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LAST UPDATE | 15 Apr
AN EXTRAORDINARY CONFLUENCE of two of the biggest controversies of Donald Trump’s second term – the Epstein files and the brutal tactics employed by ICE in fulfilling his mass deportation diktat – have landed a brand-new communications crisis on the Resolute Desk, even as the beleaguered US President struggles to shake off the all-consuming debacle of the US war on Iran, whilst conducting a damage limitation exercise following his public spat with Pope Leo.
The inciting incident in the latest twist of the couldn’t-make-this-stuff-up White House reality show features First Lady Melania Trump at its front and centre. Her perplexing delivery of an unprompted public rebuttal, in which she denied having being part of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking circle, was blown from the public discourse by her husband’s decision to eviscerate Pope Leo in a Truth Social post.
He later followed that by posting an AI-generated image of the US President in a Christ-like representation where he appeared to comfort a sick man as US military figures fix him with a reverent gaze and fighter jets hover in the background.
This image of Trump as Christ so offended American evangelicals that even the Knights Templar International, whose online posts normally feature bloodthirsty reenactments of Crusade battles, took time out from celebrating the multiple massacres of non-Christians to post a demand on X that ‘this offensive and blasphemous image be removed forthwith!”
In an even more surreal twist, this post was followed by one promising all new Knights Templar members a free Crusader battle flag and welcome pack, complete with their ‘Deus Vult’ logo, which is also tattooed on Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s right forearm.
A somewhat chastised Trump removed the post on Monday, telling reporters the image of the US President in biblical robes with orbs of light coming from his hands ‘was supposed to be me as a doctor, helping people to feel better.’ To paraphrase the Hollywood caveat, ‘Any resemblance to Jesus, either living or dead, was entirely unintentional.’
It’s unclear why Trump thought cosplaying Jesus while attacking the Pope for being ‘soft on crime’ and ‘terrible at foreign policy’ – as though he were the Democratic opponent of a mid-ranking Republican in the forthcoming midterms – was a good idea. The miscalculation may be a sign of his determination to head off any return to the Epstein morass, while deflecting attention from the worsening quagmire in the Middle East.
It certainly deflected the spotlight that his wife had repositioned directly over the Epstein files. But antagonising America’s Catholics, a significant chunk of whom voted for Trump in 2024 – which overlaps an evangelical Christian base that accounts for some 115 million Americans – is arguably one of the least effective ways of doing so.
That Trump is desperate to rid himself of the crisis he has created in the Middle East is not in doubt. His appearance at a UFC fight in Miami alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, even as JD Vance’s negotiations foundered in Islamabad, is a useful yardstick by which to measure the president’s attention span.
However, Trump seems to have underestimated the pride and affection that America’s 70 million Catholics feel for their first homegrown Pope, a Chicago native who has clearly signalled his intention to continue his predecessor’s focus on social justice and inequality.
The disconnect between Trump and his wife, who is a Catholic, and the mixed messaging that emanated from their respective offices has invited speculation that Melania Trump is already looking beyond Trump’s second term and seeking to position post-White House brand separately from her husband’s.
The catalyst for the First Lady’s statement – a bitter custody dispute between two longtime members of the Trump inner circle, a Brazilian ex-model named Amanda Ungaro and her model agent partner of two decades – brings its own revelations.
The relationship between Melania Trump and Amanda Ungaro goes back more than two decades; both were foreign nationals who were recruited as teenage models and brought to the United States on visas secured by Paolo Zampolli, a flamboyant Italian who ran in the same circles as Trump and Epstein in the 1990’s. At one point, Zampolli and Epstein had planned to run a modelling agency together.
In the meantime, Zampolli set up ID Models, an agency that failed to land any big-name models or contracts and was best known for providing girls at ‘model and bottle’ events, splashy New York parties and product launches that featured an abundance of attractive young women.
A 2001 Vanity Fair profile of Zampolli describes him ‘creeping through the room’ at one event featuring unknown teenage girls, and ‘intently fixing’ them with his ‘most discriminating stare’.
