A former model and ex-girlfriend of Donald Trump's profiled in an extensive
New York Times article about the presumptive GOP nominee's relationships with women said Monday that the newspaper lied to her about how her quotes would be used, and that Trump was a "gentleman" with her while they were together.
"The New York Times told us several times that they would make sure that my story that I was telling came across," Rowanne Brewer Lane told Fox News' "Fox and Friends'" program.
"They promised several times that they would do it accurately. They told me several times and my manager several times that it would not be a hit piece and that my story would come across the way that I was telling it and honestly, and it absolutely was not."
She said the newspaper used her quotes but "put a negative connotation on it. They spun it where it appeared negative."
"I did not have a negative experience with Donald Trump, and I don't appreciate them making it look like I was saying that it was a negative experience, because it was not," she said on Fox.
The Times piece details how Brewer Lane met Trump at a pool party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in 1990, when he was 44 years old and in the middle of a divorce from his first wife, Ivana Trump.
"He suddenly took me by the hand, and he started to show me around the mansion," she told the Times. "He asked me if I had a swimsuit with me. I said no. I hadn’t intended to swim. He took me into a room and opened drawers and asked me to put on a swimsuit."
Brewer Lane said she put on a bikini and came out and he said "wow" before showing her off to his guests. According to the Times' story, she ended up in a whirlwind romance with Trump, but said their meeting and courtship were" intimidating," as "he was Donald Trump, obviously."
On Monday, though, Brewer Lane told Fox News that Trump "never made me feel like I was being demeaned in any way. He never offended me in any way. He was very gracious. I saw him around all types of people, all types of women. He was very kind, thoughtful, generous, you know. He was a gentleman."
She also disputed the Times' version of how she and Trump met.
"If anybody would ask me, how did you meet Donald Trump, you're going to get the story of how I was at a pool party at Mar-a-Lago with my agency and a lot of other people," Brewer Lane said.
"It was a night party and I had a photo shoot that I had done all day and I had another photo shoot the next day. I almost didn't go, but my agent asked me if I would please come up and just enjoy for a while and so I did, and I didn't wear a bathing suit, I didn't have a swimsuit."
She said she was chatting with Trump over the course of the first 20 minutes she was there, and after he showed her around his mansion, the conversation turned to whether she had a swimsuit, disputing the impression that he asked her immediately to change.
"He made a comment, 'Now that's a stunning Trump girl right there,'" she said. "I was actually flattered by it. I didn't feel like it was a demeaning situation or comment at all, and that's what I told the Times, and they spun it completely differently."
She said she believes the story was spun because "obviously they feel like that they need to do something to make him look bad or go along with their article."
Brewer Lane said she does not know if anyone else was misquoted by the Times, "but I know that for a fact I was, and I don't want that out there. That's not how it -- that's now it was. That's not how it felt, and it's just not what I want out there.
"He was a very good guy, Donald, and I think he's doing a good job in this race and I think some people have a problem with that."
She said she never saw Trump mistreating women, and she'd love to find out from other women how their quotes were used.
"I didn't sleep all night, and I'm here talking about it now because it's important to me," she told the show. "I don't like what they did, and if Donald sees it and knows that, he doesn't have to worry. You know, there's a God."
Further, said Brewer Lane, she still supports Trump, and she thinks he is "doing a great job, and he is a very successful businessman, he's a great leader because of that. He has a lot going for him, let's face it and I'm supporting him."
Trump tweeted Monday that he was glad Brewer Lane came out with her statements about the piece:
The Times told
Politico in a statement that "Ms. Brewer Lane was quoted fairly, accurately and at length. The story provides a lot of context for the reader including that the swimsuit scene was the 'start of a whirlwind romance' between Ms. Brewer Lane and Mr. Trump."
In addition, Times reporters Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey appeared on
"CBS This Morning," where Barbaro defended the newspaper's depiction of the interview.
"I recall in my interview with her that she expressed some — she basically said 'I was taken aback by this,' and I think that's how we depicted it," Barbaro said about her swimsuit story. "I think people can kind of evaluate the story on its own merits."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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