Melania Goes Missing as Her Fixer Surfaces

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3:20Ben Meiselas:Now, one of the things we're seeing as Melania just kind of disappears and as she is just nowhere to be found, she has her fixer show up, especially as people start to ask questions about Melania's dark past. She puts this guy out here. His name is Mark Beckman. He says he's the senior advisor to Melania. And you know things are getting really bad and desperate when you bring Mark Beckman out for Melania. We've talked about this before when she gave that disastrous press conference about her dark past. And she said, everything about me and Epstein is false. And if you see any emails that have my names, it's false.

3:58Ben Meiselas:And Iggy Lane, everything's false. There's no connection there. Then that's when her fixer shows up, Mark Beckman. And now this is like so over the top. He just started doing his like media rounds. And he's like, okay, what lots of people don't know about Melania. She's the only person who's brought peace between Zelensky and Putin. The only sustainable peace that's taken place between Ukraine and Russia, Melania did. Melania deserves credit for that. And so as Melania is just livid that Donald Trump went off on the NATO summit with Natalie and he walks around with Natalie Harp, is that Mark Beckman is like, Melania basically created peace between Russia and Ukraine.

4:44Ben Meiselas:Y 'all see the piece, right? Listen to what he says here playing this clip. Let's think about what she's done as it relates to the war in Russia, Ukraine. I think it's fair to say that our first lady has created the only tangible, the only substantive steps towards peace. As you highlighted, she has led the charge. She and her representative have led the charge for four reunifications between Ukrainian children and Russian children and their families. It's a major, major undertaking. And I could tell you, I'm happy to report now that she's in the process of organizing the fifth reunification, David.

5:23Ben Meiselas:And then he also said, and also you may have seen in the movie, Melania. Melania Trump also responsible for bringing back the hostages to Israel. Melania saved the hostages without Melania. That wouldn't happen. Here, play this clip. But she's doing so much more. And the mainstream media is not talking about it. I mentioned reunification of families. She's doing more behind the scenes and nobody's talking about this probably should be talked about. Can you talk about all the things she's doing that people aren't hearing about in the mainstream media? Well, you mentioned reunification. Let's start with her humanitarian efforts because they really are remarkable.

6:04First, dating back pre pre administration before the inauguration. Remember, you might have seen it in her movie Melania. she played a significant role in actually creating freedom for one of the Israeli hostages, Keith Siegel. She was in contact with Aviva Siegel. And because of the first lady's efforts, two Israeli hostages who were being held in Gaza were both freed, Evitar David, as well as Keith Siegel. So that's incredible.

6:34Ben Meiselas:I told you, right? Then on this state regime media, whatever the heck this is right here, the host is like, could you imagine what people would be saying if this was Dr. Jill stopping the war between Ukraine and Russia, stopping Russia's war in Ukraine, doing all of these. Could you imagine if Dr. Jill, Jill would get credit. First off, why do all you have to like, well, if you think you've done things that merit applause or whatever, Just stand on business. Just stand on it. Why is it always Dr. Jill, former President Biden, Obama? Watch what this guy says here playing this clip. I mean, and these are the stories that we need to tell.

7:13If her name was Dr. Jill Biden, CNN would be falling over themselves to report on all of these things. Instead, you know, we have to go and make sure we screen this from the rooftops because nobody is realizing how consequential this first lady is. Probably one of the most significant first ladies we've had in a generation.

7:29Ben Meiselas:And then they just like bring on more guests. They then have this individual who goes by Valkyrie, Liberty Valkyrie. And she says that like Melania deserves all the credit in the world for bringing forward this foster for care legislation, which has completely solved the foster system. And then she goes, if anyone doesn't support it, if you don't support her legislation, you've got TDS. You've got Trump derangement syndrome. Valkyrie, let me ask you this question, Val. Who controls Congress right now? Republicans control the House. Republicans control the Senate. Donald Trump's in the White House.

8:14Ben Meiselas:You also control the right-wing Supreme Court. So Melania's foster the care program, it hasn't even gotten out of a committee. in the House of Representatives. You want applause when the legislation hasn't even got out of the Republican committees, when y 'all control all branches of government. So you're attacking the Republicans for undermining Melania? Here, play this clip. And you still have politicians, because they suffer from TDS, Trump derangement syndrome, are refusing to sign off on these programs to facilitate the most marginalized community that we have in this country. And I just have to say thank you to Melania.

8:55I have never seen a first lady put so much effort into a community that I have seen Melania put into the foster youth. There is not another first lady, you guys can Google it, you can grok it, you can chat GBT it, that has put the amount of effort and work into helping out the foster youth. And as a former foster youth myself, I was in the system since I was born, just so we're clear. In California, I grew up in group homes, moving to different foster homes. Sometimes I was lucky enough to be in with a family member, but I went through the gamut of the foster care system. And anybody that is attempting to shut down these foster the youth accounts truly don't care about marginalized communities.