The tone of the article is sceptical, both of Zampolli and his modelling agency’s pretensions at being a player in the fashion business. Melania Trump never succeeded as a model, but Ungaro claims he introduced the then 28-year-old to the 53-year-old Trump.
When he was in his thirties and she was still a teenager, Zampolli started a relationship with Ungaro that would last for two decades. He and Ungaro maintained a close relationship with the Trumps until their separation in 2023. The two couples were regularly photographed together during Trump’s first term in the White House. Both had young sons, Barron and Giovanni, who were also photographed together at the White House events and at Mar-A-Lago parties following Trump’s 2020 defeat.
During his first term, Trump appointed Zampolli to the Board of the Kennedy Centre and created several sinecures for the couple. Ungaro secured a job as a midlevel UN diplomat which allowed her to obtain a diplomatic visa and tax-exempt status. But their separation turned ugly and Ungaro was frozen out of the inner circle. When Trump returned to the Oval Office, he appointed Zampolli as a ‘Special Envoy for Global Partnerships.’ Ungaro, a Brazilian native, was detained by ICE for several months before being deported last October. In several X posts directed at Melania Trump, she excoriates her former friend for failing to come to her assistance and warns of a forthcoming ‘tell all’ that would reveal unknown information about their relationship with Epstein.
The threat clearly rattled the East Wing. That Melania Trump chose to redirect the media’s gaze back to the Epstein files may be less due to a malign intent on her part than the myopia of a First Lady who is singularly oblivious to the norms of her role and who, like the rest of the Trump family, views the White House as a vehicle for self-promotion and self-enrichment.
The decision to issue a preemptive statement was not an impulsive move. On 8 April, this reporter, along with every other reporter on the White House press list, received notice that the First Lady would be issuing a public statement at the White House’s main foyer the following day and inviting applications for ‘in-person’ media credentials.
The First Lady’s wide-ranging presumptive rebuttal suggested she believed Ungaro was poised to accuse her of involvement in Epstein’s criminal enterprise.
However, the First Lady need not have bothered. Ungaro’s El País interview, which was published on Saturday, focused largely on her detention and deportation by ICE, and her ongoing custody battle for her 16-year-old son.
But the interview does provide worrying evidence of Trump’s willingness to tolerate abuses of power by his inner circle in furtherance of their own personal agendas. Ungaro claims that after she was arrested in Florida on a fraud charge, Zampolli pressured an ICE official to ensure she was detained and deported. It’s alleged that the ICE official involved told ICE agents in Miami to pick her up, adding the case was important to someone ‘close to the White House.’
It’s not the first-time Trump’s inner circle has recruited ICE agents to settle personal scores. Last year, Bruna Ferreira, the former sister-in-law of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, was arrested by ICE agents in the midst of a custody battle with Leavitt’s brother over their 11-year-old son. While Ferreira, who was in the process of applying for a green card, fought attempts to deport her to Brazil, the White House issued a statement that falsely claimed she had not seen her son in years. A Boston judge refused to deport her without a hearing, and Leavett denied she attempted to abuse her position to have Ferreira deported.
In her second term as First Lady, Melania continues to eschew the normal duties associated with the role in favour of developing her own ‘brand’. First came the Melania book and then the $40 million ‘Melania’ documentary, a mind-numbing fly on the wall focus on her outfit choices for the 2025 Inauguration.
More recently, she has shown an interest in AI and embraced robot technology, which, given her wooden persona, spawned any number of predictable jokes from late-night comics.
Her statement sought only to limit her exposure and made no mention of her husband’s 15-year friendship with Epstein. But the unprompted denial of her association with Epstein is contradicted by multiple photographs of them at parties together in New York and Palm Beach.
It achieved little other than to cause the media to refocus on the single issue that her husband is so desperate to shield from further media scrutiny and to invite public attention back to the sordid Venn Diagram where Trump and Epstein’s friendship represents the core of the overlapping circles.
Marion McKeone is an award-winning journalist, writer and documentary maker.
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