Are these the 5 girls who might convey down Donald Trump? | EUROtoday

Quiet, piggy.” It’s the form of crass insult that you simply would possibly hear yelled within the college playground – and positively not what you’d anticipate a president to hiss at a journalist (accompanied with a finger level, no much less) throughout a press name on Air Force One. But this disturbing incident, which noticed Donald Trump berate Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, is simply the most recent grim instance of the POTUS’s well-documented lady drawback.

From that Access Hollywood tape, when a pre-politics Trump notoriously alluded to “grabbing” girls “by the pussy”, to his slights on “nasty woman” Hillary Clinton, to calling actor Stormy Daniels “horseface”, his historical past of insulting girls is lengthy and miserable. Even when he’s not going out of his option to offend, his tone can appear, properly, greater than somewhat problematic. “I just like to watch her talk,” he stated in a single latest press convention encounter with one other feminine journalist, earlier than condescendingly telling her she’d accomplished a “good job” and addressing her as “darling”. His administration’s observe file on girls’s rights (or the rolling again of stated rights) speaks volumes on this depend, too.

How ironic, then, that it has been girls who’ve compelled his hand in what’s arguably the largest risk to his management up to now. Earlier this month, Trump was compelled to make a serious U-turn when he referred to as for Republican members of Congress to vote for the discharge of the Epstein recordsdata, a set of paperwork regarding the intercourse trafficking expenses in opposition to Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 whereas awaiting trial. Previously, the president had been reluctant to take action, and even claimed that such calls for had been a “Democrat hoax” to “deflect” consideration away from his MAGA grand plans.

Trump has up to now managed to shake off scandal after scandal, however the Epstein saga seems to have critically thrown him off kilter. The president has been photographed at events with Epstein and his affiliate Ghislaine Maxwell, however has at all times maintained that he broke off any contact with the intercourse offender years earlier than any convictions, and that he was not conscious of Epstein’s wrongdoing. But for Trump’s MAGA trustworthy, his dealing with of this grim debacle, with all its false begins, about turns and prevarication, has fallen brief. The president has at all times introduced himself as a crusader in opposition to corrupt elites, his devotees consider. So why hasn’t he acted sooner to show them?

On Tuesday, Republicans near-unanimously voted to launch the recordsdata; the Senate then agreed to cross the invoice. This comes after months of campaigning spearheaded by girls, a lot of whom are unlikely political bedfellows united by a need for the reality to come back out.

Will we at some point look again at them because the catalysts of Trump’s downfall? Whether the president can safe the belief of his diehard followers as soon as once more stays to be seen. In the meantime, although, these are a number of the girls who’ve performed a key function within the Epstein recordsdata saga up to now.

Marjorie Taylor Greene

For years, Georgia congresswoman Greene, 51, has been one in every of Trump’s most loyal supporters with a status as a real MAGA firebrand. She’s additionally beforehand embraced conspiracy theories bearing on all the pieces from Covid to QAnon to highschool shootings, and has been accused of racist rhetoric. But in latest months, she has undergone one thing of a political pivot, critiquing Trump’s international coverage and breaking along with her get together to develop into the primary Republican member of Congress to explain the disaster in Gaza as a “genocide”.

But maybe her greatest schism with the president has been over Epstein. She was one in every of simply 4 Republicans (alongside fellow MAGA stalwarts Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, and Kentucky consultant Thomas Massie) to signal the petition calling for the discharge of the recordsdata. Her very public stance on this situation has prompted Trump to lash out in characteristically splenetic trend, branding her “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene” and, somewhat improbably, accusing her of becoming “Far Left”.

Greene and her family have since been the subject of threats, she has claimed. “As a woman, I take threats from men seriously,” she said. “I now have a small understanding of the fear and pressure the women, who are victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal, must feel.” She’s even had something of a mea culpa moment, “humbly” apologizing “for taking part in the toxic politics” after a CNN interviewer pointed out that she’d never previously spoken out about the potential impact of Trump’s verbal attacks.

Annie Farmer

All the way back in 1996, 16-year-old Annie Farmer and her older sister Maria, then 25, made the first known reports to the FBI and NYPD about Epstein’s abuse. It would take almost a decade for investigators to actually start probing the murky world of the financier and his associates. Despite this, the Farmer sisters have spent almost three decades fighting for their stories to be heard, and to achieve some semblance of justice.

