Princess Diana’s secret letters to Donald Trump revealed
He once famously boasted that he could have “nailed” Princess Diana. Now Donald Trump has published Di’s private letters to him.
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A new book by Donald Trump has revealed private letters from Princess Diana during the former president’s aggressive sexual pursuit of the royal in the 1990s.
“Letters to Trump”, a cache of previously unseen letters from celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-un, will release on April 25.
Mr Trump famously bragged in 1997, just months after Diana died, how he could have “nailed” the princess after her divorce from then Prince Charles.
“I think I could have,” he said in an interview with radio shock jock Howard Stern, but only if she, “of course”, passed an HIV test.
“That would have been a tough one,” he continued. “Go back to my Lexington Avenue doctor, we want to give you a little check-up.”
Mr Trump “aggressively” pursued Princess Diana after her divorce in the early 1990s but his romantic overtures were rebuffed, according to Christopher Andersen’s biography of her ex-husband, The King: The Life of Charles III.
In the audio of his 1997 interview, which was resurfaced during his presidential campaign in 2016 by Buzzfeed News, Mr Trump said he missed his “opening” to sleep with Princess Diana after her “most beautiful, warm” private letter.
“She was actually really beautiful. I thought she was super model beautiful. She had height. She had beautiful skin,” he began.
“She wrote me a letter about a couple of months before she died. Thanking me because I did her a favour for something.”
Grilled on what the favour was, Mr Trump showed rare restraint, saying only “she asked me to do something. I did it.”.
“She wrote me a really nice letter. I can’t tell you it’s so personal you know. It’s a personal thing. But I did something. Then I sent her some flowers.
“I can’t tell you,” he pushed back again after repeated grilling. “But she really thanked me for the flowers more than the thing.
“A favour. Just a favour. Then I sent flowers. She wrote me the most beautiful warm letter. And instead of following up on that, like a schmuck, I didn’t.”
“There could have been an opening,” he said, before adding that Dodi Al Fayed was “not good for her, as it turned out. That was not a good situation.”
The full content of the letter is published alongside 40 years’ worth of celebrity correspondence to Mr Trump before he announced his 1996 presidential bid, including from comedian Jay Leno, actor Arnold Palmer, actress Liza Minnelli, and former presidents including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Among the most incendiary will be from handwritten notes from Oprah Winfrey, a close friend to Princess Diana’s daughter-in-law, Meghan Markle, who Mr Trump is “not a fan” of.
In 2000, Trump wrote that Oprah Winfrey would be his first choice for vice president if he ever ran, saying Americans respect and admire the talk show hose for her “intelligence and caring”.
His comments made her “a little weepy”, she said in the handwritten note on her letterhead, released by Winning Team Publishing.
“It’s one thing to try and live a life of integrity — still another to have people like yourself notice,” she said.
“Too bad we’re not running for office. What a team!”.
Once announcing his run for president, Mr Trump says she never spoke to him again. But he always wanted someone like her, and another former TV presenter, Kari Lake, tops his current list of candidates.
TRUMP’S WILD VICE PRESIDENT PICKS
Donald Trump is reportedly considering some of the most controversial female figures in United States politics to be his vice presidential candidate in 2024.
Topping the list is former TV news anchor and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who continues to challenge her election loss in the US state of Arizona, according to Axios.
Adding credence to the validity of the vice presidential shortlist is that it was “leaked” on International Women’s Day. Ever the showman, Trump’s campaign publicly denied the shortlist while privately telling the outlet the former president was set on picking a female running mate to replace former VP, Mike Pence.
A female running mate is seen as key to winning back the suburban women who cast the defining votes to evict Trump from the White House in 2020
Also said to be among consideration is former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who is running against Mr Trump for the Republican Party nomination, as well as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former White House press secretary and current Arkansas governor and Kristi Noem, a governor in South Dakota.
“Anyone who thinks they know what President Trump is going to do is seriously misinformed and trying to curry favour with ‘potential’ VP candidates,” Mr Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung, said in a statement.
“President Trump will choose his running mate on his own time, and those who are playing the media game are doing so at their own peril.”
Here’s a closer look at the top picks for the East Wing.
Kari Lake, former TV presenter and Arizona gubernatorial candidate
Kari Lake is said to be the top candidate for her qualifications if not for her electoral viability.
She lost her campaign for governor in Arizona in November’s midterm elections, and continues to challenge the election loss even as the court rejected her appeal.
Despite holding no major political office, she has the most important quality that Mr Trump is looking for. Complete loyalty and a willingness to fight back, primarily in defence of Trump.
Nikki Haley, former South Carolina Governor and former ambassador to the United Nations
Trump brutally taunted Nikki Haley after announcing she would directly challenge the technical incumbent for the Republican nomination, saying she should “follow her heart, if not her honour”.
The 51-year-old former South Carolina governor has famously twisted herself in knots to play both sides of the Trump coat-tails, denouncing him after the January 6 Capitol riot, seeking his forgiveness, and vowing she wouldn’t challenge him in 2024 before throwing her hat in the ring last month.
If her candidacy grows in popularity, however, Mr Trump could add her to the ticket to remove the threat to his own campaign.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former White House press secretary and current governor of Arkansas
A former White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders won the governor’s race in Arkansas with Trump’s endorsement.
Despite having the political pedigree as the daughter of former governor Mike Huckabee, and an unscathed tenure as the longest-serving press secretary in the Trump White House, she has publicly rejected the idea as going against the Arkansas constitution.
She also seemingly lacks Mr Trump’s number 1 requirement of loyalty after reportedly refusing to endorse him as the GOP’s 2024 candidate.
Mr Trump denied asking for her endorsement “weeks ago” after The New York Times reported she rejected the request.
“I give endorsements, I don’t generally ask for them,” Mr Trump said on Truth Social.
“With that being said, nobody has done more for her than I have, with the possible exception of her great father, Mike.”
Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota
To celebrate America’s Independence Day in 2020, Kristi Noem gifted the then-president a replica of Mount Rushmore with the Donald Trump bust carved into the mountain alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
If that wasn’t enough to catapult her to the top of the list, Noem has been one the only Trump allies to publicly criticise his toughest competitor in the GOP primary, Ron DeSantis.
Speaking at the America First Policy Institute in February, Noem attacked the Florida governor over his early response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I did not lock my people down or mandate anything. In fact, we were the only state in the country that never once ordered a single business or church to close,” she said, deftly pointing to DeSantis’ stay-at-home order without mentioning him by name.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Representative for Georgia’s 14th District in the US Congress
While an outsider the to VP race, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ambitions to be Trump’s running mate were made known last month by Steve Bannon.
Bannon, the former top strategist many credit for Mr Trump’s unexpected rise to the presidency, said she’s “no shrinking violet” and has ambitions beyond the number 2 spot.
“She sees herself on the shortlist for Trump’s VP,” he said in an interview.
“When MTG looks in the mirror she sees a potential president smiling back.”
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