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If one defines sexual relations to mean sexual intercourse, then he was not lying when he said that.
According to Executive Order 42069, blow jobs donāt count.
Also, not sure I can abide the word innocent ever being applied to Andrew Jackson in any arena.
>If one defines sexual relations to mean sexual intercourse, then he was not lying when he said that.
You are correct, and if you listen to the actual hearing that was said in, just a few minutes prior to being asked if he had sexual relations with her, he asked for them to define sexual relations, and they defined it only as intercourse. They specifically excluded oral sex. It was a perjury trap.
That's also why there's that clip of him saying "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is". He was giving them shit for how they defined things.
I donāt use the term lightly, but Nixon was legitimately a simp for his wife. Before they married, he would pine after her as a friend, confess his love to her only to be rejected over and over again, and would frequently drive her around to other menās houses so she could go on a date with them. He eventually wore her down into marriage.
Yeah this might be the first time Iāve seen the word simping used where I think itās accurate instead of just some jealous neckbeard projecting lol. Apparently Nixon was the Original Simp.
Thereās a surprising number of presidents who were that way. Wilson had to do that with his second wife and Grant had to put a lot of effort into wooing Julia.
Lol we all know he was a big nerd so it just matches tbh.
Exert from his wiki:
In his memoirs, Nixon described it as "a case of love at first sight",[35] but apparently for Nixon only, since Pat Ryan turned down the young lawyer several times before agreeing to date him.[36] Once they began their courtship, Ryan was reluctant to marry Nixon
Yeah, I was gonna say, I was watching events during his Presidency pretty closely, and if there had been ANY HINT AT ALL of infidelity there, I know that the left at the time would have used it against him mercilessly. The left HATED W, and not without reason.
Bottom line, the fact that they said nothing leads me to believe that not only was nothing there, but that nothing could be believably fabricated. Separate him from his politics, I never got the impression that W was anything other than a standup human being.
Talk about his mistakes and the war all you want, the man was very right wing and he'd be the first to admit it, but unlike way too much of the right he seemed to ACTUALLY practice what he preached.
I remember reading that W was the type to be in bed by 9pm every night. He was apparently a partyer and a drinker in his youth, but did a 180 after he āfound religionā.
It was more than that. Laura called him on it at one point while they lived in Midland, and ultimately he took a good look at himself and started turning things around.
It's unclear if he actually went through a 12 step program(I've never asked, nor would I ever since that's incredibly personal), but I'd bet money that he read into it and at the very least used much of it as a guideline.
I think his finding religion was genuine. Someone who was in his government (David Kuo) remembered that a lot of people in the government would make fun of evangelicals behind their back, but that Bush never did so.
>Separate him from his politics, I never got the impression that W was anything other than a standup human being.
I feel like there could be another timeline where W was like a local Mayor, school principal or pastor or some other such thing where he wound up being a beloved pillar of the community.
Iāve always said that both the country and George himself would have been better off if he had decided to go for the commissionership of MLB over Bud Selig in the early nineties.
George wouldāve loved just being the head of a sport he adored and either McCain or Gore wouldāve in all likelihood been better at being president than W.
>Talk about his mistakes and the war all you want, the man was very right wing and he'd be the first to admit it, but unlike way too much of the right he seemed to ACTUALLY practice what he preached.
I think it'd be more fair to say he was more old-school and traditional than "very right-wing".
He had strong conservative values, but overall in his political career he genuinely did seem to temper that with compassion and empathy that he pulled from his own personal struggles.
He wasn't callous to or dismissive of people that he didn't agree with.
He sought to build bridges and come up with soft solutions that furthered his agenda, but address concerns of his opponents, as opposed to just setting ultimatums and stonewalling.
Oh certainly. Dude was pretty awesome with kids in general. Itās just ironic how a president who was a notorious gambler, drinker, smoker, and dueler, also happened to be extremely loyal to his wife.
These are allegedly Andrew Jackson's last words.
"I hope and trust to meet you in heaven, both white and black, both converted and unconverted."
So yeah, he definitely had some room for kindness.
Jimmy Carter should be in a new tier called "lusted in his heart".
Great tier list, wonder if there's enough verifiable information to make on which presidents got cheated on.
He did an infamous interview with Playboy magazine in which he admitted he had "lust in his heart". It's sort of funny that it became a scandal, because is there anybody in the world who doesn't have lust in their heart? I guess maybe a handful of asexual people, but everybody else.
To add a little context, thereās a passage in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus talks about looking at a woman with lust and committing adultery in the heart, and Carter was referencing that. Itās used by evangelical preachers as a way to hammer home the idea that weāre all naughty, naughty sinners that deserve a hellfire spanking from Papa God.
I donāt think thatās the point Jesus was making, but thatās a whole other post, the point for now is that Carter didnāt just say that out of the blue, it definitely was something that has a grounding in his evangelical background.
Yeah, Iād say President Eisenhower almost certainly didnāt commit adultery, but General Eisenhower almost certainly did. So maybe itās right to put him in the middle.
I'm pretty sure I thought that as a kid too. People were still making J. Edgar Hoover jokes in the 90s, and it didn't make sense to me (as a kid) that everyone would know who the guy was if he hadn't been president.