9:38Ben Meiselas:Then you can see, you know, as again, as Melania's dark past surfaces, and something happened this week that I'll share with you as well. And I think this is why they are really pushing this. Ivana was back in the news, Donald Trump's first wife. Obviously, Melania is Donald Trump's third wife, his first wife, Ivana from Czechoslovakia, whose father was intelligence for Soviet Union. There was lots of views that Ivana's father may have been spying for Russia. And then Donald and Ivana went to Moscow together in the late 80s. That trip was organized by the KGB, people say. It was a tourism group, it was really kind of a KGB front tourism group that helped do this trip.

10:26Ben Meiselas:Then Donald Trump had the affair with Marla Maples, and then Ivana died under mysterious circumstances. We've been reporting now on the Midas Touch Network for quite some time about Ivana's connections with Ghislaine Maxwell. They were like best friends, Ivana and Ghislaine Maxwell. They were very, very, very close and they would drive around together. And it's just fascinating because Melania would, we saw Melania in emails with Ghislaine, although Melania says those emails aren't true. We saw in the emails with, we saw photos of Melania and Ghislaine, although Melania says that's, I guess, not true or AI.

11:03Ben Meiselas:I don't know what Melania says. I also find it fascinating that Melania has made her issue like AI for foster kids. Like that's like a big, get the foster kids the AI. They need AI. I don't know. But then she says everything else is like AI. But there was this story, Daily Beast, who reached out to an individual by the name of Beatrice, who was a 1993 beauty pageant contestant. Beatrice Kuhl, Miss Switzerland, who talked about how she thought that Ivana may have been working with Ghislaine. And that was out this week. So that's why I think then people would ask natural questions. Okay, well, what did Melania know?

11:44Ben Meiselas:What did Melania not know? And so, I mean, you see these stories. Office of the First Lady redefining the role of FLOTUS, a new level of leadership in the East Wing. Dude, the East Wing doesn't even exist anymore. How could there be a new level of leadership in the East Wing? It's literally destroyed. It's literally rubble. It's in a pile of asbestos right now. But even this article that was supposed to be the puff piece for Politico, that Melania's legislation has not even yet moved out of committee. Then Melania posts this photo with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant. And it says, thank you, Hawaii, for fostering the future accounts.

12:22Ben Meiselas:Hawaii has taken important steps forward for children in foster care. Look, I think we all need to make sure we certainly improve the foster care system. It's compassionate and empathetic that we are. I think it's definitely very much a noble cause. Melania wants to focus on investment accounts for foster care system, which I think there's probably a lot of other systemic things to address before doing investment accounts. And then her legislation hasn't even got past the committee, as I note. but you know this isn't the governor of Hawaii you posted a photo of yourself and treasury secretary Scott Besant there we're halfway through the year and it's a good time to check in with yourself back in January I think we all had plans to eat better and be more consistent some weeks I do great other weeks I look up at one in the afternoon and realize that I've had nothing but coffee that's just real life that's why Huel H-U-E-L has become one of those things that I keep around it's not about starting over every Monday It's about not completely falling off when life gets busy.

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14:41Ben Meiselas:Also this week, Melania was humiliated by Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden was on a podcast and he talked about how Melania has yet to actually file a lawsuit against him. Remember, Melania threatened to sue Hunter Biden for a billion dollars because Hunter Biden said that he had read Michael Wolff talk about connections between Melania and Epstein. And so Melania's like, I'm going to sue you, Hunter. Hunter's like, you think I care? Sue me. Sue me for a billion dollars. I want discovery. I want your deposition, Melania. Let's go and have your deposition taken. So then there was this story this week as well.

15:20Ben Meiselas:Ivana Trump accused of helping feed Epstein Network in explosive new allegations. A former beauty queen who says Donald Trump groped her, sexually assaulted her at a 1993 pageant, that's just a few years before Donald Trump met Melania, has leveled a new claim at the president's first wife. By the way, she's buried in the back lot of Donald Trump's golf course in Bedminster with like all of the grass growing over it, alleging Ivana Trump helped funnel young women into Jeffrey Epstein's orbit. Beatrice Kuhl, 55, a former Miss Switzerland and Miss Europe contestant, told the Daily Beast's new punch-up substack that she believed Ivana acted as a madam-style figure in Epstein's social world on par with convicted co-conspirator Gailene Maxwell.

16:06Ben Meiselas:And of course, there were all the questions as well about how did Melania get here? What was the role of Paulo Zampoli? Paulo Zampoli's ex, who got deported to Brazil, has made lots of statements that she knows the secrets about Melania. What type of visa was Melania here on originally? Was it a tourist visa? Was it appropriate? Remember Donald Trump during the first term when he was running, he said, I'm going to do a press conference and we're going to tell you about Melania's immigration status. There's so many red flags there, especially as the Trump regime is out there doing the most heinous things to immigrants when there are all these questions about Melania's immigration status, which in my opinion have never been answered.

