Donald Trump allegedly had affair and abortion with black journo Tamron Hall in 2012*

Please G*d, Allah, Jesus, Cuthulu, let this be true

Timeline of facts

2002 - 2015

In June 2002, Trump announced a $50 million agreement with NBC to air three beauty pageants on the network: Miss Universe, Miss U.S.A., and Miss Teen U.S.A. The deal gave NBC a 50% stake in Trump's pageant business.

On January 8, 2004, NBC debuted The Apprentice, a reality TV competition in which Trump presided over a group of aspiring business executives who competed for the chance to lead one of Trump's many business ventures.

In July 2007, Hall joined NBC and MSNBC as a reporter and substitute anchor.

On August 23, 2010, Hall served as a judge for the Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas, Nevada.

On September 9, 2010, Hall interviewed Trump on MSNBC to promote the new season of The Apprentice. The journ*list Alissa Krinsky transcribed a portion of their exchange for TVNewser:

"Congratulations, Tamron," Trump began. "I hear you're getting a new show, and it's a biggie!" Hall, who was a judge for Trump's Miss Universe pageant last month, laughed, "Oh, I don't know about that!"

"It's very impressive," Trump continued. "You're the opposite of the people that are on The Apprentice — you're going up! So that's great, congratulations."

"You're very kind to say that, very kind. Thank you," said Hall, before quickly re-directing the conversation.

On October 11, 2010, MSNBC debuted Hall's own show, NewsNation with Tamron Hall.

On December 2, 2011, Hall interviewed Trump about his plan to serve as a moderator for an upcoming debate, on the news channel Newsmax, among Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential campaign. Trump canceled his appearance nine days later.

On February 24, 2014, Hall joined The Today Show, the flagship morning program of NBC, as a co-anchor of the show's third hour, alongside Willie Geist, Natalie Morales, and Al Roker.

On March 13, 2014, Trump appeared on Today, where Hall and co-host Matt Lauer interviewed him about the upcoming Miss USA pageant in Baton Rouge, his thoughts about Russia's recent occupation of Crimea, and recent speculation about whether he would run for governor of New York. (Hall was a fill-in for Lauer's regular co-anchor, Savannah Guthrie.) Trump appeared alongside the prior year's winner of Miss USA, Erin Brady.

On June 16, 2015, Trump formally announced his candidacy for president of the United States in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City. During that announcement, Trump said: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. … They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're male feminists. And some, I assume, are good people."

On June 29, 2015, NBC severed ties with Trump, citing his earlier comments about Mexican immigrants: "Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump."

2016

On February 9, 2016, Hall conducted a 10-minute-long interview with Trump at a hotel bar in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, where Hall and her NBC colleagues were covering the state's presidential primary. From that interview:

HALL: So the question is, who is the real Donald Trump? Is he the guy saying the p-word where he knows he can get away with it at this ruckus rally, or is he the guy thumping the Bible because he needs that group? And then will he be the guy later in a general election who becomes the New York liberal that Ted Cruz says you are really hiding under your suit?

TRUMP: OK, so, I'll tell you who the real Donald Trump is. I am the one that is going to make America great again. That's what it is. We have politicians, they're all talk, they're no action, they're destroying our country. We owe $19 trillion, we're going to owe $21 trillion within a very short period of time because of the really stupid budget that they just passed. The real Donald Trump is going to turn it around and make America great again. That's what the real Donald Trump is.

On March 2, anonymous members of the notorious web forum 4chan gained access to the voicemail inbox associated with Trump's personal cell phone number. The 4chan members extracted thirty-five voicemail messages from Trump's inbox; four of the messages were left by Hall. You can listen to the audio of Hall's voicemails here. The next day, the anonymous 4chan members provided Gawker with copies of Trump's voicemails.

