Melania’s Real Past with Trump Is Back to Haunt Family

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2:30Ben Meiselas:Wow. Melania is trying to cash in on Donald Trump's cover up of his dark past, his sickening connections with Jeffrey Epstein and his efforts to try to cover up the Epstein list and the Epstein files. What do I mean by she's trying to cash in? So yesterday she posted an advertisement for her book, Melania, that came out a little while ago. And she posted the chapter, How I Met Donald Trump. And it's actually very disturbing when you read it because there are a lot of massive question marks in Melania's past. And well, Melania, since you want to volunteer this to grift off of Donald Trump's cover up of his Epstein connections and the Epstein list.

3:18Ben Meiselas:Let's delve into it. I think we should delve into, Melania, how you advertised falsely that you went to certain colleges that you never went to. I think you have a very suspicious background from Slovenia. And I think we should explore that. Look, even when you read what Melania posts from her autobiography called Melania, How I Met Donald, it's deeply disturbing. I mean, she talks about how in 1998, she went to this club in Manhattan called the Kit Kat Club. You've seen and heard me report on the Kit Kat Club before, right? That is where the wealthy Manhattan men met young Eastern European women.

3:59Ben Meiselas:There was a specific individual named Paolo Zampoli who ran a modeling agency for young Eastern European women. He'd bring them to the Kit Kat Club and they would throw these parties. and Donald Trump was one of the wealthy Manhattan businessmen who showed up and that's where he met Melania. He was with another young girl or woman when he went to the Kit Kat club that night and met Melania. And she tells that story in this specific chapter. So let's just go through her background. Let's go through the chapter. You're going to be shocked by some of the stuff I'm going to tell you, right? Because this was right around the time too, when Donald Trump was like best friends with Epstein, when he was palling around with Epstein, when Ghislaine Maxwell was working with Donald Trump to bring him young women.

4:46Ben Meiselas:And this was talked about in the London Sunday Mirror, talked about how Ghislaine Maxwell, 1997, before any of the information about Epstein would get out, it would talk about how Ghislaine Maxwell would bring these young, beautiful women to Trump and these businessmen. And they refer to Ghislaine as Madame, Madame Maxwell is how they refer to her. So just take a look at some of the photos of what Melania looked like when she was in Slovenia. Photos here, photos there. You see her right there. Now let's take a look at Melania's fake college degree. You probably forgot this story, right? CBS reported July 29, 2016, Melania Trump's website taken down after her degree claim is debunked.

5:33Ben Meiselas:Melania Trump's website that had incorrectly claimed she had received a college degree has been removed and the address now redirects visitors to the Trump organization's website. The website's removal was first noticed on Wednesday by the Huffington Post. In a tweet Wednesday, she said that the website in question created in 2012 had been removed because it does not accurately reflect my current business and professional interests, or maybe because it was false and fraudulent. The website had claimed that she had received a college degree before becoming a skincare entrepreneur and philanthropist.

6:07Ben Meiselas:CBS News confirmed during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week in 2016 that her claim that she earned a degree in design and architecture at a university in Slovenia was false. Not true. The convention program read, After obtaining a degree in design and architecture at the University of Slovenia, Melania was jetting between photo shoots in Paris and Milan, finally settling in New York in 1996. This was a direct quote from the website. CBS News checked the official public records of the university and Melania Trump is not listed as having graduated there with a degree. Also, she plagiarized her entire speech from Michelle Obama's speech at the convention.

6:54Ben Meiselas:So take a look at how she describes meeting Donald Trump. And again, this was the time when Trump was as close as can be with Epstein. Hi, I'm Donald Trump. Chapter five. On a Friday night in September 1998, as I settled into the comfort of my New York City apartment after a whirlwind trip to Paris, my phone rang. It was a friend of mine. My boyfriend is throwing a party at the Kit Kat club tomorrow night. She said, please come. We haven't seen each other in so long. I just got back from Paris. I said, please, it will be fun. A lot of people will be there. We'll pick you up. While I was tired and jet lag, I love the idea that my weekend was about to be filled with the company of friends.

7:33Ben Meiselas:I have always been selective in how I choose to spend my time and where I put my energy. A late night party at the club was not my top choice for a Saturday evening. Just pause there. You were taking a lot of nudes at this time. That's what you were doing, which you've since posted about. And you said you loved your nude modeling career. Currently, Russian state regime media is posting a lot of those nude modeling photos. And these weren't like the nude modeling photos that go into like the high art type of magazines. These were like the nude photos that go into the other type of magazines, if you know what I'm talking about.

