Donald Trump: The Origin Story of an American Actor, Part 5 continued
In 1987, Donald Trump made a new friend: serial sex-abuser and prolific sex-trafficker of underage girls, Jeffrey Epstein.
Like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein was an extremely rich New Yorker. Donald and Epstein frequented many of the same elite Manhattan social circles, where they discovered they shared some similar interests.
A New York magazine piece in 2002, 15 years after they’d first met, quoted Donald declaring that Jeffrey Epstein was a “terrific guy.”(172)
Their friendship, their connection, went deeper than these superficial words. In fact, Donald and Epstein shared at least one major thing in common.
“He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”(172)
Donald Trump said this.
He said it about Jeffrey Epstein, perhaps the single most notorious sexual-abuser of children in modern American History.
These two extremely rich and psychologically damaged men didn’t confine their friendship to Manhattan. Donald and Epstein actually did some traveling together. Traveling for pleasure, don’t forget, not for business.
In 1992, Donald invited Epstein, along with Epstein’s most crucial right-hand woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, to Mar-al-Lago. The New York Times reported on the occasion for the special visit, “No fewer than twenty-eight attractive young women were flown in to participate in a calendar-girl competition as entertainment.”(173)
As Donald himself directly, publicly stated, he and Epstein share a sexual attraction to beautiful women. And as Donald revealed, he and Epstein were seemingly most specifically attracted to women who are “on the younger side.”(172)
This is not a story about Jeffrey Epstein, but anyone familiar with this particular man’s epic criminal history has surely heard of the man’s see-no-evil-hear-no-evil personal private island in the Caribbean.
Far, far away from the prying eyes of US law enforcement, on his own private island, Epstein constructed a culture where himself and other wealthy, powerful, and amoral men could live out some of their most wild, most taboo, and most illegal sexual fantasies.
American Kompromat reveals that, “scores [of] women and young girls” were regularly trafficked to Epstein’s island. From the safety of this extravagant and police-free haven, “Epstein passed [young women] around like party favors to some of the world’s most powerful men.”(106)
As an extraordinarily wealthy man, Jeffrey Epstein had a vast social network, which included many men with a high-profile in American public life. Over the course of many years, Epstein invited many of these men to come party with him on his private island. Many of these men said yes.
Flight manifests from Epstein’s private jet traveling to his Caribbean island include the following names: Michael Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Bill Clinton, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Rupert Murdoch.(106)
Infamously, Epstein maintained a secret “black book” which contained the private contact information for some of his most important contacts.
Donald Trump appears in Jeffrey Epstein’s black book. In fact, he appears quite it bit more prominently than any of the household names mentioned above.
In Jeffrey Epstein’s private contact information, there were sixteen separate phone numbers for getting ahold of Donald Trump.(106)
Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s point-woman for coordinating the logistics of his sex addiction to children, eventually found herself under deposition. In this high-stakes legal settings, Maxwell herself confirmed, “Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s.”(173)
Business Insider reported that “Newly unsealed flight logs show Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane at least once, in 1997.”(174)
Jeffrey Epstein’s own brother, Mark Epstein, when himself under deposition, confirmed that Donald Trump had in fact flown with Jeffrey Epstein on his private jet, “numerous times.”(175)
To clarify, there appears to be no publicly available evidence that Donald himself ever went to Epstein’s private island. But even still, over the course of many years, these two men did spend a lot of time together.
As already mentioned, Donald first invited Jeffrey Epstein to party with him at Mar-al-Lago back in 1992, after the two had already known each other for five years.
Epstein, who lived in the same Palm Beach, Florida neighborhood as Donald, was photographed at Mar-al-Lago again in 1997, and again in 2000.(172)
But Jeffrey Epstein was not Donald Trump’s only ultra-rich, long-term friend who was a known, serial sexual predator of children.
Donald Trump was also pals with John Casablancas, another ultra-rich, known serial sexual predator of children.
Casablancas and Donald actually went into business together, in an industry in which they both derived a certain sort of taboo satisfaction.
Jeffrey Epstein. John Casablancas. Donald Trump. They all shared a sexual attraction to girls who were currently high school students.
John Casablancas was on the same page. In fact, Casablancas dedicated his entire adult life and career to pursuing sexual encounters with high school girls. And if having sex with underage girls is your thing, what industry would make the most sense for you to go into?
John Casablancas found his professional calling in “managing” teenage “models.” He ran an extremely successful and high-profile agency called Elite Model Management, which gave him cover and access to a never-ending stream of young, ignorant, attractive teenage girls who consistently proved quite easy for middle-aged, wealthy sociopaths to manipulate, control, and abuse.
In 2002, John Casablancas was finally sued over just one of the teenage girls that he “managed” and also sexually abused. In this particular case, regarding a series of incidents which occurred in 1988, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of a girl who was 15-years-old at the time John Casablancas repeatedly abused her. He was 46-years-old at the time of the assault.(176)
This was far from an isolated incident. As detailed in the lawsuit, Casablancas “Engaged in a pattern of seducing, sexually exploiting and/or abusing minor girls, including girls as young as 14 or 15 years old.”(176)
But, as The Guardian has revealed, “Casablancas’ sexual interest in teenage girls predated this period. His marriage to his second wife, Danish model Jeanette Christiansen, ended in 1983 when it emerged that he was having an affair with a 15-year-old model, Stephanie Seymour. Casablancas…in his early 40s…met his third wife, Brazilian model Aline Wermelinger, in 1992, when she was a “Look of the Year” contestant staying at Trump’s Plaza. They married the following year; Casablancas was 51 and she was 17.(176)
Let’s quickly examine a snapshot of the psychology of the sort of grown man who sexually pursues girls who are not yet legally eligible to drive a car, much less to vote or order a beer for that matter.
