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There’s nothing Donald Trump loves more than surrounding himself with beautiful women. “It doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass,” he once told Esquire magazine. And where better to put himself in that company than poolside at his ritzy private club?
Trump’s post-Ivana-divorce parties at his Mar-a-Lago club were stocked with “models from Miami, who floated around the patio and pool,” wrote the Washington Post‘s Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher in their new book, Trump Revealed. Ron Rice, who founded the Hawaiian Tropic pageants in which Trump’s second wife, Marla, had competed, recalled to the Boston Globe how Trump would turn to him to fill out his guest lists. “He’d call me up and say, ‘I’m having a big party. Bring your girls in,'” Rice said. “So I’d bring in a bunch of models. Sometimes he gave us rooms at Mar-a-Lago.”
“Trump insisted on at least a three-to-two ratio of women to men at his bashes,” Kranish and Fisher reported. That got the approval of Roger Stone, the peddler of conspiracy theories and former Nixon aide who’s a longtime Trump adviser. “There’s a hundred beautiful women and ten guys,” Stone told the Post. “‘Look, how cool are we?’ I mean, it was great.”
At least some of the young women came because they thought it would help their careers. In 1993, Trump hosted the finals of the American Dream Calendar Girls pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and a spot in the calendar meant modeling gigs and visibility. “None of the women competing wanted to miss a chance to impress a judge like Trump,” wrote the Tampa Bay Times in a profile of Trump.
Trump apparently saw it differently. “What it was was a way to get his friends together and bring a bunch of pretty girls with them,” said George Houraney, who owned the pageant with his then-wife, Jill Harth. Harth said Trump groped her during a Mar-a-Lago party in 1993, and then “kissed, fondled, and restrained” her during a visit to his daughter Ivanka’s bedroom, according to the Globe. Harth sued Trump but dropped the lawsuit in 1997. She told the Post that dropping the suit was a condition of settling a separate breach-of-contract suit Houraney and Harth filed against Trump. Trump strenuously denied Harth’s story.
The suit also mentioned other alleged sexual advances by Trump. The Globe described one encounter with a pageant hopeful:
In the predawn hours, a contestant named Lauren Petrella—who, at age 22, was 24 years younger than the 46-year-old Trump—allegedly found Trump, unannounced and uninvited, in her bed.
“You said you don’t sleep with men on the first date,” he told her, according to the lawsuit filed by Harth. “Now it’s the second date, and here I am.”
Another Trump guest was Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire accused of raping numerous underage girls. “That was one of his best buddies,” Houraney told the Times. “He threw a party one night just because of Epstein. He said, ‘The other guys aren’t coming, but I don’t care because Jeff’s coming.'” The Trump campaign denied that Trump was “best buddies” with Epstein, telling the Times that “Mr. Trump only knew Mr. Epstein socially as someone who would occasionally use the club.”
Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:
- Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
- Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
- Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
- Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
- Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
- Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
- Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
- Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
- Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
- Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
- Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man
- Trump Files #12: Donald Can’t Multiply 17 and 6
- Trump Files #13: Watch Donald Sing the “Green Acres” Theme Song in Overalls
- Trump Files #14: The Time Donald Trump Pulled Over His Limo to Stop a Beating
- Trump Files #15: When Donald Wanted to Help the Clintons Buy Their House
- Trump Files #16: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word “Trump”
- Trump Files #17: He Dumped Wine on an “Unattractive Reporter”
- Trump Files #18: Behold the Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In Manhattan
- Trump Files #19: When Donald Was “Principal for a Day” and Confronted by a Fifth-Grader
