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As Donald Trump campaigns to be a dictator for one day, he’s asking: “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” Great question! To help answer it, our Trump Files series is delving into consequential events from the 45th president’s time in office that Americans might have forgotten—or wish they had.
This week, the Guardian published a pre-election bombshell alleging that Donald Trump sexually assaulted a model in 1993—the latest in a string of dozens of similar accusations dating back decades. Stacey Williams, now 56, claims that Trump groped her during a visit to Trump Tower, in an encounter she said was orchestrated by Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier and convicted sexual predator, whom she had been dating. Williams told the Guardian that Trump felt up her breasts, waist, and buttocks. “I just had this really sickening feeling that it was coordinated,” she later told CNN. “I was rolled in there like a piece of meat in some kind of weird twisted game.” Williams also told her story during a public “Survivors for Kamala” Zoom call on Monday night. The Trump campaign denied the accusations.
With the election less than two weeks away, Trump’s treatment of women is now back in the spotlight, at the same time as his harsh disparagement of immigrants has taken on an increasingly dark and vitriolic air. “This election cycle,” wrote my colleague Isabela Dias, “former President Donald Trump has made mass deportation his foremost campaign promise.” It is a long-standing promise, Isabela reported, as she recapped Trump’s 2016 pledge to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants; his sweeping worksite raids; his Muslim-ban; and brutal family separations. As Isabela showed, Trump’s plans for a second term would escalate these policies significantly: He has pledged “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
These two big themes of Trump’s presidency—his treatment of women and his far-right immigration policies—first fused for me in reporting I did during Trump’s 2016 campaign. At the time, my investigation revealed that models working for his prized firm, Trump Model Management, were brought into the United States on tourist visas that did not allow them to work. Former Trump models told me they were encouraged to mislead federal officials and instructed to lie on customs forms. Once here, they were housed in a cramped, basement apartment, charged sky-high rent, and levied with dizzying fees and expenses, leaving many in debt and in legal precarity. “It is like modern-day slavery,” one model told me. Another said in a lawsuit she “felt like a slave.”
Here’s a video recap of the media storm that ensued after publication:
As Trump ramps up “zero tolerance”, don’t forget the foreigners Trump’s own company had zero issues with letting into the US to work without authorization: models at his NYC agency @TrumpModels. Here’s a video reminder my 2016 @MotherJones campaign exposé https://t.co/R5bvuhBdkF pic.twitter.com/KfVl6sFn6i
— James West (@jameswest2010) July 7, 2018
My investigation—eight articles over eight months in all—became a potent example of Trump’s duplicity. And it foreshadowed his double standards, as Trump mixed his business practices with the presidency. The story created an instant shockwave through the campaign, albeit briefly during what was a scandal-plagued race to the White House. Models began fleeing Trump Model Management, with insiders attributing the firm’s rapid decline to Trump’s increasingly controversial public persona. The once-celebrated Trump brand, they said, had become tainted.
Ultimately, after my reporting, Trump Models joined the list of defunct Trump ventures, alongside Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Airlines, and Trump Magazine—yet another shuttered firm run by the man who continues to tout himself as an expert businessman who, alone, can fix everything.
Read my original investigation here.