In 2019, Annie spoke at a bail hearing for Epstein, and two years later, she was one of four women who testified against his associate, Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. She was the only accuser to waive her anonymity, with the other women using pseudonyms.

Since then, she’s been a key voice in pushing for the Epstein files to be released, and has warned against politicising the issue. Speaking outside the Capitol this week, where she held up a photo of her and her sister in the Nineties, she pointed out that this harrowing saga has played out over the course of various presidencies, Democratic and Republican.

And while headlines about the Epstein files often end up fixating on the powerful men in the sex offender’s orbit, her words are an important reminder that it’s the victims who should be at the centre of this awful story. “There are people who have used this to their advantage and tried to focus on elements of it that are sensational,” she told the BBC. “These victims are people with feelings that are trying to live their everyday lives, and this can feel like a real weight falling on us.”

Gloria Allred

At 84, Allred’s five-decade-long legal career seems to show no signs of slowing down. Probably one of the best-known attorneys in the United States, she has spent the majority of her working life taking on sexual harassment, workplace discrimination and women’s rights-related cases. Her fame, though, is largely down to the fact that she has represented a whole host of clients against famous men, from Roman Polanski to OJ Simpson to Trump himself.

It’s a track record that has earned her a reputation either as a sort of avenging angel of women’s rights, or as an “ambulance chaser of feminism” who loves the spotlight, as one detractor once branded her in The Atlantic. But her profile has only risen in the aftermath of #MeToo. She has represented accusers in cases against Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, Harvey Weinstein and, more recently, Sean “Diddy” Combs.

And she has also worked with 27 Epstein victims; most recently, she has posted a press conference with accuser Alicia Arden, who claims Epstein groped her in a Santa Monica hotel in 1997. Allred has repeatedly urged Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to cooperate with investigators probing his links to Epstein (Mountbatten-Windsor has always strongly denied any wrongdoing) and has used her considerable platform to keep the victims’ stories in the public conversation. “Many people would prefer it if women were silenced, if women were second-class citizens and didn’t fight back,” she told The Times in 2018. “I’m not one of those people.”

Lisa Bloom

Representing 11 further Epstein victims is 64-year-old Bloom, Allred’s daughter, who has inherited her mother’s zeal for women’s rights. She’s spent most of her 30 or so years in law taking on sexual abuse and harassment cases, and her client list is just as high profile as her mother’s: she represented the model Janice Dickinson against Bill Cosby, The OC actor Mischa Barton in a revenge porn case, and the employees who accused Fox News host Bill O’Reilly of harassment.

A blot on her record, though, is her stint working as a legal adviser to Harvey Weinstein, shortly after initial allegations of abuse emerged against the producer, whom she characterised merely as “an old dinosaur learning new ways”. A few days after the New York Times published its bombshell exposé on Weinstein in October 2017, Bloom parted ways with him. She has since referred to the job as “a colossal mistake”. “I feel deeply embarrassed that I was ever associated with him, that I allowed myself to be fooled and to be in his orbit,” she told The Independent in 2022.

Bloom has been working with Epstein survivors since 2019. Like her mother, she has a major media profile and has used it to keep the pressure on Epstein’s alleged “enablers”, urging the other figures in his circle to come forward with information. A prominent voice calling for the files to be released, she has criticised how the case has been used as a “political football”. “All [the victims] have ever wanted was accountability and transparency,” she recently told CNN. “Release the files, redact the names of the survivors and let’s have accountability for everybody who was involved with this predator.”

Marina Lacerda

Until simply two months in the past, Marina Lacerda was recognized solely as “Minor-Victim 1” within the 2019 courtroom case in opposition to Epstein. As a key witness within the indictment, she informed of how she was recruited again in 2002, on the age of simply 14, to therapeutic massage him at his New York townhouse. At the time, she was working a number of jobs to assist her household, who had moved to the town from Brazil, and thought it will be a easy option to generate income. But this obvious “dream job” rapidly turned “the worst nightmare”, with Lacerda struggling three years of abuse, till Epstein determined she was “too old” at 17.

In September, Lacerda bravely selected to waive her anonymity for the primary time and spoke about her experiences outdoors Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. alongside different victims, in a bid to induce lawmakers to launch the Epstein recordsdata. Earlier this week, forward of the House vote, she instructed that Trump’s insistence that the recordsdata had been “a hoax” solely “empowered us and now you’ve made people listen to us even more”. Releasing them totally, she has stated, will assist her “put the pieces of my own life back together”.