Stephanie Seymour was 15-years-old when John Casablancas sexually abused her. This is a direct quote from Casablancas, speaking about Seymour, he declared, “She is a girl of extremes…the way she developed — there’s a quality that developed about her that is this incredible sensuality that a woman-child has, a true woman-child…her voice is a child’s, her attitudes, the way she holds her feet and her hands are those of a child, at the same time with an incredible sensuality to it. And that mixture was and is so explosive…This was something like a forbidden fruit for both of us.”(177)
For men like John Casablancas, high school girls served not only as a source of temporary personal pleasure, he also used these girls as a sort of alternate currency, to be shared, borrowed, traded among the type of men who associated with him, and shared similar appetites around “forbidden fruit.”
In 1990, Casablancas “Sent a teenage model for her first ‘casting call’ at a residential address on New York’s Upper East Side, to meet a ‘photographer’ who, it turned out, was [Jeffrey] Epstein…Epstein ordered the 15-year-old girl to undress before taking photographs of her, pushing her against a wall and sexually assaulting her.”(176)
Jeffrey Epstein was not the only friend of John Casablancas who benefited from the model agency manager’s access to vulnerable teenage girls.
Turns out, even the famed magic tricker David Copperfield got in on the action. Over the course of several years, Copperfield served as a “judge” for Casablancas’s “Look of the Year” modeling competition. From this perch, Copperfield selected an underage victim of his own. Brittney Lewis, who was 17-years-old at the time, says that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by David Copperfield, at one of Casablancas’s competitions.(176)
A man named Gérald Marie worked for John Casablancas as a senior executive at the modeling agency’s Paris branch. In 1991, Marie was in New York for that year’s “Look of the Year” contest. There, he descended upon a 14-year-old girl, Shawna Lee. Marie, in his 40’s, offered Lee a ride home after a late night of drinking. She accepted, and Marie then proceeded to take her to his own apartment, where he used his enormous power dynamic over her to coerce her into unwelcome, illegal sex. Gérald Marie has been accused of rape by multiple other models in Casablancas’s orbit.(176)
Another man named David Weil, who also worked for Casablancas, pled guilty to statutory rape of a model he met at the “Look of the Year” contest in 1992. The girl that Weil raped was 15-years-old.(176)
Donald Trump had been attending John Casablancas’s aspiring teenage girl model parties since the early 1980s.
In 1989, Donald directly propositioned one of the underage models. The girl’s name was Barbara Pilling. Donald asked her out on a date, after learning she was 17-years-old. Donald told the high school student, “That’s just great — you’re not too old, not too young.”(176)
By 1991, Donald decided to get even further involved in John Casablancas’s world.
The Guardian has conducted fantastic reporting on this little-known window of Donald Trump’s history.
As The Guardian reports, “Trump was closely involved in Casablancas’s competition. In 1991, he was a headline sponsor, throwing open the Plaza, his lavish, chateau-style hotel overlooking Central Park…He was also one of its 10 judges.”(176)
John Casabancas’ predatory 1991 teenage girl party started off with a bang. Many of the high schoolers involved in the event had never been to New York City before, some had never been alone away from their parents before. And men like Donald Trump, John Casablancas, David Copperfield, Gérald Marie and David Weil were present, and ready to capitalize on the manipulative scenario they’d created for their own personal amusement.(176)
Kate Dillon, a 17-year-old who participated in Casablancas’s contest, explained that many of her fellow teenagers there were, “from places that were very poor…a lot of these girls were desperate.”(176)
In 1991, fifty-eight aspiring models from all over the globe were in New York, hoping for the chance to earn “a life-changing prize: a $150,000 contract with the world’s then leading modelling agency, (John Casablancas’s) Elite Model Management.”(176)
The girls presumably had no idea what they’d actually be expected to do, in order to curry the favor of their “judges” like David Copperfield, John Casablancas, and Donald Trump.
The set up was pretty simple. The men in charge, the men with endless money and the ability to make or break the young girl’s careers, take the girls out for a ride on a massive luxury yacht to party.
As described by The Guardian, “Scores of teenage girls in evening dresses and miniskirts, some as young as 14, danced under disco lights. It could have been a high school prom, were it not for the crowd of older men surrounding them. As the evening wore on, some of the men — many old enough to be the girls’ fathers, or even grandfathers — joined them on the dancefloor, pressing themselves against the girls.”(176)
“While Elite’s official brochure stated that contestants were aged between 14 and 24, all of those the Guardian has spoken to, competing in both years, were aged between 14 and 19.”(176)
Donald Trump hosted his friend John Casablancas’s feeding frenzy once again in 1992.(176)
Once they had the teenage girls out on a boat, once they had gotten the teenage girls drunk, the ultra-rich middle-aged sexual predators could start blurring the line between business and enjoyment.
“One of the girls on the boat was Shawna Lee, then a 14-year-old from a small town outside Toronto. She recalls how the contestants were encouraged to parade downstairs, one by one, and dance for Trump, Casablancas and others. Another contestant, who was 15 at the time, also remembers being asked to walk for Trump, Casablancas and other men on the boat…She says an organizer told her that if she refused, she would be excluded from the competition. ‘I knew in my gut it wasn’t right,’ she recalls. ‘This wasn’t being judged or part of the competition — it was for their entertainment.’”(176)
This was not a one-off occasion. The powerful, grown men pressured the high school girls to perform for them personally, implying that this was standard practice in modeling and that it wasn’t such a big deal.
Multiple former teenage models for Casablancas have opened up about what they endured. “The agency required them to attend private dinners with Trump, Casablancas and sometimes other men.”(176)
Another former teenage model recounts “various ‘after-hours’ events over the course of the five-day competition. ‘It was very clear that there were opportunities to go out and party with Donald’…The contestants were led to believe ‘that if you were nice to certain people, good things will happen to you’”(176)
Donald appears to have been giddy at just how easy it was for him to take advantage of the girls in Casablancas’s competitions.
At the 1992 event, multiple former teenage girls confirm something staggeringly appalling.
That year, 1992, is the first reported occasion upon which Donald Trump, at that time a 46-year-old, balding father of three children, entered the private locker-room of teenage girls without their fore-knowledge or consent.