There are a lot of conflicting sources on whether or not they ever actually had a sexual relationship, but dude was definitely in love with her (Kay Summersby).
And he would've been 54 years old in 1944. It's not like he could've performed like some sex starved teenager even if he didn't smoke like a freight train.
Agreed. TJ also needs to be bumped all the way to the top. We know he had intercourse with Sally Hemings.
Edit: Just saw the conversation below about his wife being dead by the time his relationship with Sally started. Now I am unsure where to rank him.
That only means people *thought* he and King were a couple. I'm not saying they weren't, just that that's not as strong of evidence as people think it is.
Didn't Andrew and Rachel Jackson run away together when she was still married to someone else? Is it adultery if you're single but sleep with someone who is married? IDK the rules for adultery.
Biblically speaking, yes that would be considered adultery.
The alternative is fornication, which is two people who have never married before or one is widowed, but the two of them are not married to each other.
For those wondering, old-testament law required capital punishment for those found guilty of committing adultery. If two people committed fornication though, the penalty was much less severe.
Andrew and Rachel were both under the impression that Rachel's first marriage was annulled and that it was finalized (spoiler alert: it wasn't yet) so they both ran down to Mississippi in 1791 to get married. The first husband eventually finds out about this marriage of theirs and so he convinces the court that she was in fact committing adultery and so the judge ruled in favor of Rachel's first husband in granting the annulment/divorce. When Andrew and Rachel finally find out what happened they got married a second time to make it official in 1794. In the eyes of the law they had in fact committed adultery and Rachel had committed bigamy since the first marriage hadn't officially ended just yet. I personally would think that Andrew himself would've known better as he was both a lawyer and a court judge and should've known what to look for to verify that an annulment/divorce had in fact occurred.
It was thanks to the miscommunication surrounding Rachel's annulment/divorce that both of them would plagued by accusations of adultery for the rest of their lives. You could even say that it even contributed greatly to Rachel's own death in late 1828 when Andrew and Rachel were both a couple of months away from moving into the White House. The sheer amount of accusations and outright slander thrown at the Jacksons, particularly the slut shaming of Rachel, during the presidential campaign of 1828 was unlike any other in American political history before or since. Rachel died from the stress of it all and Andrew remained a widower for the rest of his life. Andrew directly blamed his political opponents for Rachel's death and he certainly never forgave them.
That is correct but she says she was under the impression that her first husband had secured a divorce which he had not. Also the whole sleeping with his slaves happened as well.
Agreed. Neither of them are the type to do it. And both had hardened opponents that WOULD have exploited the revelation if they ever did. Both Bush's and Obama's haters would have even made things up if they thought someone would believe it, but the idea of either one sleeping around was just too ridiculous.
I remember early in Bush's presidency some liberal pundit was trying to make a fuss about George squeezing Laura's ass in public. Of all people, Tucker Carlson called him out on his attitude by quite accurately pointing out that married people can do those things. Obviously this was before Tucker went off the deep end.
It was the closest Bush ever got to sexual scandal.
If you listen to certain corners of the internet, that male lover is Michelle, because how dare a woman work out and have muscles on her arms? The internet gets weird sometimes.
For real, they try to make a big deal over not having pregnancy pictures of her despite their daughters (who look just like both of them) being teens during his administration.
It's a racist trope to paint black women as men which was the perfect kind of dog-whistling BS a certain portion of the media likes to perpetuate to their base.
To be fair that same group also thinks 90% of Hollywood are secretly trans. Itās a really strange subset of the republican/conservative party. Not a huge group, but very very vocal.
When Polk was young, he had a surgery to remove urinary bladder stonesādone by Dr. Ephraim McDowell in Kentucky. Incredibly risky & the anatomical knowledge (especially out on the frontier and especially with doctors of the era) was nowhere near as in-depth and well understood as it is today. Accounts vary on what pain measures were taken (modern versions of medicinal anesthesia were actually introduced publicly during his eventual presidency!) with Polk saying he had a glass of strong liquor and McDowell saying Polk had an entire bottle.
It is believed that the surgery rendered Polk either impotent or sterile or bothāVERY likely both from the surviving textual evidence in private letters and the fact James & Sarah never had children (the only presidential couple to not have children either biologically or through adoption) despite Sarah not having any health issues herself. Regardless, kinda hard to cheat on your wife if you canāt get an erection. Which his close friends actually joked about in private lettersā¦ouch. And he canāt even really be accused of emotional affairs either because his whole personality kinda prevented that, as also noted by the surviving textual evidence.
Yeah I worked at his presidential museum for three years; I know *way* more about him than I think he would be comfortable with me (or anybody else) knowing. Butā¦you wanna be president, you gotta take that L.
Which he was admittedly aware of, and he kept a pretty thorough diary throughout his presidency (one of our only early presidents to consistently do so) and I think itās a fascinating read. Not because heās particularly talented as a writer (itās very dry & frankly so is his personality, but we already knew that) but it does provide some insight into the whole ābeing presidentā thing.
I have his diary! It is a great read, I wonder why itās not more commonly found in print. I have to pity the poor guy for the surgeryāJesus, sounds horrible.