8:12Ben Meiselas:So then she goes, I didn't want to shy away from social gatherings. I accepted the invitation anyway. After all, it was fashion week, a time of glamour and sophistication. Like everything she says is such BS, right? I was actually looking forward to mingling with industry insiders and trendsetters. When I stepped into the sleek black limo, my friend arrived. I felt like a celebrity en route to a gala. As we arrived at the Kit Kat club, the energy of the crowd and dazzling lights greeted us. The Kit Kat club was not that type of club. It wasn't like a beautiful gala. It was kind of like a sleazy club.

8:46Ben Meiselas:Inside the dark crowded space, buzzed with models, photographers, editors, and designers mingling on this fashion week Saturday night, I settled upstairs at a table in the VIP section where the atmosphere was one of sophistication and camaraderie. Oh, the Kit Kat club. Oh, it resonates. Sophistication and camaraderie. Some guests dance while others engage in lively conversations and we're all enjoying ourselves. I saw my friend wave at someone behind me. When I turned around, I noticed a man and an attractive blonde woman approaching us. Hi, I'm Donald Trump, the man said when he reached my table.

9:21Ben Meiselas:Nice to meet you. I recognized the name and I knew he was a businessman or celebrity, but not much else. He put his hand out to shake mine. Hello, I replied. I'm Melania. His eyes filled with curiosity and interest and seizing the opportunity, he took the seat next to mine and started a conversation. He asked me about my time in New York, my Slovenian home and my world travels. It was a moment of connection, a brief encounter that left a lasting impression. It was nice to make a new acquaintance. He was accompanied by a beautiful date. So I initially dismissed our conversation as mere pleasantries exchanged at an industry event.

9:56Ben Meiselas:The music was loud and the crowd boisterous, making it difficult to truly connect with someone. From the moment our conversation began, I was captivated by his charm and easygoing nature. So in other words, Trump was there with another young woman. He saw Melania. That's how they met at the Kit Kat Club. It was not a place of sophistication. She starts dating him. She gets an Einstein visa in 2001. They get married and her visa gets expedited. Snoring, hogging the covers, tossing and turning. These are problems in the bedroom that HIMSS can't help you with. But when it comes to performance issues between the sheets like ED, HIMSS has you covered.

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11:52Okay.

11:53Ben Meiselas:I want to dig into this report that Simon Rosenberg did at the time in 2016, right around 2016, 2017. And what he talks about is how this new AP story that came out then about Melania Trump's early days in the U.S. proves she and her husband had been living a lie for years on camera in writing about her immigration path into the United States. The key passage from the AP piece, the documents obtained by the Associated Press show that she was paid for 10 modeling assignments between September 10th and October 15th during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the U.S. and look for work but not perform paid work in the country.

12:35Ben Meiselas:The documents examined by the AP indicate that the modeling assignments would have been outside the bounds of her visa, which means, of course, that the story she has been telling for years is a fable, an imaginary tale as false of the word she spoke at the Republican convention. Work visas. Trump World has never produced any documents or proven Melania ever had a work visa prior to her getting her green card in 2001. Her on-camera description of her returning to her home country to get her visa stamped every few months does not describe any work visa offered by the U.S. government. It suggests she was working in the U.S.

13:12Ben Meiselas:on a tourist visa, a common thing for many models to this day, but not legal. If Melania lied about her early messy path into the U.S. on her green card and citizenship application, she almost certainly committed what could potentially be the types of immigration crimes, potentially, potentially, Essentially, if this is the case, I'm only saying that Donald Trump is going after other immigrants for right now. The Washington Post piece does a very good job explaining why Melania's story about her early work in the U.S. is hard to believe. Green card. Questions remain about how Melania received her green card.

13:46Ben Meiselas:A Trump family lawyer said in an on-camera interview with Univision that she received her green card through marriage. In the recent letter from her lawyer, which this new AP story now confirms was full of falsehoods, Melania claims for the first time ever to have received an extraordinary ability green card, aka the Einstein visa. Few experts believe this is impossible. Few experts believe it's possible given that she was never a terribly successful model. It remains my opinion that until we see her actual green card and application, we should assume she received her green card through marriage.

