According to a report by the American magazine “Salon” on its website on the 21st, as the topic of the “Epstein case” continues to heat up, an old video of former U.S. President Donald Trump reviewing a teenage model competition has recently been widely spread across social media platforms in the United States, with a cumulative view count exceeding 12 million.
The video was shot in 1991 and re-released online by internet radio show host Ben Mezler on July 18th. The video shows Trump serving as a judge at the “Annual Style” model competition hosted by the “Elite Model Management Company,” where contestants were mostly teenage girls, some as young as 14 years old. Judges questioned the models on-site and guided them in posing.
The report mentioned that the event, since 1983, has been organized by the “Elite Model Management Company.” According to a British newspaper, The Guardian, in 2020, several former participants and industry insiders accused the company’s founder John Casabarrancas of sexually assaulting young models using the event. The report emphasized that Trump himself had not faced such allegations.
The exposure of this video coincided with Trump facing multiple questions over the “Epstein case.” A wealthy American businessman, Epstein, was charged with organizing the sexual transactions of minors and died in prison during Trump’s first term as president, leading to official determination of his death as a suicide. The Wall Street Journal revealed on the 17th that a birthday card from Epstein in 2003 included explicit letters from Trump. However, Trump denied writing the letter or creating the artwork in it, and he filed a defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, accusing the publication of being “false, malicious, and defamatory.”
“Salon” noted that this is not the first time Trump’s association with minors has sparked attention. In 2005, during an interview with Howard Stern, Trump claimed to have entered the changing room of beauty pageant contestants as an organizer to “observe.” Trump said, “You see these girls are so beautiful… I don’t think anyone cares about me doing this.” During his presidential campaign, several “American Teenager” beauty pageant contestants accused Trump of entering their changing rooms without warning.
Trump was a judge for the 1991 teenage model competition. Image source: Screenshot from the video.