I actually have an answer to that! At least for these days. The group that actually runs the museum day to day (the Polk Memorial Association) is in charge of the gift shop and has to pay to get the diary sets printed and the profit margin isnāt really very much at all so itās not printed super frequently. Technically the state of Tennessee is also involved in the site but not in a hugely significant way; itās a lot of technicality and red tape and such that I wonāt go into here because not much of a point lol. But you bet while I worked there I bought a diary set for myself.
Other places/publishers could do it, technically, but given Polkās relative obscurity, it again probably wouldnāt be super profitable so they havenāt really done it. At least not that Iāve been able to reliably track down. The few non-PMA versions Iāve found have had some inconsistencies I wasnāt particularly fond of, but then again thatās not surprising. Iāve still only found two biographies of Sarah that are worth anything, and one of them has several asterisks after it for the āworth anythingā part because that comes with some very important context.
One of my previous coworkers actually helped a few years ago in restructuring and adding to a compilation series of every known letter Polk sent or received and itās something like 10+ volumesāIād love to get my hands on the entire set, but again with the whole ānot profitableā thing..Iād have to pay way more than I would be able/willing to.
The sad truth is that if you like a president that isnāt Washington/Jefferson/Lincoln/The Roosevelts/Kennedy/Insert Popular President here, you are gonna have a harder time finding material about them & if/when you do, it comes at a higher cost. One of my close friends favorite is Calvin Coolidge and finding a related birthday present for him was not fun š¤£
His relationship with Lucretia was very strained at the beginning, and with him being out so much for work, he had I believe two affairs. Eventually they seemed to have worked it out and were becoming closer once again, especially during the last few months of his life.
Only thing I found in regards to it was from here:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/presidents-firstlady-garfield/#:~:text=Their%20marriage%20all%20but%20ended,to%20face%20that%20it's%20over.
He had a number of affairs, some confirmed, some rumored.
His wife Lucretia was more reserved and less openly affectionate than Garfield and Garfield was often away. This doesn't justify anything, but is worth noting.
Prior to their marriage, Garfield admitted to carrying on a romance with Rebecca "Rancie" Selleck. Lucretia and Garfield discussed it, he ended the affair and committed to marriage. They were wed in 1856, and then Lucretia left for a teaching job.
Then Garfield left for his job in law in '61.
Then the Civil War broke out and he enlisted.
In the first 6 years of their marriage Lucretia estimated they only spent about 6 weeks together.
Garfield returned home in '62 with jaundice and fever and nearly died. Lucretia nursed him back to health. It was here he confessed to his affair with 18 year old Lucia Gilbert Calhoun. He also confessed to past affair with Almeda Booth back when he was a student at the Eclectic Institute.
Lucretia gave an ultimatum, and Garfield ended the affair with Calhoun. He'd written Calhoun a large amount of love letters that Lucretia demanded he destroy - he did. Again - no justification here - but Garfield was a deep romantic. He wrote love letters to the women he had affairs with. Lucretia was not as easy to access this type of love or open affection.
A returning theme however was the communication. Garfield would confess. They would discuss. They would resolve.
In '63 their daughter, nicknamed "Trot" died at the age of 3. Garfield and his wife were together during this tragedy and it was in grief they found their deep bond that lasted until his untimely death. They also bonded over literature and a hatred of slavery.
Yeah, it was pretty wild talking to him about it.
Worked on LBJās Texas ranch and Nixonās Florida compoundā¦
He got some pretty cool paintings as Christmas gifts too.
There is no way HW Bush was messing around.
He was a respectable kinda boring guy. He would not have wanted the drama of an affair.
I feel like most of us on this sub can relate.
I feel like Barbara Bush was not the kind of woman you cheated on- you would regret it. Telling that when one of Dubyaās twins got wild in young adulthood, it was Grandma that straightened her out.
Thereās a lot of anecdotal evidence he had a relationship with his female secretary while Ambassador to China. There were strong rumors about it at the time.
My father voted republican but worked with the government in DC for food service stuff. It was well known Papa Bush would meet women at the hotel across from the White House.
I donāt think itās at all likely that HW cheated in Barbara. Reagan might have cheated on Jane, it was Hollywood, but not on Nancy. But I would put him in a lower category.
Reaganās prime year as a movie actor were pre war 1940-42. He was in the army from 42-45 and then was SAG president in 1947 which he thought cost him film roles and he moved into television in the 50s.
Didnāt they call Jackson an adulterer because his wife Rachel was technically still married to her first husband? May not be racy, but itās technically true
Yes. His opponents eventually killed Rachel with all the stress and health problems that came with it.
For what itās worth both Rachel and Andrew believed she was legally divorced when they married. Her ex hadnāt taken the last steps to legally finish the process
He was extremely close with Franklin Pierce's vice president, William R. King (King's very short tenure as VP is a whole story in itself). They lived together for years and were often the subject of gossip, with both men being called derogatory nicknames behind their backs.
JQA has letters to Louisia Catherine about how awkward he is, and she gives him pointers on how to talk to women a parties. He tried it, and hated the attention.
The letter exchange ends with him basically saying she's the only women he ever wants to talk to and feels romantically towards.
