From the beginning, she has fiercely tried to protect and control her version of her life. After she came to New York in the 1990s. In the past, where we understood that someone was the president of the United States or someone was the first lady, they were, you know, the public has a right to know. The public has a right to discuss. The public has the right to literally say anything they want about about these people who have such power in our lives. This is a moment in time when when, when the president and the first lady have decided, you know, we're going to push back about that. We're we're we're in control. You're not. Michael. Joanna. Melania. Good afternoon. The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. The individuals lying about me are devoid of ethical standards. Humility and respect. That. That would be me. I think that would be me. I don't understand how, as first lady representing the country of the United States, she hasn't figured out yet how to how to speak the language is just shocking to me. However, Why now? Why is she coming out and making this speech now? Okay. Well, I, you know, I think, I mean, we've had now, what, more than 24 hours of of nobody talking about anything else but this. And, I think we can reach the conclusion, that nobody knows anything. Nobody has any idea why she did this. It's like, you know, reach for the stars. It makes no sense. So let's. That should be our point of departure, and then we can go over all of the various, the various theories. And I have a few new theories, perhaps to add to this, but I think the thing is, and that we have to say, and everybody is an expert, everybody is pronouncing why the truth is, nobody knows. Nobody knows. But you do have an ongoing legal case against us, so this is a good time to catch up with it. The recap is, is that I received a threatening letter from Melania and Melania's lawyers about things I had said, linking her to Jeffrey Epstein. Now that she puts out these letters on an almost at this point industrial scale, they go out. I mean, The Daily Beast has gotten them gotten them before. This particular letter was directly to me. But there are other people who actually. Oh, always as soon as somebody gets these letters, then they call me and say, oh, what? What do we do? And, but anyway, I got this, I got this, this letter, and then my. And give us a time. Michael, give us a time frame. When did you get the letter? October. So the end of October. I got this this letter and, you know, and this is I mean, it's kind of scary. You get a letter from the from the first lady and effectively from the president's lawyers. He has a, I, this is a pattern. This is a pattern. And people have large media organizations. I am not obviously a large media organizations, but large media organizations have gotten these letters from the president. And they have they have, folded, they've wilted. They've paid tens, more than tens of millions of dollars because of these, these threats. So I got this, this, $1 billion threat I have long standing relationships with with, with First Amendment lawyers because I'm a writer and, and I, I called my lawyers. I said, well, what do we do here? And they were, rightly appalled. I mean, you know, you you have the first lady of the United States using the power of the presidency to based basically in intimidate someone who is saying things that she or the president does not want, said. And there is virtually nothing that I said that was that would be considered libelous in any kind of in any kind of strict legal understanding of what libel is. So my attorney said, well, in New York State, actually to to intimidate like this, to make these kinds of threats just to keep you from saying what you have every right to say is illegal. It's called a slap action. And there is in New York State, anti-SLAPP laws. You can't do this. It's just not it's just it's just, a, a thing that you do not then the United States of America, you we, we understand, should not be done. So instead of waiting for her to sue me, which, we turned around and sued her under the slap laws in the state of New York. So that happened the end of October, and that has now been been, and then I launched a Go Fund Me campaign, which raised an enormous amount of money. I mean, from more than 25,000 individual donors, we raised more than $800,000, which, has certainly sent a message to the first lady. And, I mean, it may it means that we can we can, we can continue this legal action against her for, for a quite a long time. And, so, so we are now and these things creep along. I mean, it's astounding how slowly they they go. They made a motion to bring the case into federal court. We're in state court. We made it. We filed a suit in state court. They moved to to move it to federal court, which is their right. But then the federal court has to ascertain whether it is properly before, before the federal court. And that is where it is now. There are a set of motions before a judge in a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, who happens to be a Trump appointed judge. And whether that's a factor or not, we we don't know whether that will be a factor. We don't know. But it is in for this is now for almost close to eight weeks before this, before this judge in, in federal court and the issues before her are their side. They have moved to dismiss the case. Of course we we don't we don't believe there's much a chance of of that. They've also moved to remove the case to Florida, which would be a more advantageous jurisdiction for them. We, in turn, have moved to remand the case to federal to, state court and our, our position there is it should be in state court because there are no federal issues. And and the fact that, it might properly be in federal court if she were a, a citizen of Florida and I was a citizen of New York. But we are