As U.S. President Donald Trump fought off part of his electorate and the Democrats over the release of the files concerning late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, some internet users rushed to assert that Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017, had banned Trump from the Playboy Mansion, supposedly for being a pedophile.
Unconfirmed rumors abounded that Trump had been one of the people who had taken part in Epstein's underage sex-trafficking ring. As a result, people claimed Hefner had become aware of Trump's alleged sexual proclivities and refused to invite him to his storied mansion in Los Angeles.
For example, a post on X relayed the claim in the form of a supposed Time magazine cover with Hefner, with the words "Donald Trump was not allowed in the Playboy Mansion after I found out he was a pedophilie [sic]" (archived):
"Trump is in the Epstein files," the post read, garnering more than 500,000 views and 22,000 likes as of this writing. A similar post appeared on Facebook, and several Snopes readers searched the website seeking to confirm the veracity of the rumor about Hefner banning Trump from his mansion.
However, the image of the Time cover was of poor quality, blurry and pixelated, and the title splattered across included a spelling mistake: "pedophilie" rather than "pedophile." Further, searches on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo revealed no such story by any reputable news outlet. For these reasons, we deemed the rumor unfounded.
In fact, Trump and Hefner reportedly cultivated a friendship for years. However, in 2017, Hefner's son Cooper Hefner gave an interview to The Hollywood Reporter in which he suggested that he and his father did "not respect the guy [Trump]." He added that this was a source of "embarrassment" because Trump had once been on the cover of Playboy.
Snopes found a copy of the March 1990 Playboy issue (archived) on the cover of which Trump appeared with model Brandi Brandt. The copy, for sale on eBay, was seemingly signed by Trump.
The Hollywood Reporter article said the Hefners' feelings about Trump were linked to Trump's and the country's reversion "to a reactionary cultural conservatism remarkable in its similarity to the Eisenhower years when Playboy was founded."
In the July/August 2016 "Freedom Issue" of Playboy, Hefner published an essay titled "The Conservative Sex Movement" in which he celebrated Trump's nomination for the Republican Party. Hefner seemingly saw in it a sign that the Republican Party was willing to "stop pandering to America's fanatical religious minority and give up a losing war to suppress our sexual rights."
Playboy later took down the essay from its website, presumably when it became clear that Trump was courting evangelicals by adopting many of its stances on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, but Snopes acquired a digital copy of the issue. Hefner's essay read in part (emphasis ours):
Every four years, a new crop of conservative presidential candidates barges into American bedrooms, looking to police what you do and with whom you do it. These politicians, eager to cater to religious voters, campaign on promises to eliminate access to birth control, ban abortion, pass discriminatory laws against gays, and regulate or outright ban any lifestyle or preference that doesn't fit into their Christian crusade to eliminate all sexual activity that doesn't lead to procreation. In the 50 years since the triumph of the sexual revolution, I have personally watched this fight over and over again: conservative candidates stepping on our sexual freedoms to reach the White House.
[…]
[D]espite [Ted] Cruz's fanatical fixation on our sex lives, he failed to win the Republican nomination. Polls show that voters found Cruz too conservative and failed to embrace his views on sex, women's rights and gays. Instead, voters nominated Donald Trump, a thrice-married New York entrepreneur who once owned the Miss USA pageant, over Cruz, the son of a pastor. It's a sign of the massive changes in the "family values party" and proof of what I've watched building over the past several months: a sexual revolution in the Republican Party.
[…]
Americans have rejected these religious fanatics and fought to protect women's rights, reproductive rights and our right to privacy rather than submit to their Christian view that sex exists for the sole purpose of procreation. Recent polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans view gay and lesbian relationships, sex between two unmarried people and having a baby outside of marriage as "morally acceptable." Nearly 90 percent feel the same about birth control. This is no surprise. We won the sexual revolution; it has just taken Republicans 50 years to admit defeat. Now it's time for them to exit our bedrooms and close the door behind them forever.
Contrary to Hefner's prediction, Trump later embraced the religious stance on these issues.
We have reached out to Cooper Hefner to confirm whether his father had turned against Trump for these reasons or whether Trump's association with Epstein had also played a role in their falling-out.