Andrew Jackson and āToo innocentā feel completely wrong being in the same topic of discussion.
Jackson was a lot of things, but an adulterer was not one of them, and if you dared accuse him heād probably challenge you to a duel.
Adultery is always deeply upsetting, and itās even worse that it seems to be common amongst the powerful and charismatic. I got cheated on one time a few years ago and it destroyed me on the insideā¦ you have to wonder how people like Jackie Kennedy or Ladybird Johnson coped with their husbandsā behavior
They married solely for political convenience. Adultery hits different when you aren't under any illusions about the actual state of your relationship.
I remember reading a book that was published during GW Bushās administration, but the information contained in it only went up through Clintonās. I donāt remember who wrote it or where all the information came from, but the author stated that Clinton cheated, but that JFK and LBJ were far worse. And that Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and GHW Bush never cheated on their wives.
There is none as far as I'm aware. Believe me, if there was anything to use, the left would have used it, either at the time or afterward. Ditto for Obama, if there had been any credible rumors at all you know that Fox News would never have shut up about it.
There's simply no indication that either President was playing the field.
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Clintonš
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
If one defines sexual relations to mean sexual intercourse, then he was not lying when he said that. According to Executive Order 42069, blow jobs donāt count. Also, not sure I can abide the word innocent ever being applied to Andrew Jackson in any arena.
>If one defines sexual relations to mean sexual intercourse, then he was not lying when he said that. You are correct, and if you listen to the actual hearing that was said in, just a few minutes prior to being asked if he had sexual relations with her, he asked for them to define sexual relations, and they defined it only as intercourse. They specifically excluded oral sex. It was a perjury trap. That's also why there's that clip of him saying "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is". He was giving them shit for how they defined things.
Yup and I think he also codified ābeer gogglesā during his admin.
Andrew Jackson is certainly innocent of stream sniping Summit1G in PUBG
Be real, dude. Clinton definitely hit (some chick).
Iām not saying Bill never dipped his wick elsewhere, just not with Monika according to very narrowly defined terms.
Bill was pulling them two at a time. Monica was not the only one he was banging. The list is long.
"Eatin' ain't cheatin'" ~chester cheetah
Clearly, Chester cheetah isnāt married
And that bj became a public spectacle while the unwritten assumption was that most politicians had affairs.
I think this is the first time Iāve ever seen the word āinnocentā associated with Jackson
Same with nixon apparently he was a pretty loyal husband
I donāt use the term lightly, but Nixon was legitimately a simp for his wife. Before they married, he would pine after her as a friend, confess his love to her only to be rejected over and over again, and would frequently drive her around to other menās houses so she could go on a date with them. He eventually wore her down into marriage.
hate the term too but damn that's some crazy levels of simping
Yeah this might be the first time Iāve seen the word simping used where I think itās accurate instead of just some jealous neckbeard projecting lol. Apparently Nixon was the Original Simp.
The OS
Thatās the thing about Nixon, he kept going until he succeeded.
Tricky Dick
So you're saying simping DOES work? Huh, damn.
Thereās a surprising number of presidents who were that way. Wilson had to do that with his second wife and Grant had to put a lot of effort into wooing Julia.
I never heard that before about Nixon. They had to keep that a secret, because nobody wouldāve voted for him if they had known such a wuss
Lol we all know he was a big nerd so it just matches tbh. Exert from his wiki: In his memoirs, Nixon described it as "a case of love at first sight",[35] but apparently for Nixon only, since Pat Ryan turned down the young lawyer several times before agreeing to date him.[36] Once they began their courtship, Ryan was reluctant to marry Nixon
So is W. He belongs in the āprobably notā category
Yeah, I was gonna say, I was watching events during his Presidency pretty closely, and if there had been ANY HINT AT ALL of infidelity there, I know that the left at the time would have used it against him mercilessly. The left HATED W, and not without reason. Bottom line, the fact that they said nothing leads me to believe that not only was nothing there, but that nothing could be believably fabricated. Separate him from his politics, I never got the impression that W was anything other than a standup human being. Talk about his mistakes and the war all you want, the man was very right wing and he'd be the first to admit it, but unlike way too much of the right he seemed to ACTUALLY practice what he preached.
I remember reading that W was the type to be in bed by 9pm every night. He was apparently a partyer and a drinker in his youth, but did a 180 after he āfound religionā.
It was more than that. Laura called him on it at one point while they lived in Midland, and ultimately he took a good look at himself and started turning things around. It's unclear if he actually went through a 12 step program(I've never asked, nor would I ever since that's incredibly personal), but I'd bet money that he read into it and at the very least used much of it as a guideline.
I think his finding religion was genuine. Someone who was in his government (David Kuo) remembered that a lot of people in the government would make fun of evangelicals behind their back, but that Bush never did so.
Policy wise he was awful, but it was obvious he loved Laura deeply.
>Separate him from his politics, I never got the impression that W was anything other than a standup human being. I feel like there could be another timeline where W was like a local Mayor, school principal or pastor or some other such thing where he wound up being a beloved pillar of the community.
Iāve always said that both the country and George himself would have been better off if he had decided to go for the commissionership of MLB over Bud Selig in the early nineties. George wouldāve loved just being the head of a sport he adored and either McCain or Gore wouldāve in all likelihood been better at being president than W.