arguing that that's a lie, that she is actually a citizen of New York. She spends most of her time here. All her business interests are here. Her family is here. Anything that would that would constitute a citizen relationship with a particular state is here. And, and we've that's that's well-documented and we've and that's that evidence or the evidence that we have gathered is before the court. And now we've asked if the court is not satisfied to let us have discovery, which is to ask her for or all kinds of documentary evidence, including her prenuptial agreement, for instance, the other, you've you've all sorry, you've asked Melania Trump for her. Let's also just we've just. Yeah, we've just asked for discovery. And that's one of the things the judge has now has to decide on these on these issues. We're waiting for that decision which should, should, might and should come any day now. So is that the reason that she has stepped forward? This is the first time a first lady would have sued, journalists or media organizations who are saying things about her. We understand the, the law, sort of the law provides for I mean, almost I don't think there's any instance of a precedent or the first lady suing the media. Now, this has gone on repeatedly in the Trump years, of course. And we should go on. You know, the first the first lady, this has been really interesting. And I think that this is a key part of this from the beginning, she has fiercely tried to protect and control her version of her life after she came to, New York in the 1990s. Now, now that's, that whole story, that whole narrative is, has many confusing details. How did she come here? Who brought her here under what legal auspices? How did she work here? I mean, many, many, many details which are, you know, might be, that might have answers that she does not want the public to know. And, that might be kind of complicated for her. So what she has done to that to do that is she has she has, she has used the legal system to shut down questions about her life here. Notably, she sued the Daily Mail, which suggested that she might have been an escort in New York. And, the daily Mail settled letter after letter after letter of threat after threat after threat to anyone who brings up this subject. So in the past, where we understood that someone was the president of the United States or someone was the first lady, they were, you know, the public has a right to know. The public has a right to discuss. The public has the right to speculate. The public has a right to, literally say anything they want about about these people who have such power in our lives. So this is now this is this is a moment in time when, when, when the president and the first lady have decided, you know, we're going to push back about that. We're we're we're in control. You're not. Well, particularly notable was her documentary. Of course, the president now refers to his wife as a movie star. When asked who she was at the Easter egg hunt role by a child, he said, oh, that's a movie star. She's the movie star. But she had a full documentary when she could have addressed some of these issues. And instead the entire documentary focuses on 20 days only in the run up to the inauguration. So there's no there's no answer to the question that I think most people are fascinated and puzzled by, which is how did she, as a model, get an Einstein visa? A visa which accepts that you are a person of exceptional merit to move here, because we know that she wasn't actually a supermodel. She definitely was a model. She did catalogs, but she wasn't a supermodel. So how she got the Einstein visa for exceptional ability remains a puzzle. Yeah. And let's let's open that up a little more, because I think the movie is important. Or the doc, the documentary. Because what it does, what it inaugurates is a melania business. It's Melania the brand. And she is busy building a a melania brand business of extensions and how to exploit her own name, how to monetize, her, her own name and her own position. And she's created the the documentary is is a is an advertorial really. It's not, it's not, it's un documenting. It's certainly not a documentary to inform us who she is. It's a documentary to create the illusion of what she wants to be, a branding opportunity. And so, how is she branding herself, though? What is her brand? What does it stand for? Well, I, I, I would be hard pressed to say it stands for. It stands, but but it seems to be. It stands for. She's a glamorous, a glamorous woman who is, somehow connected to an enormous amount of power. I mean, what what else? What else is there? I don't know, and it's this name and, you know, what are brands? It's name recognition. I mean, she has a book. She put out a book. Melania the book now, Melania the movie. So this is taking really a kind of a, a Trump, a Trump approach. Just put your name on everything. No. Notably notably not the name Trump. The name Melania. Right. So is so it seemed to me very clearly. Well, well there are so many there are so many questions that this statement, throws into the air. Not least, why is she dragging attention back to the very issue that will not leave her husband alone, but very briefly, because of the war has actually taken a back seat. We know that this is an issue that enrages him, that we know that he and Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein continues now to to unfold as the most diabolical man in America over the last 20 years, that he and Jeffrey Epstein were very close. There are pictures of them all hanging out together Jeffrey Epstein, Melania Trump, Donald Trump and Glenn Maxwell now, of course, in jail for 20 years for sex trafficking. So. So why is no attention back to that? Well, that is the question which nobody can satisfactorily answer. And it's and, you know, there are the, the theory, the perfectly