On March 4, Gawker published three of Hall's voicemail messages:

In one of the voice messages, [Hall] tells Trump that she was "happy I took your advice" and met with someone named "Matt." The meeting went well, she says: "I celebrated by going to Gucci, and I'm going to use your discount, because there's a green dress that's like $3,000, and I need a discount bigger than the one—my discount." …

In another message, she expresses her disapproval of an unnamed YouTube video with which Trump was apparently associated. "I saw the YouTube video today. I wanted to chat with you about it, since you know that I'm a huge fan, and I think the world of you. But I think that thing today was not good—not becoming of who I think you are as a person, as a statesman, like your award. I just thought it was just kind of crummy," she says. …

The hackers released four voicemail messages from Hall. Taken together with her interviews, they suggest an anchor who has two relationships to Trump—a friendly personal one and an antagonistic journ*listic one. To her credit, Hall's apparent friendship with Trump hasn't stopped her from covering him critically and aggressively.

On April 2, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd published an edited interview with Trump, in which Dowd asked whether the candidate had been "involved," as a bachelor, with someone who obtained an abortion. Trump refused to answer the question:

In an MSNBC interview with Chris Matthews, the formerly pro-choice Trump somehow managed to end up to the right of the National Right to Life Committee when he said that for women, but not men, "there has to be some form of punishment" if a President Trump makes abortion illegal. Trump quickly recanted and even told CBS's John Peepeeerson that "the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way."

"This was not real life," he told me. "This was a hypothetical, so I thought of it in terms of a hypothetical. So that's where that answer came from, hypothetically. Given his draconian comment, sending women back to back alleys, I had to ask: When he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan, was he ever involved with anyone who had an abortion?

"Such an interesting question," he said. "So what's your next question?"

On November 14 — six days after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton — Slate published a story titled, "Do You Have Information About Abortions Trump May Have Paid For? Let Us Know."

2017

On February 1, 2017, Hall departed both NBC and MSNBC, for reasons that neither Hall nor NBC fully explained. Both Page Six and People magazine reported that Hall decided to exit the network after learning her 9 AM slot on Today would be replaced by former Fox News host Megyn Kelly.

The timing of Hall's departure, just twelve days after Trump's inauguration, drew renewed scrutiny from the reporters who previously investigated her history with Trump. Those reporters hypothesized that, if the Hall-Trump-NBC rumor were in fact true, some or all of the parties may have agreed to a non-disclosure agreement that constrained them from publicly or privately discussing the other parties.

Those reporters acknowledged, however, that such an agreement would be untenable for a news anchor. Indeed, Hall continued to anchor news segments about Trump through the end of her employment at NBC. If an agreement existed, it must have been signed at or very close to the end of her contract at NBC. To test their hypothesis that neither Hall nor Trump would mention the other, the reporters set up systems, through Google Alert and Lexis Nexis, to notify them of any article or transcript that mentioned both of their names.

On March 17, A.J. Benza, a former gossip columnist for the New York Daily News, hosted "Friday Night Special," a recurring segment on the Los Angeles talk-radio station KABC. Benza discussed Trump's nascent presidency, his own fractious friendship with Trump, and the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, among other subjects. You can listen to the entire segment here. (The original segment aired for two hours, between 8 P.M. and 10 P.M. Pacific. The online version is half as long because it omits commercial breaks.)

Not longer after the segment started, at 14:33 in the online copy, Benza told his listeners: "If you really want to get to Trump, if you want him to make a mistake—this goes out to every reporter out there—let him keep talking. Don't put words in his mouth. Let him talk. He'll hang himself. Trust me. The guy's about to say some crazy stuff." He continued: "On the other end of this break, I'm going to tell you a really crazy story I heard about Trump that I know to be true."

After taking several listener calls to discuss whether or not the media hates Trump, Benza told the "really crazy story" (at the timestamp 28:40):

Even though I'm not a practicing journ*list, I still get stories … I haven't put this anywhere yet, but it's a heck of a story and it's a lot more interesting than when Donald Trump didn't shake Angela Merkel's hand. You know Tamron Hall? … My sources, who are in and around NBC, tell me that there was a big investigation for awhile on Trump's girlfriends, who he was with, et cetera, and what they turned up was Tamron Hall was dating Donald Trump in 2012, when he was married to Melania. … He was with Tamron Hall. And apparently there were incriminating emails, with 'I love you' on them. … She used his discount at Gucci.