16:52Ben Meiselas:Let me just give a hat tip to my friends over at the Daily Beast and their reporter, Tom Lutchum over at the Punch-Up Substack. Here's how he described Beatrice. Let me just play this clip right here. Beatrice Kuhl, and she was a former Miss Europe runner-up, Miss Switzerland in the early 1990s, but also a banking executive. And she had a very brief foray into the world of Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and others in that world, as we know. Donald Trump used to put on beauty pageants. Well, he owned the Miss Universe contest, right? A lot of it was held in Donald Trump's hotel, in the plaza. And she's previously spoken out, actually.

17:36She's one of 28 women who've made in the past, I think the tally is 28, who have made allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump. He has denied all of them, but he has not sued any of them, which I find intriguing. So, Tom, what is it that Beatrice Kuhl is actually alleging? She was a former Miss Switzerland. She was a runner-up as Miss Europe. She met Donald Trump as part of the beauty pageant world. What is she alleging exactly? Well, she has alleged that when she was at this pageant, that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her, groped her after this beauty pageant in 1993, and then claims that he threatened her afterwards, warning bad things can happen to you if you speak out.

18:29But she now is in her 50s, and she says that she's faced similar threats since from anonymous sources where people, for instance, when Virginia Giffray died, she received a message from an AI spoofed phone number with a spoofed message saying, we know where you are and we're going to get you. Now, we're not suggesting that Donald Trump initiated that. She says a lot of the women who have made similar allegations, and then there were 28 of them, we count, have made allegations against Donald Trump in this regard, have also received threats. So she says that she fears for her life a lot of the time, for speaking out.

19:10Ben Meiselas:And then he describes what Beatrice alleged. Here, play this clip right here. He says that she was summoned to his room by an aide and Donald Trump was there and he groped her. And she made a big fuss, screamed, kicked off and was only able to get away, she felt, because she's a banking executive. So she's got a different life. She's not a particularly vulnerable woman or she wouldn't regard herself as such. And so she says that a different me or a different person might well have just not done anything. But she didn't. She made a fuss, kicked off, and then she claims was told by him that you keep quiet about this.

19:55Effectively, you keep quiet about this or bad things will happen to you. And then said a show must go on. So he says to her, the show must go on. So he's, she alleges, groped her, sort of grabbed her. She fights him off because she's not looking to make a future as a beauty queen. This is something that she does in her spare time. She's actually a banking executive. So she fights him off. She's screaming. She's making a lot of fuss. And he goes, never mind. The show must go on. What did that signal to her? Well, it felt to her as though this wasn't the first time we'd done it. It was easy. It was an easy thing.

20:34It's like, well, show must go on, just as though this was not his first rodeo, so to speak. And when these allegations were first brought, Caroline Levitt said that they were fake allegations. So why is Beatrice Coole speaking out to you now? I mean, you've got a lot of detail here. Well, she has been heartened by Michael Wolff, for example, and feels that his evidence around Epstein has led to an empowerment among survivors like her of Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera. And she feels that the more people that speak out, the more likely it is that it's going to elicit other people to speak out.

21:19And she feels like a dam will burst. There will come a point where a dam will burst. I admire her optimism. I hope that there are more answers for these people. But all we can do as reporters is report their stories and their testimonies and hope that it does do that.

21:34Ben Meiselas:And then to remind you, Epstein, victim, survivor, Maria Farmer, I had covered this a while ago, previously talked about how Ivana Trump was Ghislaine's best friend. And it's fascinating because it seems like Melania was trying to become, I was giving you my opinion, they seem friendly, let's just say that in the email. But Melania says the email doesn't exist and that these communications, I guess, aren't real or something like that. Here, play this clip. That she understood this was happening to other young women who were beauty pageant contestants too, right? Yes. She doesn't feel like she was the sole target of any of this, no.

22:14And she saw that contestants were picked out from one particular project called the American Dream Pageant. and they were moved on to private gatherings with men that they barely knew by Jeffrey Epstein, who at this point was one of Donald Trump's close friends. Yeah, she says that nothing... So she's a beauty pageant veteran, so she's been to plenty of beauty pageants that were reputable in the past. We were talking about Miss Shura, Miss Switzerland, etc., etc. But she says nothing about this was normal. It wasn't normal. And you talk about being picked out, going to private things. Even her own story about being asked to go to the suite with Donald Trump by an aide.

23:03Not normal. That isn't normal. That isn't what happens at beauty pageants. And she said that it just felt iffy and off. At the time, I don't think she necessarily realized what was going on. Because she was 23. She was coming from a normal beauty pageant background, and this wasn't. But now in retrospect, she feels like there was, I mean, certainly Jeffrey Epstein was using them to target and prey upon young women. Whether or not Donald Trump knows, Donald Trump has denied any involvement in any of this.

23:41Ben Meiselas:There you have it, folks. Let me know what you think. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. And thank you for watching, everybody. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.