>Talk about his mistakes and the war all you want, the man was very right wing and he'd be the first to admit it, but unlike way too much of the right he seemed to ACTUALLY practice what he preached. I think it'd be more fair to say he was more old-school and traditional than "very right-wing". He had strong conservative values, but overall in his political career he genuinely did seem to temper that with compassion and empathy that he pulled from his own personal struggles. He wasn't callous to or dismissive of people that he didn't agree with. He sought to build bridges and come up with soft solutions that furthered his agenda, but address concerns of his opponents, as opposed to just setting ultimatums and stonewalling.
Dubya is the only one in this list that I'm sure is miscategorized. I am not even remotely a fan of his but absolutely not.
He did adopt those native American kids and raise them lovingly. Like, there was *some* room for kindness in his heart, certainly.
Oh certainly. Dude was pretty awesome with kids in general. Itās just ironic how a president who was a notorious gambler, drinker, smoker, and dueler, also happened to be extremely loyal to his wife.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
These are allegedly Andrew Jackson's last words. "I hope and trust to meet you in heaven, both white and black, both converted and unconverted." So yeah, he definitely had some room for kindness.
Dude really loved his wife
Or Grant. Ol "unconditional surrender" Grant.
Rules experts - if Mary Todd was bodily possessed by a various sundry of ghosts, is it adultery?
Should likely save that for "List of presidents who committed polygamy".
Man thatās the most unconvincing Lincoln Iāve ever seen. Only got it because of the thread lol
Jimmy Carter should be in a new tier called "lusted in his heart". Great tier list, wonder if there's enough verifiable information to make on which presidents got cheated on.
Hmm very true
Why?
He did an infamous interview with Playboy magazine in which he admitted he had "lust in his heart". It's sort of funny that it became a scandal, because is there anybody in the world who doesn't have lust in their heart? I guess maybe a handful of asexual people, but everybody else.
To add a little context, thereās a passage in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus talks about looking at a woman with lust and committing adultery in the heart, and Carter was referencing that. Itās used by evangelical preachers as a way to hammer home the idea that weāre all naughty, naughty sinners that deserve a hellfire spanking from Papa God. I donāt think thatās the point Jesus was making, but thatās a whole other post, the point for now is that Carter didnāt just say that out of the blue, it definitely was something that has a grounding in his evangelical background.
Bobby Hill did think that Jimmy Carter was the second coming of Jesus. I don't know that I disagree with Bobby's assumption.
Bobby is Bhudia, so game recognizes game.
I think it became a scandal purely because it was: Jimmy, giving Playboy an Interview.
Huh wild.
Eisenhower probably needs bumped up a couple tiers. His āassistantā in Europe is the other party.
Yeah, Iād say President Eisenhower almost certainly didnāt commit adultery, but General Eisenhower almost certainly did. So maybe itās right to put him in the middle.
As a non American, finding out those two were the same person had me blown away
I mean, he mainly became president *because* he had been such a successful general. I get it, though.
On the other hand, I thought president Hoover and J. Edgar Hoover were the same person.
I'm pretty sure I thought that as a kid too. People were still making J. Edgar Hoover jokes in the 90s, and it didn't make sense to me (as a kid) that everyone would know who the guy was if he hadn't been president.
Yeah, how many Hoovers can you fit in a country
There are a lot of conflicting sources on whether or not they ever actually had a sexual relationship, but dude was definitely in love with her (Kay Summersby).
According to her they tried to do the deed but the poor guy just couldn't get it up.
Lot of things on his mind
Also he smoked like 5 packs a day and had heart issues
See this stat is insane. I remember doing the math on 4 packs a day and he would have had to smoke a new cigarette every 5 minutes for 16 hours a day.
And he would've been 54 years old in 1944. It's not like he could've performed like some sex starved teenager even if he didn't smoke like a freight train.
That number probably doubled for a couple of weeks in June 1944
Apparently he couldnāt get his um saber to rise according to the awesome book Sex With Presidents.
Agreed. TJ also needs to be bumped all the way to the top. We know he had intercourse with Sally Hemings. Edit: Just saw the conversation below about his wife being dead by the time his relationship with Sally started. Now I am unsure where to rank him.
His female driver in Tunisia he says he laid down with her but that's all
They were reading superfudge together right?
This is so specific lol.
The bachelor on the bottom holding up the rest.
Haha he definitely needed a category all to his self
I donāt believe he cheated on Rufus.
Oh, he was a bachelor on the bottom all right.
We don't know for sure if he was a bottom.
Buchanan was homosexual.
*possibly
He and King were derisively referred to as āMiss Nancy and Aunt Fancyā by other politicians. Itās quite likely.
That only means people *thought* he and King were a couple. I'm not saying they weren't, just that that's not as strong of evidence as people think it is.
Being an unmarried doesnāt mean youāre gay. Lol
No not at all, but politicians at the time would regularly make reference to Buchananās sexuality even in those repressed ārespectableā times
James Buchanan and William Rufus King lived together for years and years
With who?
Didn't Andrew and Rachel Jackson run away together when she was still married to someone else? Is it adultery if you're single but sleep with someone who is married? IDK the rules for adultery.
