Kim Kardashian is hitting back at rumors she once had an affair with Travis Barker.
The 40-year-old Keeping Up With the Kardashians star addressed the allegations in a Q&A on Wednesday, May 26 with fans on her Instagram Story.
Kardashian was asked point-blank by a fan, “Did you hook up with Travis Barker?”
“NO! False narrative!” was Kardashian’s emphatic reply. “We’ve been friends for years and I’m so happy for him and Kourt.”
Barker has been dating Kim’s sister Kourtney Kardashian, 42, since late 2020. They made their relationship Instagram-official in February.
The claim that Kim once slept with Barker comes from none other than Barker’s ex-wife Shanna Moakler, 46, whom he was married to from 2004–2008. Moakler made the allegation last week to Us Weekly, saying she divorced Barker “because, I saw them — I caught them having an affair.”
Barker, 45, met Kim in the early 2000s while she was an assistant to Paris Hilton. Barker briefly dated Hilton in 2006 (he and Moakler separated that year).
Barker admitted an attraction to Kim in his 2015 memoir Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums, writing he was “secretly checking out” Kim while on a trip with Hilton to Amsterdam.
“Kim was eye candy. I was in no way disrespectful to Paris, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off Kim.”
But he also claimed, “Kim and I never touched each other. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
Still, Moakler had her suspicions and threw a drink on Kim at a July 2008 party hosted by Carmen Elektra.
“I felt terrible,” Barker wrote about the incident in his book.
Yet, he reiterated in an October 2015 interview with Complex that he and Kim never hooked up. “Kim and I, we just became good friends,” Barker said. “When Shanna and I broke up, I was very clear in my book saying that [Kim] was nothing but a sweetheart, and I have the utmost respect for her, and I can’t say anything negative about her. She was dope.”
If you find it surprising that Barker never hooked up with Kim given his admiration for her, you’re not alone. Barker revealed his friends felt the same way. “Everyone was like, ‘Why didn’t you ever hook up?’ I couldn’t see myself being anything but a gentleman to her. She was just always so cool,” he told Complex.
But Moakler claims to Us Weekly that Barker is lying about never hooking up with Kim. “Someone sent me all their [text] conversations and I’m also close friends with people who were there, while things were happening,” she said.
Now that Barker is dating Kourtney, Moakler has a message for the Kardashian sisters: “Thanks for destroying my family twice,” she said via TMZ last week.
Moakler claims that Barker’s relationship with Kourtney is “putting a wedge” between her and her children, she elaborated to Us Weekly. She and Barker share son Landon, 17, and daughter Alabama, 15.
But Landon and Alabama approve of their father’s relationship, posting positive messages on Instagram pics of Travis and Kourtney’s April vacation to Utah. Landon even called the relationship “True love.”