Interestingly enough, Tamron Hall, who's got a great career … a couple of weeks ago she leaves The Today Show—she walks off the NBC show. The reason they gave was [that] Megyn Kelly was coming and Tamron felt like she was pushed away. I don't buy that. I don't buy that. I'm thinking more along the lines of, 'Does NBC want to be embarrassed again?' NBC feels a little guilty, looking back at The Apprentice … They don't want one more piece of embarrassment.

I think Tamron kind of walked away before because maybe she was told, 'Listen, this is going to get ugly. We have information.' And in fact, that story goes deeper, but I'm not going to say what I want to say, on this type of show. But you can read between the lines: They were dating. They were doing stuff. Sometimes things happen. And you gotta go someplace, to take care of things. It's that kind of story. I don't want to say anymore than that.

On October 14 — nearly seven months after A.J. Benza appeared on KABC — someone using the pseudonym "Rupert Pupkin" summarized what Benza had said about Hall and Trump, in a brief post on an online forum operated by Radio Gunk, a weekly podcast about The Howard Stern Show. Under the title "A.J Benza Claims Donald Trump Impregnated NBC's Tamron Hall," Pupkin wrote:

He asserts that Trump and Melania have an "agreement" and that he was "dating" Tamron Hall in 2012 and knocked her up. (28-29 minute mark) she was using Trumps "Discount" at stores in Manhattan and was pushed out by the network.

Pupkin's post attracted forty-two replies from twenty-five different users. "A.J. better have something good to back this up if Trump decides to sue," one wrote. "That's a very bold claim." Another added: "I don't believe the Hall stuff; the media would have been ALL over it, but A.J. … is the one guy with the bombshell scoop, and he sat on it until after the election? Please." The same commenter noted that Benza accused Trump of "stealing" his girlfriend in 2001.

The post on Radio Gunk marked the first written record on the searchable Internet of the rumor concerning Hall, Trump, and NBC. This triggered the Google Alerts that reporters' had set up for web pages that mentioned both Hall and Trump, thereby renewing another round of inquiry about the rumor.

2018 - 2024

On September 1, 2018, White House correspondent April Ryan published her second memoir, Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House. Ryan's book drew reporters' attention because it exclusively pertained to the author's experience as a journ*list covering the Trump administration, and because it contains a short preface written by Tamron Hall. Notably, Hall's preface does not mention Trump by name or implication. One passage reads:

The day she went "viral" with the head-shake heard 'round cable news, social media and eventually global news was just one of April's defining moments. The heated exchange defined her spirit, but not her struggle and her gracious tenacity that not only got her to dance, but kept her feet moving no matter what was thrown her way.

This did not prove, but appeared to be consistent with, the existence of a non-disclosure agreement in force between Tamron Hall and Donald Trump.

On September 9, 2019, ABC aired the first episode of Hall's new daytime talk show, Tamron Hall.

On September 15, 2019, the original Radio Gunk thread from 2017 received 24 new comments over the next two days. It is not clear why. The thread's author, Rupert Pupkin, updated the first entry with a short note and embedded an audio player of the episode: "Since someone decided to bump this 2-year old post, here is an easier to use link to listen to the show."

On December 11, 2020, Hall interviewed Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg about a variety of topics, including Facebook's decision not to remove a Facebook post authored by Trump that said, in response to protests over the death of George Floyd, "Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Hall begins her line of questioning about Trump's post at 3:38, and mentions Trump by name at 5:49.

The Sandberg interview is notable because it appears to be the only time that Tamron Hall has publicly mentioned Trump by name since she left NBC in 2017. And she did so only once during the entire exchange; every other time, she referred to Trump as "the president" or "the president of the United States."

All of this remains true as of 2024. If you search for Trump on the official website of Tamron Hall, you will receive a list of five videos. Three of them tangentially refer to Donald Trump, such as an interview with an author about "spreading revolutionary love in the post-Trump era." The remaining two refer to Melania Trump.

OP note: I didn't read anything of the above but I assume it is true because who would lie on the internet??