Hugh Hefner’s son called Trump Playboy cover a ‘personal embarrassment’

Cooper, who now heads the magazine empire, likens the US president’s leadership style to the populist politics played out in America in the ‘50s under Eisenhower

Speaking just a few weeks before the death of his father Hugh Hefner, Cooper Hefner said the Playboy cover which featured Donald Trump was now a “personal embarrassment” for both him and the company’s brand.

Mr Trump appeared on the front of the March 1990 edition of the erotic magazine dressed in a white tuxedo shirt and bow-tie, alongside playmate Brandi Brandt.

Cooper and his late father Hugh enjoy a moment during a party in the Playboy Mansion (Getty Images North America)

But Cooper said that the cover photograph featuring a young Trump in a suggestive pose was offensive to him because he didn’t like the now-US president’s populist politics.

He compared his leadership to Eisenhower’s conservative style in the fifties, during which thousands of Americans were interrogated over alleged links to communism.

Mr Trump is accused of pandering to right-wing voters on issues such as immigration – including his pledge to build a wall along the US’s southern border with Mexico.

Mr Hefner, 25, a self-confessed liberal, said: "We don't respect the guy." He told The Hollywood Reporter: "There's a personal embarrassment because Trump is somebody who has been on our cover."

Mr Hefner senior founded Playboy in 1953 as a reaction to what he saw as the culturally-stiff times. The first edition featuring a nude Marilyn Monroe - pictures that had been taken some years earlier - caused shock in the conservative era.

The erotic magazine is credited in some circles for helping with the liberation of women, though others have criticised its role in sexualising and objectifying particularly the female workers of the Playboy Mansion.

Cooper took over the running of the Playboy empire from his father last year and believes he can again use the brand to bring about what he sees as a further shift in society.

“Yes, there are lifestyle components to Playboy, but it's really a philosophy about freedom and, right now, as history is repeating itself in real time, I want Playboy to be central to that conversation,' he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Mr Trump featured on the cover of the March 1990 edition of Playboy – in its heyday when it had a circulation of some five million copies and made profits of more than $200m.

But sales of the erotic magazine tumbled with the advent of freely available internet porn from the late 1990s, with the latest figures showing it now shifts fewer than a million copies and makes about $135m.

The magazine dropped full nudes from its pages in 2015 in a bid to rebrand the publication in an era when consumers can see porn on devices such as their smartphones.

Mr Hefner died aged 91 surrounded by his family at the Playboy mansion in Beverly Hills, California.

In a statement, Cooper described his father as a “media and cultural pioneer” and said he would be "greatly missed by many".