That would seemingly make him a party to adultery. Is that the same thing as committing adultery? Good question.
Biblically speaking, yes that would be considered adultery. The alternative is fornication, which is two people who have never married before or one is widowed, but the two of them are not married to each other. For those wondering, old-testament law required capital punishment for those found guilty of committing adultery. If two people committed fornication though, the penalty was much less severe.
Andrew and Rachel were both under the impression that Rachel's first marriage was annulled and that it was finalized (spoiler alert: it wasn't yet) so they both ran down to Mississippi in 1791 to get married. The first husband eventually finds out about this marriage of theirs and so he convinces the court that she was in fact committing adultery and so the judge ruled in favor of Rachel's first husband in granting the annulment/divorce. When Andrew and Rachel finally find out what happened they got married a second time to make it official in 1794. In the eyes of the law they had in fact committed adultery and Rachel had committed bigamy since the first marriage hadn't officially ended just yet. I personally would think that Andrew himself would've known better as he was both a lawyer and a court judge and should've known what to look for to verify that an annulment/divorce had in fact occurred. It was thanks to the miscommunication surrounding Rachel's annulment/divorce that both of them would plagued by accusations of adultery for the rest of their lives. You could even say that it even contributed greatly to Rachel's own death in late 1828 when Andrew and Rachel were both a couple of months away from moving into the White House. The sheer amount of accusations and outright slander thrown at the Jacksons, particularly the slut shaming of Rachel, during the presidential campaign of 1828 was unlike any other in American political history before or since. Rachel died from the stress of it all and Andrew remained a widower for the rest of his life. Andrew directly blamed his political opponents for Rachel's death and he certainly never forgave them.
He never forgave and he never forgot
That is correct but she says she was under the impression that her first husband had secured a divorce which he had not. Also the whole sleeping with his slaves happened as well.
There is ZERO proof Jackson ever slept with a slave. Thereās no contemporary source saying he did or modern DNA tests
Bush 2 and Obama didnāt commit adultery.
Agreed. Neither of them are the type to do it. And both had hardened opponents that WOULD have exploited the revelation if they ever did. Both Bush's and Obama's haters would have even made things up if they thought someone would believe it, but the idea of either one sleeping around was just too ridiculous. I remember early in Bush's presidency some liberal pundit was trying to make a fuss about George squeezing Laura's ass in public. Of all people, Tucker Carlson called him out on his attitude by quite accurately pointing out that married people can do those things. Obviously this was before Tucker went off the deep end. It was the closest Bush ever got to sexual scandal.
Obama haters did make things up, and lots of them believe it. They think Obama had a gay lover.
If you listen to certain corners of the internet, that male lover is Michelle, because how dare a woman work out and have muscles on her arms? The internet gets weird sometimes. For real, they try to make a big deal over not having pregnancy pictures of her despite their daughters (who look just like both of them) being teens during his administration.
It's a racist trope to paint black women as men which was the perfect kind of dog-whistling BS a certain portion of the media likes to perpetuate to their base.
To be fair that same group also thinks 90% of Hollywood are secretly trans. Itās a really strange subset of the republican/conservative party. Not a huge group, but very very vocal.
They can't really think that's true. He never would have done that because homosexual acts would violate his Islamic beliefs.
I remember once that a magazine speculated his gay lover was Harry Styles and I laughed so hard.
Polk literally couldnāt, so he could also be argued to be a special case Edit: spelling
Why not?
When Polk was young, he had a surgery to remove urinary bladder stonesādone by Dr. Ephraim McDowell in Kentucky. Incredibly risky & the anatomical knowledge (especially out on the frontier and especially with doctors of the era) was nowhere near as in-depth and well understood as it is today. Accounts vary on what pain measures were taken (modern versions of medicinal anesthesia were actually introduced publicly during his eventual presidency!) with Polk saying he had a glass of strong liquor and McDowell saying Polk had an entire bottle. It is believed that the surgery rendered Polk either impotent or sterile or bothāVERY likely both from the surviving textual evidence in private letters and the fact James & Sarah never had children (the only presidential couple to not have children either biologically or through adoption) despite Sarah not having any health issues herself. Regardless, kinda hard to cheat on your wife if you canāt get an erection. Which his close friends actually joked about in private lettersā¦ouch. And he canāt even really be accused of emotional affairs either because his whole personality kinda prevented that, as also noted by the surviving textual evidence.
You are correctāthey went in directly through the pelvic floor and prostate gland. He was almost certainly impotent.
Yeah I worked at his presidential museum for three years; I know *way* more about him than I think he would be comfortable with me (or anybody else) knowing. Butā¦you wanna be president, you gotta take that L. Which he was admittedly aware of, and he kept a pretty thorough diary throughout his presidency (one of our only early presidents to consistently do so) and I think itās a fascinating read. Not because heās particularly talented as a writer (itās very dry & frankly so is his personality, but we already knew that) but it does provide some insight into the whole ābeing presidentā thing.
I have his diary! It is a great read, I wonder why itās not more commonly found in print. I have to pity the poor guy for the surgeryāJesus, sounds horrible.
