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The Nutty Lives of these American Leaders Were Anything But Ordinary

Khalid Elhassan August 25, 2022 38 min

13. Warren G. In the Closet

Nutty Moments - Nan Britton and her daughter by President Warren G. Harding — Nan Britton and her daughter by President Warren G. Harding. The New York Times

Warren G. Harding’s affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips was relatively ho-hum. The same could not be said about his affair with Nan Britton. She wrote a tell-all book after Harding’s death – The President’s Daughter – in which she alleged that he had fathered an illegitimate daughter upon her. Britton described salacious details that make Trump and Stormy Daniels or Clinton and Monica Lewinsky look tame. Among other things, Warren G. and Nan got it on in White House closets. In a nutty twist, Secret Service agents were posted as lookouts to turn away intruders.

Nan alleged that after she gave birth, the president paid her child support of $500 a month – a considerable sum back then. Understandably, Harding’s family rushed to defend what was left of his reputation, and denied the affair. They painted Nan Britton as a liar, and alleged that the 29^th president had been infertile, and so could not have possibly fathered a child upon her. Things remained in a he-said-they-said standoff until 2015, when DNA tests concluded that Nan’s daughter, Elizabeth Ann Bleasing, was indeed Harding’s child.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.