One of the teenage girls present explained, “Every time we changed, it was like Trump would find a reason to come backstage.”(176)
Yet another former teenage contestant corroborates this, adding that while the girls were in the midst of changing their clothes, “He’d come by and say, ‘Hey girls, are we ready?’”(176)
John Casablancas lived a long and opulent life. The famous, decade’s long child sex-abuser spent not a single day of his life in jail. He died in 2013 of natural causes, at age 70. The NYT did mention the “affair” he had with a 15-year-old, but the title the newspaper selected for the occasion of this sadistic criminal’s obituary was decidedly and confusingly kinder to his memory.(178)
According to the NYT, the main thing we should remember about John Casablancas, is that he was a “modeling visionary.”(178)
The John Casablancas’s “modeling agency” still exists.
They’re still in business, today. They’re literally still naming their business in honor of the memory of a man who designed his entire life around his insatiable sex addiction to vulnerable teenage girls.
John Casablancas’ website, to this very day, remains pretty upbeat about their founder. “For over 30 years, the internationally renowned John Casablancas Centers have developed the undisputed path for people seeking to improve their self-image and learn what it takes to enter the entertainment business. Founded by John Casablancas, the leader in the modeling/talent development business, the John Casablancas Centers have flourished in cities throughout the United States, South America, Asia and Europe. John Casablancas brought his unique ability to find and develop talent to the United States when he expanded the famous Elite Model Management Agency and helped develop the world’s top ‘Supermodels.’”(179)
The Daily Kos reports that the “legend” of John Casablancas “lives on. His name is still attached and promoted by his discredited chain of modeling schools, which continue to churn through small town girls with high aspirations, low self-esteem, and gullible parents willing to accrue sub-prime debt to help them succeed…his legacy continues to take out ads in teen magazines to lure in young girls, teach them useless skills like how to balance a book on their head while turning their hair into grease-fires and issue them ‘diplomas’ printed out at Kinkos under high volume discount…At the end they either walk away with thousands of dollars in debt before they even reach college-or if they are ‘lucky’ they might funnel their ‘experience’ and ‘contacts’ into the next level of this system-Miss Teen USA, teen modeling, hopelessly corrupt industries that will likely chew them up and spit them out before they reach the age of majority.”(180)
In addition to being long-term friends and business partners with notorious child sex-abusers like Jeffrey Epstein and John Casablancas, Donald Trump appears to have been inspired by these men as well.
In 1996, still in crippling debt, Donald impulse purchased three “beauty pageants…Miss Universe, Miss USA, [and] Miss Teen USA.”(106)
In 1999, having observed up close John Casablancas’ success, Donald opened his own modeling agency, “Trump Model Management.”(106)
Donald brought the same level of professional qualification to his shiny new beauty pageants as he did to his failed airline and his failed Jersey casino empire.
But as far as Donald himself was concerned, of course, he was just the right man for the job.
Years later, on the Howard Stern show once again, Donald explained part of his personal vision and contribution to the pageants he personally oversaw.
As captured by Rolling Stone magazine, Donald explained that, “The relative hotness of contestants had seriously deteriorated in the preceding years…because the judges had begun placing a greater emphasis on brains over beauty. ‘They had a person that was extremely proud that a number of the women had become doctors,’ Trump said. ‘And I wasn’t interested.’”(181)
In 2010, having been the owner of several pageants for 14 years, “Trump boasted to David Letterman that when he bought Miss USA, ‘I made the heels higher and the bathing suits smaller.’”(181)
In the late 1990s, Donald was now the proud new owner of several businesses that made their money off of the physical beauty of endless scores of often vulnerable young girls and women.
The psychological damage Donald personally inflicted on many of these young girls and women would haunt some of them for the rest of their lives.
In 1996, the year Donald bought his slew of pageants, Alicia Machado of Venezuela was 18-years-old. That year, she was named Miss Universe. Along with any potential exhilaration she may have felt over her victory, in actuality, more than anything else, Machado was quickly engulfed in shame.
Donald himself was the source of the head-spinning, body-shaming rollercoaster she was about to be thrown into. As the NYT reports, “For 20 years, Alicia Machado has lived with the agony of what Donald Trump did to her after she won the Miss Universe title: shame her, over and over, for gaining weight.”(182)
You see, after winning the Miss Universe competition, 18-year-old Alicia Machado committed the sin of gaining 12 pounds.(182)
Donald was pissed.
So, what does he do? He commands Machado to appear at a gym. Donald himself is at the gym when Machado arrives. With him, he’s brought dozens of press, reporters, and TV cameras. Without so much as having alerted her as to what was about to happen, Donald tells Machado to start working out. She does. Meanwhile, she’s being filmed and analyzed by a herd of media people, while Donald talks shit about her body at the same time.(182)
Like hunter crouched and smiling over the corpse of his catch, Donald “posed for photographs” next to Machado as she was working out on full display for soulless members of the press aligned with Donald.(182)
“This is somebody who likes to eat.” Donald sneered to the cameras.
Alicia Machado “says she has never recovered from the experience…she had eating disorders and psychological trauma as a result of the episode.”(182)
“I was sick — anorexia and bulimia for five years…I was 18. My personality wasn’t created yet. I was just a girl.”(182)
She was “just a girl.” Exactly how men like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and John Casablancas like them.
Part of the reason why certain extremely wealthy and powerful men channel their sexual attraction to underage girls is quite simple. High school age girls tend to be far easier to manipulate, control, and silence than fully matured, independent women of legal age.
The multi-tiered exploitation of vulnerable teenage girls has historically been deeply embedded within the “model management” industry.
It all starts with the type of girls who become selected by predatory modeling agencies founded by men like John Casablancas and Donald Trump. Turns out, many of the girls these men relied upon to make money for themselves were attractive teenage girls from foreign countries. Is the United States at such a profound dearth of young female beauty that we must import it from abroad? Certainly not. But foreign teenage girls offer a crucial advantage to men like Donald Trump and John Casablancas: they are both far cheaper and also far easier to exploit.