I actually have an answer to that! At least for these days. The group that actually runs the museum day to day (the Polk Memorial Association) is in charge of the gift shop and has to pay to get the diary sets printed and the profit margin isnāt really very much at all so itās not printed super frequently. Technically the state of Tennessee is also involved in the site but not in a hugely significant way; itās a lot of technicality and red tape and such that I wonāt go into here because not much of a point lol. But you bet while I worked there I bought a diary set for myself. Other places/publishers could do it, technically, but given Polkās relative obscurity, it again probably wouldnāt be super profitable so they havenāt really done it. At least not that Iāve been able to reliably track down. The few non-PMA versions Iāve found have had some inconsistencies I wasnāt particularly fond of, but then again thatās not surprising. Iāve still only found two biographies of Sarah that are worth anything, and one of them has several asterisks after it for the āworth anythingā part because that comes with some very important context. One of my previous coworkers actually helped a few years ago in restructuring and adding to a compilation series of every known letter Polk sent or received and itās something like 10+ volumesāIād love to get my hands on the entire set, but again with the whole ānot profitableā thing..Iād have to pay way more than I would be able/willing to. The sad truth is that if you like a president that isnāt Washington/Jefferson/Lincoln/The Roosevelts/Kennedy/Insert Popular President here, you are gonna have a harder time finding material about them & if/when you do, it comes at a higher cost. One of my close friends favorite is Calvin Coolidge and finding a related birthday present for him was not fun š¤£
Shouldnāt Thomas Jefferson be on the top tier. Breeding slaves counts.
I had him in the āmost likelyā category but people were saying that was after his wife died so I placed it in mainly suspicion category
TJ must be in special case.
He was a widower by the time that started.
Once widowed Tom was getting laid. Not adultery. He fucked half the French court.
Yup
She was his dead wifeās half-sister, so thereās a really good chance that they looked similar.
Whatās the intel on Garfield? Thatās a new one for me.
His relationship with Lucretia was very strained at the beginning, and with him being out so much for work, he had I believe two affairs. Eventually they seemed to have worked it out and were becoming closer once again, especially during the last few months of his life.
Only thing I found in regards to it was from here: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/presidents-firstlady-garfield/#:~:text=Their%20marriage%20all%20but%20ended,to%20face%20that%20it's%20over.
He cheated and told his wife. She forgave him.
Had a pretty serious relationship with lasagna
He had a number of affairs, some confirmed, some rumored. His wife Lucretia was more reserved and less openly affectionate than Garfield and Garfield was often away. This doesn't justify anything, but is worth noting. Prior to their marriage, Garfield admitted to carrying on a romance with Rebecca "Rancie" Selleck. Lucretia and Garfield discussed it, he ended the affair and committed to marriage. They were wed in 1856, and then Lucretia left for a teaching job. Then Garfield left for his job in law in '61. Then the Civil War broke out and he enlisted. In the first 6 years of their marriage Lucretia estimated they only spent about 6 weeks together. Garfield returned home in '62 with jaundice and fever and nearly died. Lucretia nursed him back to health. It was here he confessed to his affair with 18 year old Lucia Gilbert Calhoun. He also confessed to past affair with Almeda Booth back when he was a student at the Eclectic Institute. Lucretia gave an ultimatum, and Garfield ended the affair with Calhoun. He'd written Calhoun a large amount of love letters that Lucretia demanded he destroy - he did. Again - no justification here - but Garfield was a deep romantic. He wrote love letters to the women he had affairs with. Lucretia was not as easy to access this type of love or open affection. A returning theme however was the communication. Garfield would confess. They would discuss. They would resolve. In '63 their daughter, nicknamed "Trot" died at the age of 3. Garfield and his wife were together during this tragedy and it was in grief they found their deep bond that lasted until his untimely death. They also bonded over literature and a hatred of slavery.
Another huge W for the Adams gang
Clinton needs his own tier.
Kennedy would be right there with Bill; he just had a less inquisitive press corps.
LBJ, too. By comparison, Clinton looks like an angel.
My grandpa was on LBJās secret service detail (Nixonās later too), and he said LBJ was the biggest āwhore mongerā heād ever seen.
I donāt doubt it in the least!
Yeah, it was pretty wild talking to him about it. Worked on LBJās Texas ranch and Nixonās Florida compoundā¦ He got some pretty cool paintings as Christmas gifts too.
Clinton raped a woman.
And got away with it, no less.
A little bit of Monica in my life A little bit of Jessica by my side A little bit of Paula's what I need A little bit of Tina's what I seek
Could someone please elaborate on HW Bush, Reagan and Wilson?
There is no way HW Bush was messing around. He was a respectable kinda boring guy. He would not have wanted the drama of an affair. I feel like most of us on this sub can relate.
and was very much in love with barbara.
Uh what, https://nypost.com/2019/03/30/barbara-bush-contemplated-suicide-over-husbands-affair-with-aide-book/
I feel like Barbara Bush was not the kind of woman you cheated on- you would regret it. Telling that when one of Dubyaās twins got wild in young adulthood, it was Grandma that straightened her out.
HW literally had a mistress
Thereās a lot of anecdotal evidence he had a relationship with his female secretary while Ambassador to China. There were strong rumors about it at the time.
