The Ratking

Epstein, Trump and Immigrant Women

HOLIDAY GIFT BONUS: Signed copy of my book The Trump Women: Part of the Deal to new paid subscribers this week.

This weekend, Trump channeled Adolph Hitler in New Hampshire, howling that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”  The day before, Melania, who has been hiding out at Mar a Lago throughout her husband’s criminal indictment period, was deployed to the National Archives to speak at a ceremony welcoming new citizens.

Creating cognitive dissonance like that is one of the hallmarks of the Russian post-modern autocracy that Trump and his MAGA cult admire. It’s a manipulative move sociopaths and domestic abusers deploy to exert control over cult followers, prisoners, women, animals: Slap with one hand, and with the other feed, caress, pet.

Trump’s sometime pal Jeffrey Epstein was a master of this sick game, among other sinister skills. Every few months, we learn more about the methods, if not the motives of the late sex-addicted blackmailer/spy/trafficker who still haunts the exposure nightmares and actual reputations of living wealthy and powerful men who at the very least gawped and drooled around his harem, if not joined him in rape and abuse.

Epstein is the original rat in a metaphorical ratking, a rare - and vile - natural phenomenon where a bunch of rats get their tails tangled up and eventually die of mutual cannibalism or starvation, leaving a Freakshow-worthy carcass, versions of which are on display in various museums (many of which, weirdly, happen to be in Germany).

A new Wall Street Journal exposé reveals more secrets of King Rat Epstein’s pimping and abuse. The latest story (paywalled but here) details Epstein’s abuse of East European migrant model-wannabe beauties in the years after federal prosecutors set him free after a valiant attempt to get justice for his first line of victims, girls from low-rent Florida, failed.

Epstein continued his predations into the 2010s with a thriving cultish harem dependent on control and sexual abuse of immigrant women. Much of the story is from the account of a victim the paper identifies only as “the Polish model.” Polish model was introduced to Epstein by a self-described New York model scout. She spent several years under Epstein’s almost total control, accepting small amounts cash and lodging while waiting for his help with immigration papers, and an always-promised never-granted job at the UN.

The Polish Model joined a battalion of other young beauties who - per calendar entries the WSJ published - serviced him sexually between meetings with important men, multiple times a day. Epstein also groomed the women for his friends or clients. Brad Edwards, a lawyer for 150 women, says more than 20 men have been named in confidential documents as participants in sexual exploitation or abuse by women trafficked by Epstein.

Researching a documentary on Ghislaine Maxwell for Peacock recently, I often heard about Epstein’s uncanny ability to spot people’s weaknesses or dark urges. The WSJ article reveals how he deployed this trick on women:

Epstein showed keen interest in their troubles and asked them intimate questions about their pasts. Several said they confided in him not just about their financial and visa problems, but also relationship troubles, eating disorders and mental-health problems. Two women said they told him about previous sexual assaults.

He typically started by giving them small amounts of cash. The Ukrainian model said when she arrived in New York, Epstein put her up in an apartment and gave about $200—just enough for food and toiletries. “I remember that I couldn’t even afford a return ticket,” she said. 

Epstein promised to help the women make powerful connections, find work, pay for their university studies, obtain immigration papers or get an apartment. When they accepted, he would begin to both counsel them and critique them.

The women needed green cards, and were vulnerable to both the law and poverty. Epstein sometimes forced women to marry other women to get the green cards. They were utterly sexualized in exchange.

From the WSJ:

“I suspect that you are a quasi sex virgin,” he wrote [Polish Model]. “It’s ok. your sensittivty to the subject and highly emotional reactions to concepts leads me to beleive that this is an issue.” 

“Is my impression correct of what you said that braking moral beliefs is a must to achieve sth in life?” she replied in a Jan. 20 email. “I know you would like to help but sex education is not what i want right now. If you feel disappointed i can send you money back.”

“again you misunderstood,” he wrote back within minutes. “I am making an investment in your future ,  asking if you should return the money , makes little  sense. if you dont wnat to do as i recommend  thats ok.  , I don’t use money as a means to control you.  only to empower you.”

Despite his assurances, he continued sexually exploiting her. She said the sexual demands didn’t stop even after she confided in him about her past struggles with physical abuse and anorexia. 