Mother Jones has provided us with crucial reporting on the way these dynamics played out in Donald Trump’s own modeling agency.
For starters, “Trump Model Management has profited from using foreign models who came to the United States on tourist visas that did not permit them to work here…Foreigners who visit the United States as tourists are generally not permitted to engage in any sort of employment unless they obtain a special visa, a process that typically entails an employer applying for approval on behalf of a prospective employee. Employers risk fines and possible criminal charges for using undocumented labor…These rules for immigrants are in place to ‘protect them from being exploited.’”(183)
But remember, like his father before him, Donald Trump has no interest in ethics, or even basic legality in how his businesses are run.
Many former teenage models have since come forth with the experiences they had working for Donald Trump.
Clear patterns emerge. Trump Management regularly coached foreign models on how to evade and deceive US immigration and law enforcement officers. Foreign models were encouraged “to deceive customs officials about why they were visiting the United States.”(183)
Specifically, Trump Management “Told them to lie on customs forms about where they intended to live.” One foreign model recounted that she “received a specific instruction from a Trump agency representative: ‘If they [Immigration/Customs] ask you any questions, you’re just here for meetings.’” Yet another former teenage model recalls the instructions she got from Trump Management upon her arrival in the US, “When you’re stuck at immigration, say that you’re coming as a tourist. If they go through your luggage and they find your portfolio, tell them that you’re going there to look for an agent.”(183)
In 2016, when Donald was in the pipeline to scoring the biggest job he’d ever get, he was explicitly clear about his opposition and hostility to the very concept of bringing foreigners into the US to work here.
In 2016, Donald told a large gathering of his supporters, “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program…No exceptions.”(183)
In a similar setting that year, Donald expanded, “These are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse.”(183)
So, what exactly is this “widespread H-1B abuse” we’re talking about here? The H-1B visa is essentially an immigration policy loophole, which allows for US companies to hire “high-skilled” workers from abroad if they are finding difficulty hiring for specific, high-stakes roles in the American economy.
As detailed by Mother Jones, “H-1B visas have been increasingly popular in the high-tech field, and Trump’s companies, including Trump Model Management, have used this program extensively in the past.”(183)
Wait, what? This is a program explicitly for “high-skilled” workers. So how was Donald using the policy to import foreigners who possessed no true economic skill, beyond their aesthetically fortunate genetics?
CNN Money explains further, “While this visa program is best known for bringing over technology workers like engineers and computer programmers, Trump’s own modeling agency has used the program for years, federal data shows. That’s because federal law surprisingly lumps in fashion models with these other specialized workers — though it’s the only job that doesn’t require higher education.”(184)
How interesting. So, in addition to coaching some foreign models to directly lie to US law enforcement about their employment statues in the US, Trump Model Management also successfully brought other foreign teenagers into the US by exploiting an odd loophole in US immigration law.
CNN revealed that during his 20-year tenure as the owner of several beauty pageants, “Trump’s agency has successfully brought over [at least] 30 foreign models — from countries like Brazil, Latvia and China — using the H-1B program.”(184)
Alexia Palmer was one of the teenage models Donald brought to the US under the H-1B visa program that he now rails against so vociferously. Palmer is Jamaican, and was lured to the US by the “promise of more than $200,000 in earnings” over a three-year period working for Trump Model Management. CNN confirms that this exact “salary was also what was listed by Trump Model Management as part of [Palmer’s] visa application.”(184)
But upon arrival in the US, nothing Palmer was led to believe by Trump Model Management proved to be true.
“Experts say that the U.S. government requires that full-time H-1B workers like Palmer be paid a high enough wage that they aren’t being exploited or displacing American workers — regardless of how much they end up working. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency confirmed that a sponsoring company “must pay the actual wage or the prevailing wage, whichever is higher” — meaning it was illegal to pay Palmer below either listed wage.”(184)
On the H-1B visa Trump Model Management secured for Palmer, the agency declared she’d make a minimum of $45,000 per year. In reality, Palmer “made less than $30,000 over three years.”(184)
But the $30,000 figure (for three years of work) was only the officially reported amount of income Palmer received working for Trump Model Management. In actuality, she took home far less than this already poultry sum. The money Palmer made in the US “Was almost entirely eaten up by taxes, a 20% commission to the Trump agency, administrative fees and modeling-related costs like $75 walking lessons and a $200 dermatology visit…In the end, Palmer netted $4,985 over three years…a figure acknowledged by the Trump agency.”(184)
Neil Ruiz of George Washington University, is an expert on the use of H-1B visas. Ruiz offers the following, on the case of Alexia Palmer working for Trump Model Management, “If someone isn’t being paid what they are supposed to be paid, they are being exploited…This case shows that [Trump’s] own company has benefited from exploiting his own H-1B visa holders.”(184)
Alexia Palmer is but one example of the type of teenage girl, often foreign, who Donald made money off of through deceit and the payment of below-poverty wages.
In fact, as clarified by the Daily Kos, “The glamorous lifestyle you imagine models living is in reality a grinding, low-wage existence of long hours and slum-like living conditions. Living conditions which in some cases have been contractually required. The exorbitant rent charged for that squalor is then directly deducted from any wages they can garner.”(180)
Trump models, some as young as 14-years-old, were forced to live in “dormitory-style quarters…pack[ed]…into bunks, in some cases charging the models sky-high rent and pocketing a profit…Models weren’t in a position to complain about their living arrangements. ‘You’re young,’ [one former Trump model reflected,] ‘and you know that if you ask too many questions, you’re not going to get the work.’”(183)
The Mother Jones investigation into the exploitation of teenage models at Trump Model Management notes the following, “In the summer of 2004, an entire studio apartment near [where Trump models were made to stay] was advertised at $1,375 a month.”(183)
Nonetheless, Trump Model Management charged its teenage models “as much as $1,600 a month for a bunk in a room…with five others.”(183)
Yes indeed, Donald’s foray into the “model management” world sure worked out quite well for Donald. An ostensible business investment, the true value Donald derived from being the owner of teenage girl beauty pageants also provided him with other, self-anointed perks behind the scenes.