- Trump Files #20: In 2012, Trump Begged GOP Presidential Candidates to Be Civil
- Trump Files #21: When Donald Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Gorbachev and an Impersonator
- Trump Files #22: His Football Team Treated Its Cheerleaders “Like Hookers”
- Trump Files #23: Donald Tried to Shut Down a Bike Race Named “Rump”
- Trump Files #24: When Donald Called Out Pat Buchanan for Bigotry
- Trump Files #25: Donald’s Most Ridiculous Appearance on Howard Stern’s Show
- Trump Files #26: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal
- Trump Files #27: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible
- Trump Files #28: When Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
- Trump Files #29: Donald Wanted to Build an Insane Castle on Madison Avenue
- Trump Files #30: Donald’s Near-Death Experience (That He Invented)
- Trump Files #31: When Donald Struck Oil on the Upper West Side
- Trump Files #32: When Donald Massacred Trees in the Trump Tower Lobby
- Trump Files #33: When Donald Demanded Other People Pay for His Overpriced Quarterback
- Trump Files #34: The Time Donald Sued Someone Who Made Fun of Him for $500 Million
- Trump Files #35: Donald Tried to Make His Ghostwriter Pay for His Book Party
- Trump Files #36: Watch Donald Shave a Man’s Head on Television
- Trump Files #37: How Donald Helped Make It Harder to Get Football Tickets
- Trump Files #38: Donald Was Curious About His Baby Daughter’s Breasts
- Trump Files #39: When Democrats Courted Donald
- Trump Files #40: Watch the Trump Vodka Ad Designed for a Russian Audience
- Trump Files #41: Donald’s Cologne Smelled of Jamba Juice and Strip Clubs
- Trump Files #42: Donald Sued Other People Named Trump for Using Their Own Name
- Trump Files #43: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers
- Trump Files #44: Why Donald Threw a Fit Over His “Trump Tree” in Central Park
- Trump Files #45: Watch Trump Endorse Slim Shady for President
- Trump Files #46: The Easiest 13 Cents He Ever Made
- Trump Files #47: The Time Donald Burned a Widow’s Mortgage
- Trump Files #48: Donald’s Recurring Sex Dreams
- Trump Files #49: Trump’s Epic Insult Fight With Ed Koch
- Trump Files #50: Donald Has Some Advice for Citizen Kane
- Trump Files #51: Donald Once Turned Down a Million-Dollar Bet on “Trump: The Game”
- Trump Files #52: When Donald Tried to Shake Down Mike Tyson for $2 Million
- Trump Files #53: Donald and Melania’s Creepy, Sex-Filled Interview With Howard Stern
- Trump Files #54: Donald’s Mega-Yacht Wasn’t Big Enough For Him
- Trump Files #55: When Donald Got in a Fight With Martha Stewart
- Trump Files #56: Donald Reenacts an Iconic Scene From Top Gun
- Trump Files #57: How Donald Tried to Hide His Legal Troubles to Get His Casino Approved
- Trump Files #58: Donald’s Wall Street Tower Is Filled With Crooks
- Trump Files #59: When Donald Took Revenge by Cutting Off Health Coverage for a Sick Infant
- Trump Files #60: Donald Couldn’t Name Any of His “Handpicked” Trump U Professors
- Trump Files #61: Watch a Clip of the Awful TV Show Trump Wanted to Make About Himself
- Trump Files #62: Donald Perfectly Explains Why He Doesn’t Have a Presidential Temperament
- Trump Files #63: Donald’s Petty Revenge on Connie Chung
- Trump Files #64: Why Donald Called His 4-Year-Old Son a “Loser”
- Trump Files #65: The Time Donald Called Some of His Golf Club Members “Spoiled Rich Jewish Guys”
- Trump Files #66: “Always Be Around Unsuccessful People,” Donald Recommends
- Trump Files #67: Donald Said His Life Was “Shit.” Here’s Why.
- Trump Files #68: Donald Filmed a Music Video. It Didn’t Go Well.
- Trump Files #69: Donald Claimed “More Indian Blood” Than the Native Americans Competing With His Casinos
- Trump Files #70: Donald Has Been Inflating His Net Worth for 40 Years
- Trump Files #71: Donald Weighs In on “Ghetto Supastar”
- Trump Files #72: The Deadly Powerboat Race Donald Hosted in Atlantic City
- Trump Files #73: When Donald Fat-Shamed Miss Universe
- Trump Files #74: Yet Another Time Donald Sued Over the Word “Trump”
- Trump Files #75: Donald Thinks Exercising Might Kill You
- Trump Files #76: Donald’s Big Book of Hitler Speeches
- Trump Files #77: When Donald Ran Afoul of Ancient Scottish Heraldry Law
- Trump Files #78: Donald Accuses a Whiskey Company of Election Fraud
- Trump Files #79: When Donald’s Anti-Japanese Comments Came Back to Haunt Him
- Trump Files #80: The Shady Way Fred Trump Tried to Save His Son’s Casino