Cooper 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.”

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

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

Hefner compared his leadership to conservative style in the fifties, during which thousands of people were interrogated over alleged links to communism.

He blames the president for his right-wing politics on issues such as immigration and building a wall along the US’s southern border with Mexico.

 

Cooper took over the running of the magazine 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,’ Cooper told The Hollywood Reporter.