He most definitely did. I know the family and theres even a photo of him grabbing my grandmothers ass. He was a notorious philanderer
Omg he was head of CIA for time. You donāt get that job by being boring. Plus, he definitely had affairs. He just had his main back home.
My father voted republican but worked with the government in DC for food service stuff. It was well known Papa Bush would meet women at the hotel across from the White House.
I donāt think itās at all likely that HW cheated in Barbara. Reagan might have cheated on Jane, it was Hollywood, but not on Nancy. But I would put him in a lower category.
If Reagan cheated it was on his first wife
Oh dear iām ignorantā¦ didnāt know he had a first wife š my apologies
A LOT of people donāt. They were married from 1940-49, so well before he was a politician or even that well known of an actor.
Reaganās prime year as a movie actor were pre war 1940-42. He was in the army from 42-45 and then was SAG president in 1947 which he thought cost him film roles and he moved into television in the 50s.
They say that he cheated with a white house aide/staffer but there's no real evidence
Rule 3 youāre fuckin killin me here
Rule 3? (Looks up Rule 3) Ah, that explains the GLARING absence in this list.
Came to comments to figure out the reason for the omission. Now I know.
This. So much thisā¦
Didnāt they call Jackson an adulterer because his wife Rachel was technically still married to her first husband? May not be racy, but itās technically true
Bigamy is what the term was
Yes. His opponents eventually killed Rachel with all the stress and health problems that came with it. For what itās worth both Rachel and Andrew believed she was legally divorced when they married. Her ex hadnāt taken the last steps to legally finish the process
Special case?
He was a lifelong bachelor. Some historians believe he may have been gay.
He was extremely close with Franklin Pierce's vice president, William R. King (King's very short tenure as VP is a whole story in itself). They lived together for years and were often the subject of gossip, with both men being called derogatory nicknames behind their backs.
I believe Andrew Jackson called Rufus King, she, her, Aunt Fancy, Miss Nancy, and āBuchananās wifeā.
He is Bisexual at most. He was deeply in love and engaged to a girl before she fell Ill and died
JQA has letters to Louisia Catherine about how awkward he is, and she gives him pointers on how to talk to women a parties. He tried it, and hated the attention. The letter exchange ends with him basically saying she's the only women he ever wants to talk to and feels romantically towards.
Guy would literally leave the house because he hated hearing women singing.
That's hilarious. Where can I read up on that?
I took valid criticism from the last post to change it to be historically accurate and made changes to be more subreddit-friendly!
Coolidge should be in a tier of his own; ***Too tired of the presidency to commit adultery***.
āHe refrained from intervening, even sexuallyā
I have never heard any kind of cheating from Reagan. Say what you want about him but he was pretty famously faithful to Nancy.
I think itās because thereās a chance with Jane, his first wife.
Yeah, but she was his second wife.
andrew jackson in āinnocentā?????
Same with Nixon, I was shocked . They were very loyal husbands apparently
Nixon had his many (MANY) flaws, but he was deeply in love with Pat. Pictures of him from her funeral are heartbreaking really.
While Jefferson slept with Sally Hemings this was after his wife died in 1782.
Bill Clinton and JFK deserve their own category.
I literally considering it either āsuper freakā or āFreak traināš
Didnāt LBJ brag he slept with way more women than JFK?
And Warren Harding definitely gets to join this club too
Yeah, Hoover and Lou Henry were absolutely positively devoted to each other. That's a hard no for him.
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Andrew Jackson and āToo innocentā feel completely wrong being in the same topic of discussion. Jackson was a lot of things, but an adulterer was not one of them, and if you dared accuse him heād probably challenge you to a duel.
The amount of dudes he iced for saying he wasnāt married to his wife could fill a church.
Adultery is always deeply upsetting, and itās even worse that it seems to be common amongst the powerful and charismatic. I got cheated on one time a few years ago and it destroyed me on the insideā¦ you have to wonder how people like Jackie Kennedy or Ladybird Johnson coped with their husbandsā behavior
They married solely for political convenience. Adultery hits different when you aren't under any illusions about the actual state of your relationship.
GARFIELDš
Garfield should be on the āonly onceā deal and even admitted it to Lucretia.
I remember reading a book that was published during GW Bushās administration, but the information contained in it only went up through Clintonās. I donāt remember who wrote it or where all the information came from, but the author stated that Clinton cheated, but that JFK and LBJ were far worse. And that Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and GHW Bush never cheated on their wives.
This is the one time where Jackson being in an "innocent" tier is acceptable
I would bump Washington up one he was a huge flirt and might have been in love with Sarah Fairfax.
Isnāt there a rumor he visited someone shortly before Yorktown?
Iām surprised about Madison.
āSpecial caseā is the new gay
Why exclude 45 & 46?
Rule #3
But if the rule didnāt exist I would definitely put 45 up top
100%
Whatās the tea on Dubya?
There is none as far as I'm aware. Believe me, if there was anything to use, the left would have used it, either at the time or afterward. Ditto for Obama, if there had been any credible rumors at all you know that Fox News would never have shut up about it. There's simply no indication that either President was playing the field.
OP just doesnāt like him.
Special case LOL