reasonable theory that she is getting out ahead of something. A, you know, the PR point of view, if you if you know that something disparaging is coming about you, you should be the one to say it or to anticipate it and try to modify it or to head it off. So that may be and a lot of people are speculating about a lot of possible issues. And we should we should get into that. But the other thing that it could I mean, it's certainly, it certainly feels like, is that it could be a direct dig in assault against her husband. Who is this bad for? Who it is it who is it? A bad for the most. And it would seem to be, Donald Trump. This is bringing back an issue that, that, I mean, certainly hadn't gone away, but it had been muted at least for the past number of weeks of, of the, of the war. And here we are, front and center. No bigger issue today, yesterday, today and for the coming days or weeks again, then Jeffrey Epstein and his relationship to the president and the first lady and the president yesterday said that, that he'd had a sort of two minute conversation with her about whether or not she was going to do this. He sort of sensed or he tried to give the impression that he knew she was going to give some kind of statement, but he didn't know how. And then he said, well, if he'd been doing it, he might not have done it like this. So he seemed a somewhat nonplused by the fact that she'd done that. It seemed to come as a surprise, certainly to the regular press corps who cover the white House. Often you get a hint of, of what the of what the speech is going to be beforehand. People knew that she was booked to make a speech that was in the white House diary, but no one expected this. It was as if she'd deliberately kept it secret. I suspect that he was completely caught off guard by this, because it's so I mean, from left field. So, yeah, I would say he knew nothing about this. And, and also remember, part of this statement was, was this invitation to Congress to, to go deeper, to investigate more, to actually investigate, you know, the son of a bitch, her husband. So if you're Donald Trump and you're thinking, well, who knows? What's that? We're inside his head trying to figure out what he's thinking about the Strait of Juan. Well, since he's not inside his wife's head. Well, I was going to say. How did he see it? Did someone call him and say, sir, you need to be watching. You should be, you know, just switch on the news. He's always watching the news anyway, so maybe it wasn't a surprise to him because she suddenly pops up and there she is. But but, as you say, nobody has talked about anything else because, which of course means that there are all sorts of conspiracies going around about why this should happen. One is the case that you have. The second is the strange case of Pablo Sampaoli, the owner of a modeling agency, who says and according to Melania, he says he introduced Melania to Donald Trump at a party he was having. And that's just the official version of how they met. As written in her book. Melania. Yes, in some. Poly, of course, had a relationship with Epstein at the time. I mean, this whole the the modeling world. I mean, we're right in the in the middle of this modeling world of the 1990s, the dirty 1990s, and and, you know, in which everybody kind of knows everybody in this, in this relatively tight knit modeling world, everybody is investing with everybody Epstein is investing in, in modeling agencies. Trump is investing in modeling agencies. Polly is a model. Jean-Luc. What's that guy's name now? Sean Lee. Now, you know, another completely suspicious character involved with all all of these people. And then in the middle of this, we have, you know, I mean, Melania comes to New York, she's a model in New York dealing with with all of these people. Yes. Just so but go on. That's just the background to the to well, this this is just the background because, Polly ends up having a long relationship with a Brazilian model called Amanda Magaro, with whom she has a child. They then have what appears to be an acrimonious breakup, and it becomes evident that Amanda has overstayed on her visa. And it appears that someone tipped off ice. She is forced to self deport back to Brazil in the middle of a custody battle for the son that she has with Sampaoli. She then goes on ex furious it appears. And again, we're not sure if this is true, but this is one of the big stories that's being talked about out there. She then goes on ex and posts that she is furious that Melania hasn't come to her help, that she has been close with Melania's family. There are lots of pictures of them all hanging out together as recently as, 20, 22. And that she's prepared to tell all. Of course, nobody knows what all is or what it refers to, but it's a threatening post. It's a threatening post on X. Okay. But this is let's deconstruct this. This is a story that has been around for, you know, the better part of two months now. It has a story that has gotten almost no traction. Social media notice, of course, you know, but but, but certainly is not a substantial story. I mean, it's one he, you know, it's really is a he said, she said, you know, marital complicated story. I mean, it seems it seems terrible. It seems that he, he dropped a dime on on his, on his, ex partner on his child's mother. It seems terrible. But it was also not a story in which in which, in which anyone was, was linking Melania to Epstein. So. So it was a story that was not getting much traction. It was a story that was not linking Melania to Epstein. It was a story that one had no reason to believe would would mutate into a major crisis. Except now it has. Why? Because she came out and made this announcement. So she has whatever, whatever, whatever velocity this story now has is all due to her. Well, and then to add another, spark to the conspiracy fire, Donald Trump then posts a video, a horrifying video of a man bludgeoning a woman to to death in Florida in a gas station, which he says he's put out to remind people how awful the Democrats are and that these are the kind of people that the Democrats welcomed into the the country. The man in question is a Haitian. Immigrant. And so the timing of that people read into as somehow a threat from the president himself. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, everybody is reading everything into into anything. So we we don't we don't know how does how is this informing our understanding of why Melania is, suddenly made this announcement? I'm like, okay, I don't, does it tell us anything? Does it get us anywhere? Do we know? I mean, nothing has come out in the in since she had made this, since she made this statement. So all we really still have is the statement. The statement is the news. So if the statement was made to preempt news, it certainly hasn't preempted anything and has rather rather become the news itself. So now we have it in. If this is about Melania's brand, she is the the the Melania brand is suddenly very much tied to the Epstein story because she tied it. So what is going on here? I think as things stand now, it seems it seems to most directly track back to Melania's relationship with her husband. Okay, so so we have theories. We have one that she is trying to get ahead of something. It could be related to your own case. As the first person to sue a first lady with the New York anti-SLAPP suit so it could also be asking Congress to investigate the Epstein files more because she wants to know about her husband. Because we know that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were friends for at least 15 years and close friends, and you've posited possibly even best friends. Why would she want to know the truth about her, about her husband? That would be a truth that would be damaging to her husband and therefore damaging to her, unless she wants to doesn't not not necessarily want to know the truth. She wants to damage her husband, or she wants to threaten to damage her husband. And, you know, remember, let's let's we we know that this is, to say the least, and unusual marriage. They basically don't live together. This relationship, of the of the president and the first lady fits no pattern of any president and first lady heretofore. Well, and certainly people in the white House say that when she comes, she's she's treated as if she were a guest. So it's certainly a peculiar marriage. It's also possible that she lives in a bubble, that she didn't know there were all these things being said about her, and she went down some sort of spiral. Yeah. I mean, you know, she went on the spiral on social media and sort of found all sorts of things. And so I have to put a stop to this. Yeah. I mean, I suppose that that's true. I don't know how she thought that this would put a stop to it. In, rather than having the opposite effect is, is fueling it. But she certainly I seems to have known something because she sends out these letters all the time. $1 billion here, $1 billion there. Give me a billion. But that also indicates that she is very aware she is trying to stop something. And she is trying to stop something, and we're not absolutely sure what the something is. Right. And she may not be I mean, I don't I mean, I think that, I mean, other than her general strategy of saying nothing and ignoring everything, which I think has been a basically savvy strategy, I mean, she's never given any indication that she has a, a deeper strategic sense of how to deal with, with, with, with the press and with potential scandals and with, and with social media. Well, she's just dealt with it by becoming even more unknowing. That is a new of use, this word about her. And it's a great word to describe her. Unknowable. She seems unknowable. You watched the the the documentary of her, and she remains unknowable. You have no idea who her friends are. The only people she talks to are people that are being paid her designer, her stylist, her florist, her event planner. There's nobody around to actually that. That appears to have any real relationship with her. And it's very clear when they focus on her meeting the president and they going off to do something together, that they're having a conversation as if they haven't spoken to each other for several days. And she's like, have you spoken to Barron? And he's like, yes, he's a cute kid. He's a cute kid. As if he doesn't actually have much to do with him. And then she says he's very smart. He's very smart. So this is not a couple that, at least according to the documentary that she chose to put out in the world about herself, she's not suggesting this. Any intimacy between her and her husband. And at the end of the inauguration, the evening of the inauguration, the one night you think that perhaps a newly elected president might have conjugal relations with his wife, they very clearly go their own separate ways, as if they've done their duty with each other. And now they're separating. He's going off to eat burgers and watch Fox News. And she's going, who knows what she's going in. In the. If your strategy is to be unknowable, then, he, I mean, it's not exactly a successful step to get out in front of the cameras and then start to announce all kinds of details which which are which, many or checkable many already seem to be contradicted by by known evidence. I mean, you have just you have just actually opened the window into asking myriad questions about who you are, what you've been doing, and what the real story is. Here. So who do you think if anybody advised her on this strategy? You know, I mean, it's hard to say that because we don't know what the strategy is for. We don't know, and we don't know what the point of this is. So it's very hard to say who is advising