Footage of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at a party at Mar-a-Lago in the 1990s (Image: Screengrab via NBC News)
President Donald Trump may act like he is answerable to no one, but an ex-Republican consultant warns that he and the rest of the “Epstein class” are nearing the end of their heyday.
“Everyone knows how much the Trump family cares about the little people,” wrote Steve Schmidt, who previously advised President George W. Bush, in a Substack post on Tuesday. He then showed a picture of First Lady Melania Trump going to an immigrant detention facility wearing a jacket saying, “I don’t really care. Do u?”
“She’s a beautiful soul," Schmidt wrote sarcastically, and then proceeded to tell the story of Amanda Ungaro, who was reportedly held in an ICE detention facility for more than three months by her ex-partner Paolo Zampolli after Trump intervened to help Zampolli in a custody dispute.
“Melania claims it was Zampolli who introduced her to her soulmate at the Kit Kat Klub in Manhattan in 1998,” Schmidt wrote. “That’s the story at least. Ungaro came to the United States via airplane at age 16 or 17 from Brazil. She arrived via private jet.”
Schmidt then quoted Ungaro declaring on social media about Melania Trump that “I will tear down your corrupt system, even if it's the last thing I do in my life. I will go all the way—l am not afraid.” She added, "Maybe you should be afraid of what I know... of who you are, and who your husband.”
Schmidt even connected Trump’s failure to distance himself and his wife from the convicted late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein to his recent seemingly staged photo op with an elderly female DoorDash driver.
“Donald Trump’s out-of-touch stooges thought it was a good idea to cast a grandmother in the role of a happy serf kissing the feet of her Lord with gratitude for his dispensations of a half pence to the low and unseen,” Schmidt wrote. “What it showed was the corruption of our age and the rot of American life. It showed the chasm between the Epstein class and normal Americans.”
Schmidt went on describe Trump's Mar-a-lago home in Florida as a "place of corruption, decadence and depravity," and he noted the president's inability to climb out from beneath Epstein's shadow.
The First Lady, for example, has repeatedly denied the accusations about her and Epstein being linked, including in a surprise press conference last week. But critics say Trump has failed to bury the Epstein scandal, despite his repeated efforts to do so.
“The American people don’t need any help being suspicious about the government’s handling of Jeffrey Epstein,” reported CNN’s Aaron Blake in February. “But the Trump administration keeps giving them more reason to be anyway.”
Blake aid "the plausibility" of victim's claims "isn’t the main point; the point is that an increasingly politicized Justice Department — one where a massive banner of Trump was hung last week — did not release documents containing allegations about the president.”
He added, “In a vacuum, that would be problematic. But next to everything else, it’s really bad.” Three out of four Americans said Trump is “hiding information” about Epstein, according to a recent Reuters and Ipsos poll, while a recent CNN poll put the number at two out of three. Indeed, the Trump administration only released the Epstein files that were disclosed when forced to, and has subsequently “failed to redact lots of victim information while apparently redacting more than the law called for in other areas, including the names of potential and suspected Epstein co-conspirators. The administration claimed it didn’t ‘redact the names of any men,’ but it clearly did.”
Despite others facing legal consequences in nations like the United Kingdom, no one in the United States has yet faced judicial accountability for their involvement with Epstein. But Schmidt predicted big changes in 203 days.
"I will see multitudes in the streets joyously celebrating as the MAGA Congress is obliterated," Schmidt said. "I see Lindsey Graham defeated.I see the beginning of the reckoning at hand. The disgrace of this era is far from over and the worst lies ahead, but I can see something very clearly. The world does not exist like Donald Trump sees it. His fantasy is crumbling."