Recall that the first reported occasion upon which Donald Trump strolled into a private locker-room of teenage girls without their foreknowledge or consent was at John Casablancas’s drunk and desperate teenage girl contest in 1992.
Inspired by John Casablancas’s long legacy of devil-may-care teenage girl exploitation, in 1996, Donald Trump purchased his own string of contests in which vulnerable teenage girls were rounded up to display their bodies for the entertainment of 50+-year-old ultra-rich men like himself.
Now the owner of multiple beauty pageants, Donald used his position of power and enormous wealth to take sexual advantage of the teenagers now under his financial purview.
In 1997, shortly after his purchase of the Miss Teen USA contest, Donald Trump entered the private locker-room of teenage girls without their foreknowledge or consent for the second known time.
Mariah Billado was named Miss Teen Vermont in 1997. Billado recounts, “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here.’”(181)
The man suddenly in the young women’s dressing room was their employer, Donald Trump.
Rolling Stone reported that, when Donald entered the teenage girl’s private space, some of the girls were as “young as 15 [and] were in various states of undress…Three other teenage contestants from the same year confirmed the story.”(181)
Somehow it still gets even weirder.
Remember when, in 1994, on TV, Donald mused about how nice his baby daughter Tiffany’s legs were, and how big her breasts might be someday? Tiffany was not the only daughter on the receiving end of her father’s incredibly inappropriate sexualization. Around that same time, Donald also sought to exploit his other daughter’s physical appearance, Ivanka.
At the 1997 Miss Universe competition, Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee was a co-host of the event. That evening, Donald Trump approached Lee for confirmation that his 16-year-old daughter, Ivanka, was as sexually attractive as he thought she was.
Donald leered, “Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?”(181)
Three years before this moment, when Ivanka was only 13-years-old, her parents decided that she was going to become a model. In full knowledge of the lifestyle of teenage models and the widespread sexual abuse and financial exploitation of teenage girls throughout the seedy industry, Donald insisted that his own young daughter become immersed in this world.
At the time his daughter was only 13 years of age, Donald Trump signed Ivanka up with, wait for it, John Casablancas’ agency, Elite Model Management.(179)
The Daily Kos reflects on this incredibly irresponsible, cruel, and reckless parenting decision. “What kind of man seeks out, pursues friendship and business partnerships with a man who is unabashed in his predilection for underage girls? Who openly admits he prefers them young because they are easily manipulated? What kind of man throws his…daughter into this den of wolves? Plausible deniability isn’t going to work on this one-Donald Trump knew about the state of the industry, he knew that it was a cesspool of drug abuse and sexual exploitation.”(179)
The fact of John Casablancas’s child sex-predation “was not obscure knowledge-it was a subject of a national broadcast. It was an industry wide embarrassment. It was a front-page story…Donald Trump knew the reputation of Elite, he knew the reputation of the industry, he knew that it was a ripe hunting ground for young, impressionable girls…many, many people and many companies decided not to work with Casablancas at all after his private behavior became public. Whether it was a moral stance, or a business decision, they determined he was toxic and should be avoided at all costs. Many people were able to see that associating with Casablancas would not reflect well on their character, and that any young woman they put in his presence would be at risk.”(179)
Donald Trump, in full knowledge of these truths, simply shrugged his shoulders, and threw his own 13-year-old daughter into the arena regardless.
—
We’re rounding a new corner now in our understanding of the kind of man Donald Trump truly is.
While we have thus far not used the following term specifically, it should at this point be abundantly clear, and beyond the point of legitimate, good-faith dispute, that Donald Trump matches the definition of a sexual predator.
True, Donald Trump has at this point never been successfully convicted in a court of law for the sex crimes he’s committed over the course of decades.
But overwhelming cascades of evidence, much of which was been public knowledge since the Reagan administration, confirm the obvious.
If Donald Trump is not a sexual predator because he’s never been locked up over it, then every common rapist who’s also currently not behind bars is not really a rapist either.
People commit crimes and get away with them all the time. Just go look up how many people have been murdered in the biggest city in your state so far this year. Then find out, in how many of those cases was someone actually arrested and charged and imprisoned? It’s not pretty out there.
The immediate point is this: we all know that in our nation, men with essentially no money, no fancy lawyers and no political connections can get away with actual murder in America’s cities every single day.
So, is it really that big a stretch of the imagination to consider the possibility that a man like Donald Trump just might be able to get a little creative in skirting around the American legal system himself?
Remember, we’re talking about a man who has never had to go through a job interview in his life. Donald Trump inherited what in today’s money would be $413,000,000 from his father. And with money like that, you can buy yourself the friends (unethical lawyers, mafia bosses, corrupt politicians) who can help you get away with all sorts of things.
And for those of us who have been fortunate enough to never have been on the receiving end of unwelcomed sexual aggression, we need to ground ourselves in the understanding of just how prevalent serious sexual assault actually is, even in “modern” countries like our own which pride themselves on the “rule of law.”
In the United States alone, nearly one in every five women will be raped at some point in her life.(185)(186)
Rape is also one of the most underreported violent crimes. All told, experts estimate that around 60% of rape cases that occur in America are simply never reported.(185)
This adds up to a pretty comfortable environment for sexual predators to operate within. They can do what they want, and on average, they can rely on the fact that most of their victims will opt into a lifetime of silence, rather than pursue legal accountability for the men who harmed them.
At this point, it bares remembering that Donald Trump is a sociopath. Understanding some of the key aspects of the psychology of sociopaths in general helps us illuminate important factors which lead to people with this condition to abuse and discard other human beings with the frequency and callousness characterized by individuals like Donald Trump.
With respect to identifying Donald Trump for what he is, a sexual predator, let’s review several features within the mind of a “high-functioning” sociopath.
