Trump's Epstein friendship haunts him in final hours of election

Of all the scandals that have embroiled Donald Trump over his treatment of women, surely none holds a candle for sheer tackiness to a new allegation that he once made a bet with Jeffrey Epstein over which of them could seduce Princess Diana.

There's no suggestion either man came close to winning the wager (although one presumes Diana had considerably more taste) or indeed whether such a conversation ever took place.

After all, the reported source of the story, Epstein — a pedophile financier who killed himself in a New York jail cell while awaiting a child sex trafficking trial — was a notorious conman who spent his life exaggerating his connections to the rich and powerful.

The man to whom he allegedly told this story was journalist Michael Wolff, the veteran chronicler of the Trump White House whose opinion of the ex-President is hardly flattering and who has, it must be said, been dismissed by the Trump campaign as a 'disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books'.

Even so, it is no secret that Trump and Epstein, who both had homes in Palm Beach, were friends. And the Diana bet certainly sounds like the sort of tawdry, macho talk that two such preening egotists might have had as they tried to impress each other over cocktails at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's grandiose Florida resort home.

As Wolff observes, the pair were 'two playboys very much styling themselves as playboys in that [Hugh] Hefner sense, who palled around for the better part of 15 years'.

It's also clear, because he has released brief excerpts from them, that Wolff was able to interview Epstein (for some 100 hours, he says) in 2017 while researching his first Trump expose, the 2018 book 'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House'.

Wolff also claims - though with no evidence - that Epstein would repeatedly show off half a dozen photos of Trump with 'topless young women' sitting on his lap around the pool of the financier's Palm Beach home in the late 1990s.

In one of the pictures, which Epstein allegedly kept in a safe, some of the girls were said to be pointing at a stain on the front of Trump's pants and laughing.

According to Wolff, Epstein also told him that Trump liked to 'f*** the wives of his best friends'.

Trump, who has repeatedly denied infidelity accusations (as he has denied any impropriety with Epstein) would allegedly seduce the wives of his friends by allowing them to eavesdrop on his phone conversations with their husbands — during which he would encourage the men to be unfaithful with beauty pageant contestants Trump could supply.

Wolff also says that Epstein claimed that he and Trump would join forces to pick up women after separating them from their male companions.

'We always used to go to Atlantic City to try to find girls in the casino,' he is said to have told Wolff.

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'And if there was a guy, I would say, "I'm here to invite the guy to go out to dinner."

'And [Trump] would say, [to the woman], "Let me show you the casino." And as he walked out, he put his arm around the girl's shoulder, and the bodyguard would walk up and Donald, whoosh, [would] take the girl away.'

Democrats will find it only too easy to believe all these sordid tales of their political nemesis – a man who in 2005 was recorded boasting that, as a star he could, 'grab 'em by the p***y – you can do anything.'

But that's surely a calculation that the mendacious Epstein – also a Democrat – would have made when he agreed to brief Wolff.

As for the timing of Wolff's revelations, coming just days before the election, it's difficult to believe this isn't intended principally to damage Trump's election chances at the eleventh hour.

Wolff insists that he revealed what he was told only after former Sports Illustrated model Stacey Williams came forward less than two weeks ago to claim that, in 1993, Epstein – her then boyfriend – took her to Trump's Fifth Avenue penthouse where their host groped her in what she described as a 'twisted game' being played by the two men.

Williams, now 56, said that as soon as she was introduced to Trump, he pulled her towards him, put his hands 'all over my breasts', waist and buttocks – apparently egged on by Epstein who, she said, was exchanging grins with Trump.

Williams said Epstein and Trump were 'really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together'.

Her account is undoubtedly similar to the stories told by some of the more than two dozen other women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct over the decades.

But why did Williams – who this weekend was seen out campaigning for Kamala Harris in her home state of Pennsylvania – come forward now?

And why, by the same token, has 6'1" ex-beauty queen Beatrice Keul, come out of the woodwork now? Her claims emerged just a few days later (although she first made them before the Williams scandal broke).

Keul exclusively told DailyMail.com that Trump paid for her to visit the US after she took part in a Miss Switzerland pageant in her home country.

Keul alleged that he had 'jumped' on her and groped her – again in 1993 – after inviting her up for 'private talk' in a suite at his New York hotel but that she fought him off.

'I think my size saved me,' said Keul, now 53. 'He tried to lift my dress. He was grabbing and touching my body everywhere he could.'

She insisted she was only coming forward now because she'd discovered all the paperwork for her trip while packing to move home.

With or without these perfectly timed reminders, it was inevitable that Trump's allegedly toxic private life and his squalid treatment of women would resurface in an election in which he needs to win back female voters.

Yet, while any other politician's campaign would be stopped in its tracks by the claims of any one of these fresh accusers, they have caused barely a flutter to Team Trump, which has dismissed them as false and designed to help Kamala Harris.

The reality is that Trump supporters, even those who regard themselves as highly moral people, made their peace with their man's sexual proclivities long ago.

As a wealthy evangelical Christian woman told me at a Trump rally in Tennessee in 2018: 'I would never have Trump as my pastor but I'm happy to have him as my president.'

Even the suggestion of sleazy new connections with Epstein, a man now regarded as one of the most prolific pedophiles of modern times, has failed to move the needle.

Granted, Epstein is hardly the most reliable source: some of what he told Wolff as proof that he and Trump were close is hardly news – such as his claim that Trump had scalp reduction surgery to hide his baldness. In fact, that story (denied by Trump) first surfaced back in 1990.

After Epstein was arrested in New York in 2019, Trump distanced himself, saying that he was 'not a fan of his'. He said that, after learning about the sex trafficking allegations, he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. 

Things had once been rather different.

The two men were often photographed at social events together in the 1990s and 2000s. And in 2002, Trump famously told New York Magazine: 'I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.'

They fell out two years later when they both tried to buy the same Palm Beach estate.

They might, indeed, have been bosom buddies in the worst possible sense: swaggering rich men who loved to humiliate women (although there's no evidence Trump has ever pursued underage girls) and treat them, as Stacey Williams put it, like 'a piece of meat'.

But when it comes to the idea that any of this might – even remotely – impede Donald Trump from returning to the White House, that ship sailed long ago.