her in, in any effort to accomplish that, that point or goal. Well, and she may be looking to a life post-Trump. She's much younger than her husband. She's 55. He's soon to turn 80. There's a 25 year age gap between them. So she must be thinking, what am I going to do after this first lady gig is up? Do I want to go and work in fashion? Do I not want to work at all? Do I want to remarry? She doesn't, you know, so she she doesn't want to, as you say, go down on the Trump ship. If it all ends badly. Yeah. No, I, I mean, obviously kids can see that, but still, why would you come out and dare the world to challenge the world to link you to Epstein? Well, and especially to say that the pictures aren't true and the pictures are I, because there are plenty of pictures that are previous to I never been heard of, which show, you know, very clearly Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Glenn Maxwell. And we saw the letters to and from Guillen and Melania in the Epstein files. Guillen calling her sweet pea. You know, Melania saying, great story about Jeffrey Epstein in You magazine. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, certainly I mean, and, you know, it's I mean, there's a soft that she's trying to she's trying to I mean, this is spin this, but spin this in a, you know, in a gauzy way. Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time. Since overlapping in social circles in common in New York City, in Palm Beach. Now, that doesn't sound like she. At the same time she's saying, I didn't know Epstein at all. But that certainly doesn't sound like you didn't know Epstein at all, right? It sounds like I'm trying to I I'm I'm, you know, I'm I'm trying to do a dance to distance myself from in fact, knowing Epstein, and we know that Donald and, Jeffrey Epstein were friends and fell out somewhere between 2000 and 4, 2005, which was in 2004. They started to I mean, that was the the, you know, the moment, the fight over real estate. And so Melania had been dating Donald Trump for at least four years at that point. So Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump and Melania overlapped in their relationship history for at least four years. Right. Six 1998, they they met and she says they met in 1998, although there's a clip of, of a show says, I've looked at all of his stuff because of this case in which she says, she says they met in 1997. Again, all of this, this is this this is all a murky area. And the only thing that she has accomplished by this statement, it seems to me, is to, is to throw it up, throw it out there and have people pin it down. It's really strange. Well, I guess we'll see over the next 2 or 3 weeks if anything comes out. But let's, let's, let's think of this in also in, in broader terms, the terms that things are going dramatically wrong for Donald Trump at this at this point, and they thing and there there could be parallel tracks. They're, they're, they're going wrong for in the war. They're going wrong from, from the country going wrong in terms of heading into the midterms, elect elections. It's quite possible that they're going wrong in terms of his marriage or that all of these things become linked as they do with everyone. When one thing goes wrong, other things goes, goes, goes wrong, and and she is now stepping into the middle of this. So what she is doing and I think we can safely say this, this she's what she has done is not without meaning. It means something. It is to some purpose what that purpose might be. We don't yet know, but it could very well be the personal in and interfacing of the personal and the political. Have we had a president get divorced in the white House? I don't think we have halfway. Well, we we, we can safely say not in the modern, in the, in the modern era, all presidents and first ladies have endeavored to appear as though they have happy and traditional marriages. What a pressure for any couple justify is under that absolutely appalling, microscope. But and then and again and I think this is, this is really important, I think this is going to be a theme that we're going to see more of. She is trying to distance herself. She is trying to build a separate business. She is trying to to come out of this experience, the experience of being the first lady ahead of the game instead of behind the game, which with Donald Trump is always possible. Okay. Well, Michael obviously Will will be paying close attention and will be doing exactly the thing that I think the first lady didn't want anybody to do, which is pay much more attention to this matter. And we will look forward to hearing an update from your case. You said you thought there might be an answer. Well, that is I mean, that is the other thing to do to, that is obviously I'm thinking about, but I think it's also very possible that she is thinking about it. There's going to be a decision from a federal judge. And one of the things that that that that judge may be allowed to go forward is discovery about exactly where she lives. So and that will be she doesn't live in Florida. She doesn't live in Washington. She lives in New York City. And, and that alone could be a big problem for her. Okay, Michael, we will be back on Tuesday with another episode of Inside Trump's Head. I think a lot of people will be very glad to have the update on the case. As you say, 25,000 people have contributed to it from small amounts, from $5 up to, I'm sure, much larger. Not to. Yeah. To, there's some hundred dollars, but it's really in small amounts. Well, I think a lot of people are fed up with the first couple and don't want them telling us what we can and can't say. Okay. If you haven't, please subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, just press the subscription button. So the good news is we have so many beast tier members now. 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