According to BetterHelp, the world’s largest online therapy service, the following are key elements of the sociopath’s psychological makeup. First, the sociopath demonstrates impulsive behavior, “sociopaths are often reckless. They typically live in the moment and will do what they feel is needed to reach their immediate goals.”(187)
Second, the sociopath needs constant stimulation, “Sociopaths often get bored easily and need to be actively engaged.”(187)
Third, the sociopath displays addictive tendencies, “Their compulsive mindset may result in addiction to drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, or other addictive behaviors.”(187)
Fourth, the Sociopath disregards societal rules and laws that they don’t like, and often engages in criminal behavior, “In general, sociopaths are known rule breakers. It is not uncommon for them to have a history of criminal activity because of their belief that they are above the law.”(187)
Finally, the sociopath is sexually deviant, “they lack guilt, remorse, and emotional attachments, high-functioning sociopaths tend to have affairs and engage in questionable sexual activity.”(187)
Donald Trump meets five out of five of these characteristics.
Furthermore, it’s important that we understand that serial sexual predators like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and John Casablancas are getting more out of the experience of sexually assaulting vulnerable girls and women than sheer physical pleasure.
As explained by Psychology Today, sexual abuse “is more about power than it is about sex. Although the touch may be sexual, the words seductive or intimidating, and the violation physical, when someone rapes, assaults, or harasses, the motivation stems from the perpetrator’s need for dominance and control…sex is the tool used to gain power over another person.”(185)
As is the case with Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and John Casablancas, “most sexual assaults…arise within asymmetrical power dynamics, where the perpetrator occupies a more powerful or dominant position in relation to the victim…These men have what their victims, who are in less powerful positions, want and need: a job…an audition, a role in a movie, a place close to the center of power. They confuse and control by dangling enticements with one hand and wielding threats, implied or explicit, with the other.”(185)
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The first credible report of Donald Trump committing sexual assault took place back in 1980. A husband of several years at this stage in his life, and with a 3-year-old son at home, Donald allegedly assaulted a woman named Jessica Leeds.(188)(189)(190)
The incident took place on an airplane. Leeds was back in coach and received an invitation from a flight attendant to bump up to first class. Leeds took the offer, and in moments, found herself seated next to a man she didn’t know and had never heard of: Donald Trump.(188)
“He is perfectly reasonable when I first sit down.” Leeds recalls, but then, all of the sudden, “He is on me…He didn’t say a word…It’s like he’s got four extra hands…He’s grabbing my breasts. He’s trying to kiss me. I’m trying to get his hands off me…he starts putting his hand up my skirt [and] I get a jolt of strength and manage to wiggle out of the seat. I grab my purse and storm to the back of the plane.”(188)
In 2016, acting as master of ceremonies at a stadium packed full of people there to cheer him on, Donald publicly spoke to the reports of his first known sexual assault. True to form, Donald had one thing to say about the prospect of his having sexually assaulted Jessica Leeds several decades earlier.
He said, “Believe me, she would not be my first choice.”(189)
The crowd went wild. They loved it.
The second credible report of Donald Trump committing sexual assault took place in 1992. A husband and father of three young children at the time, Donald allegedly assaulted a woman named Kristin Anderson.(190)(191)
The incident took place at an elite Manhattan nightclub. Anderson was seated on a couch talking to friends of hers, when all of the sudden, “His fingers slid under her miniskirt, moved up her inner thigh, and touched her vagina through her underwear.”(191)
It was Donald Trump, sitting next to her on the couch. He didn’t so much as say a word to her, he simply seems to have had an outrageous sexual impulse, and he decided against containing it.
Anderson herself explains, “It wasn’t a sexual come-on. I don’t know why he did it. It was like just to prove that he could do it, and nothing would happen…There was zero conversation. We didn’t even really look at each other. It was very random, very nonchalant on his part.”(191)
Let’s recall that, as explained by Psychology Today, sexual abuse “is more about power than it is about sex….when someone rapes, assaults, or harasses, the motivation stems from the perpetrator’s need for dominance and control.”(185)
“It was like just to prove that he could do it, and nothing would happen.” One of the first known victims of Donald Trump’s predatory behavioral pattern, Kristin Anderson hit the nail on the head. But she wasn’t the first, and she would certainly not be the last.
The third credible report of Donald Trump committing sexual assault also took place in 1992. A husband and father of three young children at the time, Donald allegedly assaulted a woman named Jill Harth, for the first time.(190)(192)
In the early 1990s, Jill Harth and George Houraney (her boyfriend/business partner) arrived in Mar-a-Lago to negotiate a contract with Donald. Jill and George were hoping to land a deal with Donald to host a Calendar Girl pageant at one of Donald’s Atlantic City casinos.(192)
But as soon as the couple sat down to meet with Donald, red flags emerged immediately.
Vanity Fair has covered Donald’s long-term record of sexual harassment and assault, particularly during the 1990s. At that first meeting at Mar-a-Lago in 1992, Vanity Fair reports that Donald straight up told George, “’I’m very attracted to your girlfriend,’ and asks him if they’re sleeping together.”(192)
Later that evening, Donald takes the couple to a party. At one point during the evening, George takes a photo of Jill and Donald sitting down at a table. At this very moment, smiling for the camera, Donald sticks his hand up Jill’s dress, and just as he’d done with Kristen Anderson earlier that same year, with no forewarning, directly touches her vagina.(192)
As Vanity Fair puts it, “Now, a woman doing business with a man like Trump has two options. She can slap him, walk out, and say ‘to hell with it…or she can play patty-cake, laugh it off, hand him a pen, and get his signature on the contract.’”(192)
This latter approach is how Jill Harth decides to handle the sexual assault. She simply ignores it, and continues placating her abuser in the hopes it leads to a greater financial payoff for herself down the line.
The following year, in 1993, Jill and George decide to return to Mar-a-Lago, in full knowledge of how Donald is likely to treat them.
