Barry Levine - 22 Oct

GOD AND COUNTRY: HOW EVANGELICALS

HAVE BECOME AMERICAS NEW MAINSTREAM

T o find Donald Trumps favorite bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, start by ascending the red-carpeted steps that lead inside the pink stucco landmark built in 1912. Once inside the grand lobby, walk past reception and continue toward the famed Polo Lounge, where decades ago Hollywood heavyweights like Douglas Fairbanks, Humphrey Bogart, and the Rat Pack once held court.

To the right of the lounge youll see an exit door, which leads to a shady path. Tropical plants and citrus trees line the walkway as it takes you away from the hotels main building. Nestled amid the lush greenery of the winding passage are the hotels most famous accommodationsthe bungalows. There are twenty-three in all, and the history of their occupants could fill many a gossip column: Elizabeth Taylor spent six of her eight wedding nights in Bungalow 5; Howard Hughes lived in Bungalow 4 on and off for thirty years; and John Lennon and Yoko Ono used Bungalow 11 as their hideout.

One day in March 2019, a hotel employee guides me to Bungalow 22, the only one of the private villas without a green and white marker. It has an octagonal ceiling, a terrace fireplace, Palm Springs mid-century furnishings, and a grand piano. In addition to being Trumps preferred rendezvous locale, its also rumored to have been Sinatras favorite.

Hotel advertising describes the bungalow as a wonderfully private and luxurious experience, steeped in ultimate glamour. It also teases, If these walls could talk

No need.

From adult film star Stormy Danielss expos about her liaisons with the future president on 60 Minutes to former Playboy playmate Karen McDougals CNN interview to the details provided in the defamation lawsuit that ex-Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos filed against the president, we have a pretty good idea of their version of what went on inside the bungalows when Trump was staying there.

Stormy has said it was here that she watched Shark Week with Trump and ate swordfish. While their bungalow get-together was supposed to be about discussing her potential appearance on The Apprentice, she wrote in her book that Trump, feeling frisky, started to trace his finger on my thigh.

Karen, meanwhile, remembered that their first datearound the time of his June 14 birthday in 2006ended in a bungalow here with him offering to pay her after sex.

Did he actually try to hand you money? Anderson Cooper asked her in their CNN interview.

He did. He did, McDougal responded. And I said, I just had this look of I dont even know how to describe the look on my face must have been so sad because I had never been offered money like that.

It was also here that some of the events alleged in Summers lawuit against Trump took place. In her court papers, she claims a 2007 incident at a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow began after Trump emerged from a bedroom and immediately started kissing [her] open mouthed, pulling her towards him.

It went downhill from there with Summer claiming Trump grabbed her shoulder, again kissing her very aggressively, and placed his hand on her breast before she pulled back and walked to another part of the room.

The documents describe his allegedly continuing advances and her continued attempts to rebuff him until he paced around the room and seemed angry, adding: He told her that he did not believe that she had ever known love or been in love.

Did he meet these women in Bungalow 22, or one of the others here? Accounts arent clear, though Bungalow 22 was the site of a Trump casting call in 2008 for a short-lived MTV reality series called The Girls of Hedsor Hall, in which a dozen young American women with unladylike traits would be shipped off to an English country house to learn social graces. According to the Washington Post, Trump held court as a series of possible contestants presented themselves. Trump allegedly suggested trying to find more attractive participants.

As I wandered the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel, I couldnt help but wonder about the influences in Donald Trumps life, including his long association with Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine. Had the presidents long history of affairs and boorish behavior just been an exaggeration of his lifelong attempt to fulfill his inner Hugh Hefner?

As a student at New York Military Academy, the all-boys boarding school in which he enrolled in 1959, young Donald was probably no different than others his age in wanting to emulate the hedonistic Playboy founder. Trumps five-year stint in the military academy began at age thirteensix years after Hefner began publishing his mens magazine, which author Carrie Pitzulo wrote after his death, defined an airbrushed and unattainable standard of feminine attraction and availability.

I can envision a teenage Trump and his bunkmates after lights out, passing around a dog-eared copy of Playboy, checking out that months centerfold by flashlight and nodding off to Hefs philosophy of manhood and of breast-filled midnight dreams. Of Trumps times at the military academy, David Cay Johnston, one of his biographers, told me, Donald has been living the year he was thirteen for the last sixty years.

It was clear Trump was channeling Hefner on the first night he was alone with Stormy Daniels at a hotel suite in Lake Tahoe. Stormy writes in her book, Full Disclosure, that Trump came swooping in, wearing black silk pajamas and slippers. Hi there, he said. Look at this motherfucker, I thought Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Hefner. Im looking for Mr. Trump What are you doing? Go put some fucking clothes on.

One thing separates Trump from his would-be sexual idol, however. Like Trump, Hefner was accused over the years of various acts of sexual exploitation and abuse. But unlike Trump, the