Donald Trump is known for his complex and controversial romantic connections, the former president dated upcoming model Kara Young from 1997 to 1999. The couple first met in the Hamptons, New York, and started dating while the Republican leader was still going through the divorce process from his second wife, Marla Maples. In 2022, an extract from the book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and Breaking of America by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman claimed that Trump made racial comments against his then-girlfriend. As reported by Rolling Stone , he jokingly claimed that his multiracial model ex-girlfriend’s ‘intelligence’ came from her white father and her ‘beauty’ from her black mother.
While Trump openly joked about Young’s roots, the young model had defended the billionaire tycoon in 2017 over racial remarks, saying, “I never heard him say a disparaging comment towards any race of people.” When asked at the time if he was in favor of white nationalist ideas, she said, “That was not my experience.” As per the Daily Mail report, Young described another instance from 2017 in an interview, in which Trump said he was surprised that Serena and Venus Williams attracted a diverse crowd at the U.S. Open because he had assumed that black people had little interest in tennis. Journalist Haberman detailed another White House incident in the book, which stated that in a different incident, Trump hosted a reception at the White House in January 2017 to meet with leaders of Congress. Mistaking them for wait staff, the former President once turned to a group of ethnically diverse staff members and requested that they bring out the hors d’oeuvres.
According to John Bolton, a former national security adviser, Trump allegedly told him he preferred to break up with women rather than be dumped. “How with the women he had dated, he never liked to have them break up with him; he always wanted to be the one doing the breaking up,” Bolton mentioned in his memoir The Room Where It Happened. Speaking for the first time about the incident, Young told exclusively to Inside Edition that the ‘inappropriate racial joke’ incident is true. “Kara, you and I have been friends forever. You have specifically asked me not to talk about your old friendship with Donald Trump. Why are you speaking now?” host Deborah Norville asked. “When something’s said for years and years and years, and you never say anything back, that got as frustrating as if I spoke all the time,” Young explained at the time.
“It sounds—when someone says something in jest—are they kidding? I don’t know,” she said. Young revealed that she corrected Trump later for making the inappropriate comment about her. “It wasn’t a fight or anything like that; it was just more like, ‘No. Don’t say that; it’s not funny,’” Young said. “He said, ‘I was just joking; I was just kidding. No, I don’t think that.’” However, the model praised the 2024 presidential hopeful in the interview, saying, “I didn’t think I was going to like him because he wasn’t my type. I didn’t think he was my type, but it just ended up happening. I know it’s hard to believe; he’s very funny, and he has a really good personality,” Young said.