Jill explains, “We believe Trump is finally going to sign the [pageant] contract.” But in order for the deal to proceed, Donald now demanded that they “bring the girls” in, so that he can personally inspect the “quality of the girls.”(192)
So, Jill and George proceed, quickly flying in young models from all over the country. Once the models are in order, they host a party at Mar-a-Lago so that Donald can do what Donald does with vulnerable young women.
Oh, and Donald and George make up two out of only three men at the party. The only other man at the party is Donald’s neighbor and close friend, Jeffrey Epstein.(192)
Honing in on the young women, Epstein “represents himself as a scout for Victoria’s Secret.”(192)
Then, Jill reports, “Next thing I know, Donald is taking my hand…pulling me into this room…and then [he] pushes me up against a closet door…and he starts to grind on me and try to kiss me. And he’s maneuvering his way up my dress with his hand. And I push him off — I say, ‘What the hell are you doing!’ I mean I was flattered he was giving me all this attention, but what the hell? I’m shocked! George is right outside!”(192)(193)
Apparently immune to the basic human ability to recognize patterns, Jill Harth, having already been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump twice, continues to pursue her abuser as a business partner.
She soon returns to Donald’s lair once again. Once she arrives, Donald pounces. He says, “Come on. We’re gonna have our meeting in the bedroom…Come on. Come on. I want to lie down.” Jill says, “He pulls me into a bedroom and onto the bed with him. And I say, ‘Donald! I did not come here for this. I’m here to have a meeting with you.’…I’m trying to get off the bed and he’s trying to undo my pants. I’m saying, ‘STOP IT! I want to talk business.’ And I keep on saying stop it, and he says, ‘Oh, come on, come on. What’s the big deal? I know you’re not a prude.’ I say, ‘That’s it. I’m leaving.’”(192)
In 1995, Jill’s boyfriend George’s business sued Donald Trump for $5 million over disputed financing of the beauty pageant that never came to pass. “In 1997, during the deposition phase…Jill and George and their attorneys arrive at the court building at exactly the same time as Trump and one of his lawyers…[Jill recounts] ‘We’re all in the elevator. And Donald says to his lawyer, loud enough for everybody to hear: ‘See. I told you she was a hot piece of ass.’”(192)
Jill then filed a lawsuit of her own against Donald in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit detailed several years of “Sexual harassment, sexual assault, attempted rape, sexual subjugation, and defamation.” But, “a few weeks after she files the suit, she drops it on condition that Trump settle George’s suit, which Trump does.”(192)
It just keeps on getting stranger from here.
In 1998, after the lawsuits of the year prior had apparently cleared the air, Donald invited Jill and George to celebrate a special occasion with him. In 1998, Donald was throwing a party for himself to celebrate his divorce from his second wife, Marla Maples.
Jill and George accept the invitation.
Later that year, not long after Jill had sued Donald in a court of law alleging attempted rape, among other sex crimes, Jill accepted an offer from Donald to come have sex with him in his Trump Tower penthouse.
“When he called me and tried to work on me again, I was thinking maybe I should give this a try, maybe if he’s still working on me, I should give this rich guy a chance.”(194)
Jill reports that her consensual intercourse with the man who had been harassing and abusing her for years was unsurprisingly quick and underwhelming.(192)
After these two lost souls had merged in passionate love-making, Donald whispers sweet nothings into the ears of his lover, he said, “You’re gorgeous in every way. But you’re too skinny. You could use a boob job…I’m gonna make some calls. I have a great doctor in Miami.”(192)
Jill and Donald date on and off for several months, then they fall out of touch.
24 years after Donald sexually assaulted her for the first time, Jill attempted to reinsert herself into her abuser’s life once again.
In 2016, Donald’s face was on television perhaps more than anyone else’s in the entire world.
Jill Harth wanted back in.
So, she reaches out to Donald’s campaign, and tries to get hired as Donald’s makeup artist. Jill sends multiple emails to Donald’s staff, hoping to get through to the man himself.
She writes, “You are doing a tremendous job of shaking things up in the United States…We both know you’ve always been a handsome guy…It kills me to see you looking too orange and with white circles under the eyes.”(192)
Jill was not hired.
The fourth credible report of Donald Trump committing sexual assault took place in late 1995 or early 1996. A husband to his second wife, and now a father of four young children, Donald allegedly raped a woman named E. Jean Carroll.(190)(195)
Carroll ran into Donald in a luxury department store in Manhattan. Donald was there looking to buy a gift for one of the many women in his life, and he asked Carroll for some advice. Soon finding themselves in the lingerie section, Donald invited Carroll into a changing room.(195)
For some reason, Carroll accepted this proposition. Then, she recalls, “The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips…He seizes both my arms…holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights…The next moment, still wearing [his suit and tie] he opens [my] overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.”(195)
After physically struggling greatly to get the man off of her, she frees herself and escapes her famous assailant.
