It was only last week that President Donald Trump, before unleashing a racist tirade against four Democratic congresswomen of color on Sunday, was engulfed in the scandal stemming from disgraced billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest for alleged sexual abuse of underage girls, charges that prompted two new headaches for the president.
One was over the future of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta amid renewed scrutiny over his role in allowing Epstein to escape a federal investigation for similar sex trafficking charges more than a decade ago (Acosta eventually decided to resign.) The second saw Trump attempting to brush off his once-friendly relationship with Epstein, a man he once praised as “terrific.”
“I had a falling out with him a long time ago, I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week. “I wasn’t a fan.”
A new video uncovered in the NBC archives is once again questioning those claims.
The November 1992 clip shows Trump relishing in Epstein’s arrival at his Mar-a-Lago estate, as the two men leer at the women dancing around them. “She’s hot,” Trump tells Epstein at one point. At different moments, Trump is seen dancing with cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins.
Here's video from the @NBCNews archives showing Trump partying with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in 1992. Last week, Trump said he "was not a fan.” pic.twitter.com/9NE4ZhFCxz
— Colin Jones (@colinjones) July 17, 2019
As Mother Jones noted during the 2016 presidential election, Trump was known to pay particular attention to Epstein during his Florida pool parties. “He threw a party one night just because of Epstein,” former beauty pageant promoter George Houraney said of Trump. “He said, ‘The other guys aren’t coming, but I don’t care because Jeff’s coming.’”
The video’s emergence comes as more women come forward to allege that Epstein sexually abused them. In recent days, prosecutors have also revealed that several suspicious items, including a fake passport with a Saudi address and Epstein’s photo and “piles of cash,” were uncovered in Epstein’s Manhattan home.