14:21Ben Meiselas:It is the only option that makes sense as her own lawyers eliminated the other likely possibilities. And imagine that Donald Trump's wife received a green card usually reserved for Nobel laureates, and he never once bragged about it in public, nor did she ever mention it in an interview or include it in her bio. Now, one of the things I want to show you is during the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump said that in two weeks or three weeks, he would hold a press conference with Melania to talk about her status, her immigration status, which he never did. Here, play this clip.

15:22is the only problem. She came in totally legally. I mean, you know, so it's one of those. All right. But you'll see it in a little while. I said to her, no, no, let it simmer for a little while. Let them go wild. Let it simmer. And then let's have a little news conference and have some fun.

15:39Ben Meiselas:So she ultimately never addressed her green card status. She got married to Donald Trump and she brought her family into the United States. And as I mentioned, they met at the Kit Kat Club, Paulo Zampoli helped her, according to this story, expedite her visa, and the rest is history. So now Melania Trump sold a documentary on, you know, she sold her story that I just read you, and there's more in her book, I suppose, to Amazon for$40 million. Jeff Bezos acquired the rights to that a few months back. I'm not sure who the hell would ever want to watch that, But she spent her time grifting off of the Trump-related PACs.

16:22Ben Meiselas:Her stylist, her hairdressers were getting tens of thousands of dollars a month from the Trump supporters. She would get speaking fees when she would speak at Trump-related events to the tune of significant six-figure fees. Whenever she would do interviews, she would demand that she gets paid, like when she demanded that CNN paid her$250 ,000. I don't think they ever did that if they wanted to hear her talk. Here, by the way, is Melania. You can see Melania literally just plagiarizing Michelle Obama's convention speech. Let me play this for you right here. Let's play it. The values that you work hard for what you want in life.

17:05That your word is your bond, that you do what you say you're going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect action because we want our children and all children in this nation to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.

17:29Ben Meiselas:You know, and I give credit to Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett for bringing up Melania's background here at Play This Clip. And since we're talking about integrity, I'm confused as to why my Republican colleagues aren't talking about the lack of integrity when it comes to the president's family's visas. Let me remind y 'all that Melania, the first lady, a model, and when I say model, I'm not talking about Tyra Banks, Cindy Crawford, or Naomi Campbell level, applied for and was given an EB1 visa. And what that stands for is an Einstein visa. Now, y 'all that don't know, let me tell you how you receive an Einstein visa.

18:06You're supposed to have some sort of significant achievement, like being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize or a Pulitzer, being an Olympic medalist, or having other sustained extraordinary abilities and success in sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics. Last time I checked, the first lady had none of those accolades under her belt. It doesn't take an Einstein to see that the math ain't math in here.

18:29Ben Meiselas:I think about Melania selling the mean coin, which has lost like 98 % of its value. I think about Melania selling like symbols of America in like bracelets for, you know, hundreds of dollars, you know, to people like, how tacky can you be? And even though she's not selling this, this just leaves personally a bad taste in my mouth, you know, where the federal government failed Texas. The flash floods could have been dealt with so much better than how it was dealt with. And now they want to pretend they did a great job in Texas. But you know, Melania and Donald Trump go out there and this is what she posts.

19:12Ben Meiselas:And she goes forever love mystic. This bracelet will forever hold a sacred place in my heart, a quiet shining thread to the young souls who now watch over us from heaven. Each charm carries the weight of their memory, the warmth of their presidents, and will forever symbolize their love. Mystic is permanently bound through the joyous time spent together and the remembrance of their shared laughter. I mean, look, to me, the sentiments of remembering these young girls who died is so important. And my heart goes out to everyone who lost their family member. It is one of the most tragic events. But there's more that we should be doing as a country than posting bracelets and charm bracelets and things like that.

19:55Ben Meiselas:You know, when Donald Trump says you're an evil person, if you ask what went wrong, And as you have Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security Secretary, say what happened in Texas was perfect and they want to do that in other states, I'm like, just stop it. That's not what we need. I'm sick and tired of the thoughts and prayers. Look at our bracelets. Let's take action. Government needs to work. What are we doing here? Let's actually help the people by trying to save their lives in the first place and taking accountability when things go wrong. How about we do that? anyway that's the background of melania a deeper dive than you probably ever thought let me know what you think and again she's she's boasting about how she met donald trump at the kitkat club when he was with another girl at the club hell play the thanks for watching and subscribe can't get enough midas check out the midas plus sub stack for ad-free articles reports podcasts daily recaps from ron filikowski and more sign up for free now at midasplus.com

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