Epstein used his links to rich and famous men to further soften up his victims: Bill Gates, Oslo Accords diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen, Swiss banker Ariane de Rothschild, Woody Allen, Israeli intelligence chief Ehud Barak, TV journalist Charlie Rose and Joi Ito, then head of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, and Thorbjørn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister - all show up in this article. Epstein allowed Polish Model to take pictures of herself with, for example, Gates, Allen and Barak, and promised meetings with important men who might hire her: “jagland is head of the council of europe and the chair of the nobel peace prize, I want you to meet,” [sic] Epstein texted, while promising to connect her.

The WSJ article adds little to our understanding of what the deal was with people like New York billionaire Leon Black, who has paid out in the nine figures to settle Epstein-related cases, and former Barclay’s boss Jes Staley, forced to resign after being accused in court documents of raping an Epstein-groomed woman (he denies) on the private Caribbean hideaway where - according to the latest WSJ story - Epstein ordered women under his control to walk around naked when he was entertaining masters of the universe.

When immigrant women tried to cut ties, they were on treacherous turf immediately because of their visa situations, over which he had control. He might present them with bills demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in housing, dental and other expenses. When Polish Model escaped, she got this misspelled typo-filled text from Jeff: “I guess orgainzing hours of singin lessons , toefl exam, help;  special doctors to get you more time so that you could enroll in school,  was forgotten,” he wrote. “no need to respond to me anymore. my mistake.” [sic]

Note the fake contrition, the vaguely menacing final words.

What’s the ratking have to do with us today?

When Trump bellows about the immigrant poison in American blood, he is of course, not including his own immigrant family members - mother, grandmother, first and current wife. That’s because their skin is white of course. But Trump is surely aware of the role of the ratking in the lives of vulnerable women.

As I wrote in my book about the Trump women, Slovenian immigrant Melania came of age in the global modeling industry in the late 1980s, one of literally tens of thousands of Slavic beauties who ran for the West looking to use their looks as a means of access to the luxuries that the Iron Curtain had walled off. The end of communism meant a newfound reliance on women’s bodies to titillate commercial senses, to sell stuff, and to be sold, but not all of the beauties could get into the overcrowded modeling industry. New York Times writer Michael Specter published a feature in 1998 called “Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naïve Slavic Women.” He compared the trafficking to enslavement, and wrote that “few ever testify” for fear of being killed by the increasingly violent and powerful Russian mob that pimped them.

Melania arrived in the U.S. in the mid-1990s, and was reportedly introduced to Trump by Paolo Zampolli, who has said he got the former Melania Knauss her original U.S. visa through his modeling agency. She was, by the standards of her crowd, lucky: According to their story, Trump met Melania at a party for a Victoria’s Secret model. Epstein’s deep and strange connections to Victoria’s Secret founder Les Wexner are well known. As the recent WSJ article reiterates, Epstein often used the Victorias Secret modeling opportunity as a carrot to lure or maintain control over women like Polish Model.

Soon, Trump was getting Melania model contracts to pose semi-nude and in chain mail in men’s magazines.

We know better than to expect compassion from Trump or MAGAs for the poor and downtrodden men or women who come to our shores and borders fleeing violence and poverty and looking for a better life, just as his, their and most of our ancestors did. But we are in altogether new territory when people in New Hampshire will cheer as the leading presidential candidate for the Republican Party Chief spews Mein Kampf at them.

In fascism, women must rank low on “natural” hierarchies. The Epstein operation is about powerful people witnessing and doing nothing, or actively participating in abuse of vulnerable female immigrants and Florida pubescents. The King Rat died in prison, with the ratking still tied to him by the tails. An untold number of men still at large, still riding around in limos, still living large, knew and stayed silent or shared his taste for controlling and abusing vulnerable women. Among this crowd, who cared then or now about “women’s empowerment,” that slogan attached to seminars during the same decade Epstein was at his busiest, not far from his mansions in New York and Florida? The phrase was relegated to joke status by the ascent of Trump, his regime’s abuse of women in policy and in speech and the packing of the Supreme Court with forced-birth fanatics who now allow tools like Ken Paxton to hound women and doctors.