She told how the two would engage in what she called "pruning" – sitting inside a steam shower and telling each other secrets until their fingers get all pruney. She explained that the pair would "unload" their stresses and struggles. She said that the Don Jr. the world sees today is not who he was when she knew him. At that time, she said, they were soul mates, sharing hopes and dreams.
Today, that couldn't be further from the truth.
"You know what a bleeding-heart liberal I am," O'Day told Cohen. "And you know how I'm a social justice warrior since I was born and raised by one. There is no way that I could have ever loved somebody like what we see today. So, that goes to show you how much transformation or potential posturing the man is doing or has done since the man that I would call my soulmate — I also don't discredit that word. I do think if he were able to tell the truth, he would, since he called me his soulmate first."
She said that they would both laugh at the same things and have the same sense of humor.
"You know Trump is one story; Trump Sr. Don is something completely different," she explained. "That didn't start happening until after the show had wrapped. We were building a love for each other. I believe during the entire thing, we were building a friendship. ... We just saw each other's soul in one another, and I think that's likely because he was born into a name that he did not choose. He was born a Trump. We know he went and rebelled after college."
The younger Trump became a bartender in Denver, Colorado, where he lived for about a year. O'Day and Cohen compared notes on the story the way they heard it, but Cohen explained that Trump Sr. gave Don 30 days to join the company or he would never be able to be part of the business.
"And I said, how long after you were there were you bored," O'Day recalled asking. "And I think he said something like a couple of months. And I said, how long did you stay? I think it was for around a year. I don't know the exact time. And I asked him why, and he was like, 'because f--k my dad."
In her experience, she was told she had to follow orders, do whatever people wanted, be who they wanted, and fork over a lot of her money; otherwise, everything would be taken away. It was similar to what she said Don Jr. experienced at that time in his life.
She said Trump Jr. carried with him "trauma," and that there is always a desperate "need to please his father. And his father was never pleased enough with him."
While on "Celebrity Apprentice," she said, Don. Jr. asked if she wanted his help. She told him "no," and it became this understanding between them that she wasn't talking to him or hanging out with him because she wanted something.
"Meaning, his name didn't mean sh-t to me," O'Day continued. "I actually just wanted to be where we were at for him and me."
She describes one night that Don Jr. wanted to see her, and she was at an event at a gay club, but Don still wanted to hang out with her. It wasn't any gay club, she explained. "Everyone was in a g-string or less." But he still showed up and was perfectly comfortable with everyone.
"My assistant said he was very comfortable and she remembered him being totally chill and nice with everybody which, I mean, I looked at his Instagram for the first time in years the other night and saw all kinds of jokes you know, kind of belittling the gay community, transgender women, etc ... And I thought to myself, man you were super comfortable in that gay club. In fact, so comfortable that we ended up going to the bathroom and, for the first time, had sex in a gay club bathroom."
Despite the extent to which he's changed, she said that she still refuses to dish all of his secrets and the conversations about Donald Trump Sr. She did say she would give some broad stories.
Cohen recalled the kind of happy and comfortable Don Jr. he once considered his brother. At one point, he was sent as a so-called "fixer" to deal with O'Day just as he was sent to deal with a number of other Don Jr. women. O'Day went into great detail to say that Cohen was never a Ray Donovan-type of brow-beating fixer.
"I'm glad you bring it up," said Cohen. "I don't regret the times that I spent at the Trump Organization. I regret what's happened to me as a direct result. I regret the fact that I wasn't stronger myself and say 'no' to certain things."
O'Day concurred, saying Cohen was sent to "clean things up" with her but that she was never silenced. "You gave me options. You absolutely never Ray Donovan'd me."
"I really loved that man, and I will always love him," said O'Day. "I don't believe that you stop loving someone. Like who he is now, I love in a sorrowful way. Like I feel sorrow for him and frankly, the entire organization because I only saw it adored by the people they're obviously stepping on and taking advantage of. [They] have their entire presidency — the people that got them there. Or there were wealthy people that were happy. That their taxes got better and they're financing. They got to have conservatism back in their financial lives, which is all Don really cared about."
She said that she's shocked to see him taking on the role of the "QAnon guy" and the conspiracy theorist.
"I think they chose him to be the QAnon guy, and that's who he became," said O'Day. "But he, I think, what I see now, and from all of them, is like, I got to hear Don's dreams, you know? You want to talk about something I will say in the shower hour. He wanted to help low-income families and build housing projects that were good for the environment. And I would go with him to the meetings with all kinds of people, and every time he'd get advances in that project, he would try to get funding from a bank, and his dad would stop it, either because they work with him or out of respect for potentially getting his work one day. And it was a point of contention that was very, very deeply rooted for him because he did want to be something else other than what he ended up becoming."
She went on to say that from her experience Ivanka was treated like a foolish girl who just needs to be given a pair of shoes, and she'd go away. In reality, O'Day said that her experience was watching Ivanka be the real puppetmaster for the elder Trump.
Ivanka was very organized and scripted, and prepared, but every time she'd leave the room, Trump Sr. would say that she was lucky she was so pretty. The implication being she'd never make it in the world otherwise. The elder Trump truly believed that all women wanted to be Ivanka and all men wanted to sleep with Ivanka.
"That's why he'd send her on all the deals, because there'd be a banker there that was a guy, and so on," said Cohen.
As for Don and Ivanka, both Cohen and O'Day saw the two pitted against each other as a way to manipulate them. Cohen even said from his observations that even if Ivanka is pulling the strings, Don is by far the smartest of the family members. Dr. Mary Trump disagrees with that assessment, however. Both said that they can't understand how Don Jr. gets up every day next to Kimberly Guilfoyle, whose name they both mocked and intentionally mispronounced.
She went on to describe a "Five Year Plan," that she and Don Jr. created together about getting his kids into private schools and creating a pathway for the two of them so that it would make sense for him to divorce Vanessa Trump. In fact, O'Day said that she got the impression that Vanessa Trump knew about her during the affair, and it wasn't until later that she was able to match up stories with the ex-Trump wife.
"I mean there was this plan, and a play that he was dedicated to that any time he spoke with me, he was so dedicated that when it started to get very tricky he would always tell me, 'You have to stop doubting this. You have to stop.' Like I would say, let's just stop this is getting too intense. This is potentially damaging. I didn't understand how damaging because I always felt like Vanessa was very aware of me. Until I spoke with her did I understand more of what she was aware and unaware of. And it is part of my accountability."
She said she also wanted to use his show to apologize to Vanessa for her role in the ordeal.
The interview goes on for another 40 minutes, dishing about their relationship and the family.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-doj-to-bring-new-trump-charges-with/id1530639447?i=1000619085683
