Trump's Trial Resurfaced His View On Sexual Attraction, And Experts Have Thoughts

Donald Trump’s hush money trial has brought some of the former president’s views on sexual attraction to light once again — and they’re just not accurate, sex experts say.

Trump is facing 34 criminal charges tied to $130,000 in hush money payments his then-lawyer Michael Cohensaid hemade to adult film star Stormy Daniels days prior to the 2016 presidential election to prevent her from speaking publicly about their alleged 2006 extramarital affair. Prosecutors say Trump falsified business records to conceal the reimbursements to Cohen. The former president has denied all of the charges.

On Tuesday, the prosecution asked witness Sally Franklin, a publishing executive from Penguin Random House, to read excerpts from some of Trump’s books aloud, including this quote from his 2004 book “Trump: How to Get Rich”:

As the book was published 20 years ago, it’s conceivable that the author’s views have shifted over time. But since the quote resurfaced this week in the context of the trial, we asked sex experts for their thoughts.

Laurie Mintz is a psychologist, sex therapist and an emeritus professor at the University of Florida, who teaches a course on the psychology of human sexuality. She told HuffPost that Trump’s assertion that “a sexual dynamic is always present between people” is false — and there’s science to back that up. She pointed to a whole body of research about what attracts us to other people and the reasons are “quite complex,” she said.

“In a nutshell, we know from this research that attraction is a ‘biopsychosocial’ event — meaning our biology, our psychology and cultural norms all impact this,” Mintz explained.

She referred to sex researcher Justin Lehmiller’s “The Psychology of Human Sexuality” textbook,