump Sr., who sometimes used the name "Mr. Green" when speaking with reporters.

Donald Trump supposedly began using pseudonyms in 1980, when he came under fire for destroying historically important artwork in his construction of Trump Tower. He is said to have later used fake names when discussing everything from his failed United States Football League to his dating life. Allegedly under the name John Miller, Trump told Sue Carswell of People, "Important, beautiful women call him all the time," claiming pseudonymously that he may be involved with Kim Basinger, Madonna, and Carla Bruni (something the latter outright rejected). Trump has publicly denied using a fake persona during a 1991 telephone interview obtained by The Washington Post, though he quietly confessed to it while under oath, stating, "I believe on occasion I used that name." The name was used throughout litigation over Trump's illegal employment of Polish workers he had paid $4 an hour for construction, with Trump admitting (per ArtNet), "Lots of people use pen names. Ernest Hemingway used one."

Donald Trump also used fake names to insinuate that he was much wealthier than he actually was, which ties into another long-standing rumor — that Trump is nowhere near as wealthy as he has claimed to be. Jonathan Greenberg, who worked on compiling multiple editions of the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America, revealed in a piece for The Washington Post that Trump had used the "John Barron" pseudonym to lie about his wealth. "Most of the assets have been consolidated to Mr. Trump," Barron told Greenberg on the phone, attempting to gain a higher placement on the list. "You have down Fred Trump [as half owner] . . . but I think you can really use Donald Trump now." As Greenberg himself wrote, "I have learned that he should not have been on the first three Forbes 400 lists at all. In our first-ever list, in 1982, we included him at $100 million, but Trump was actually worth roughly $5 million."

Trump's rumored inflation of his own wealth (even by $2.2 billion in one single year) eventually led to consequences. In 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James alleged that he had lied about his net worth for years, using deceptive accounting practices to inflate his wealth (and actual property size) in order to defraud banks and insurers out of bigger loans. Judge Arthur Engoran ruled that Trump had fraudulently exaggerated his wealth, something an appeals court later upheld.

In denying all wrongdoing, Donald Trump has argued that he has been the victim of "lawfare" throughout his political career. He claimed that his presidency has made him the target of rumors and subsequent investigations. Of course, being president automatically raises your profile, which is perhaps why Trump never wanted to win the first election to begin with, according to some rumors. The idea that Trump would actually become the U.S. president seemed more than far-fetched when he announced his first candidacy. Based on some reports, the goal was never to win but to generate popularity, strengthen the Trump brand, and secure future book and TV deals.

Journalist Michael Wolff's 2018 book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," documented the Trumps' reaction to election night. "Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy," Wolff wrote (per New York Magazine). "There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon's not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump." While it's only a rumor that Trump didn't want to win the 2016 election, it's practically undisputed that he didn't expect to. As journalist Mary Jordan wrote (per CNN), "The election night win came as a surprise even to Trump, according to many on his campaign."

The older that Donald Trump gets, the more rumors there are that he either has some form of dementia or that his health is deteriorating in some way or another. The rumors tend to escalate so easily that, after Trump wasn't seen by the media throughout Labor Day weekend of 2025, discussions of his death went viral on the internet, leading to the delightfully ridiculous Politico headline, "Trump denies he's dead."

Of course, there were reasons for people to be concerned about Trump's health; he's the oldest person to ever be president, after all. Images of odd bruising, swollen ankles, and other funky physiognomy raised alarms, and Trump was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency. An image of Trump at a 9/11 memorial event, in which half of the president's slumped, led to rampant speculation that Trump had suffered a stroke. Trump has worked overtime to topple these rumors, saying on September 2, 2025, (per Politico), "Last week, I did numerous news conferences. ... And then I didn't do any for two days and they said, 'There must be something wrong with him.'" He added that former president Joe Biden wouldn't do press conferences for months at a time, stating, "You wouldn't see him. And nobody ever said there was ever anything wrong with him." While that's patently false (with even Trump promoting the absurd rumor that Biden died in 2020 and had been replaced by a body double), rumors of Trump's demise have been greatly exaggerated.