The fifth credible report of Donald Trump committing sexual assault took place in 1997. A husband to his second wife, and a father of four children, Donald allegedly assaulted a woman named Cathy Heller.(190)(196)
Heller was at Mar-a-Lago, among many others, for a Mother’s Day event. Making the rounds at different tables, Donald spotted Heller and honed in on her. Heller reports, “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips.” She tried to turn away, but Donald persisted. He said, “Oh, come on!” and forcibly kissed her, clearly against her will.(196)
“He was pissed.” Heller remembers. “He couldn’t believe a woman would pass up the opportunity.”(196)
The sixth credible report of Donald Trump committing sexual assault also took place in 1997. A husband to his second wife, and a father of four children, Donald allegedly assaulted a woman named Temple Taggart McDowell.(190)(197)(198)
McDowell was 21-years-old at the time, she had recently been named Miss Utah, and was flown into New York to participate in Donald Trump’s Miss USA pageant. At a rehearsal for the pageant, the very first time she ever so much as saw Donald, he walked right up to her, leering, and forcibly kissed her on the lips.(197)(198)
McDowell reports feeling “shocked,” “embarrassed,” and “gross” over the audacity of the violation, which took place in front of other people involved in the pageant. Not long afterwards, it happened a second time. Again, in front of other Trump employees willing to look the other way.(197)(198)
The seventh credible report of Donald Trump committing sexual assault also took place in 1997. A husband to his second wife, and a father of four children, Donald allegedly assaulted a woman named Karen Johnson.(190)(199)
The incident took place at Mar-a-Lago. As reported by Vox, this is how Johnson herself explains what happened, “I was just walking to the bathroom. I was grabbed and pulled behind a tapestry, and it was him…he’s strong, and he just kissed me…I was so scared because of who he was…I didn’t have a say in the matter.” In the process of manhandling her, Donald’s hand lunged for her vagina.(199)
Donald started calling Johnson in the days following the assault. She had not given him her phone number, and was disturbed as to how easily he was able to get it without her consent. For several weeks, he called her again and again, pressuring her to “visit” him in New York. Not only was Johnson married, but her then husband was dying. She told Donald this, he responded, “Don’t worry about it, he’ll never know you were gone.”(199)
The eighth credible report of Donald Trump committing sexual assault also took place in 1997. A husband to his second wife, and a father of four children, Donald allegedly assaulted a woman named Amy Dorris.(190)(200)
The incident took place at the US Open tennis tournament. Donald had a VIP box, of course. While Dorris found herself waiting in line for the bathroom, Donald snuck up on her and pounced. As reported by The Guardian, Dorris herself reveals, “He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything.”(200)
The nineth credible report of Donald Trump committing sexual assault took place in 1998. A husband to his second wife, and a father of four children, Donald allegedly assaulted a woman named Karen Virginia.(190)(201)
The incident took place, once again, at the US Open. Virginia, then 27-years-old, was waiting outside for a car to pick her up when she heard a group of 50-something year old men commenting on her body. As reported by Time Magazine, Virginia explains she heard Donald himself sneer, “Hey, look at this one, we haven’t seen her before, look at those legs!”(201)
“As though I was an object rather than a person.” She recalls. Then, Donald lunges. He grabs ahold of her, he fondles her breast. “I was in shock…I flinched.” Virginia remembers.(201)
“He said, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ I felt intimidated and powerless.”(201)
Sources Cited
172. Maxwell confirms “Donald was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/what-the-unsealed-epstein-documents-reveal-about-trump.html
173. 16 separate phone numbers for Donald Trump appear in Jeffrey Epstein’s secret Black Book
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/07/how-trump-kept-tabs-on-jeffrey-epstein
106. American Kompromat. Craig Unger, 2021. (60, 64, 69, 70, 88, 111)
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/635379/american-kompromat-by-craig-unger/
174. Donald Trump known to have flow on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet at least once in 1997
https://www.insider.com/donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-flight-logs-unsealed-2019-8
175. Mark Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, says under deposition that Donald Trump flew on his brother’s private jet “numerous times”
176. How John Casablancas, Jeffrey Epstein, and Donald Trump sexually preyed upon high school girls
177. John Casablancas muses about the mystique of his 15-year-old “woman-child” girlfriend
https://www.thecut.com/2018/02/a-hard-look-at-the-original-modelizer-john-casablancas.html
178. 2013 NYT obituary of John Casablancas lauds the Serial Child Sex-Abuser as a “Modeling Visionary”
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/nyregion/john-casablancas-modeling-visionary-dies-at-70.html
179. In 2021, John Casablancas’ teenage modeling agency is still going strong
https://www.jcasablancas.com/index
180. Trump models paid poverty-level wages, contractually obligated to live in “slum-like” conditions
181. Donald promptly overturns his beauty pageant’s greater focus on “brains over beauty”
182. Donald calls in paparazzi to film an 18-year-old girl working out while he criticizes her for “liking to eat”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/us/politics/alicia-machado-donald-trump.html
183. Donald Trump exploits teenage immigrants from abroad to illegally work in his modeling agency
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-model-management-illegal-immigration/
184. Donald declares to end the H-1B visa loophole for foreign workers, even though he himself had exploited this exact provision for decades, in order to import teenage models from abroad.
https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/10/news/trump-model-visas/index.html
185. 1 in 5 American women are raped sometime in their lives. Sexual assault is about power, not just sex
186. National Sexual Violence Research Center: 1 in 5 American women are raped, rape is extremely underreported
https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics
187. Sexual assault and Sociopaths
https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/sociopathy/traits-of-a-high-functioning-sociopath/
188. 1980: Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaults Jessica Leeds
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/i-moved-on-her-very-heavily-part-3/616201/
189. 1980: Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaults Jessica Leeds
190. The patterns of Donald Trump’s decades long history as a sexual predator
191. 1992: Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaults Kristen Anderson
192. 1992–1998: Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaults Jill Harth. Also, Jill Harth chooses to have consensual sex with him after years of sexual harassment and abuse led her to sue him.
193. 1993: 2nd occasion of Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaulting Jill Harth
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48754967
194. 1998: “Maybe…I should give this rich guy a chance.” Jill Harth
195. 1995–1996: Donald Trump allegedly Rapes E. Jean Carroll
https://people.com/politics/donald-trump-raped-e-jean-carroll/
196. 1997: Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaults Cathy Heller
https://www.businessinsider.com/cathy-heller-trump-accusations-2016-10?op=1
197. 1997: Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaults Temple Taggart McDowell
198. Additional account of Trump’s 1997 alleged sexual assault of Temple Taggart McDowell
https://people.com/politics/donald-trump-forcibly-kissed-pageant-contestant-temple-taggart-mcdowell/
199. 1997: Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaults Karen Johnson
200. 1997: Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaults Amy Dorris
201. 1998: Donald Trump allegedly sexually assaults Karen Virginia
https://time.com/4538729/donald-trump-accuser-karena-virginia/
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Note: This essay was originally posted on somethingtosharewiththeclass.com in April of 2021
