The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump's Beauty Queen Accuser: Why I Live in Fear

Episode Date: July 4, 2026

Go to https://ground.news/BEAST for a better way to stay informed. Subscribe for 40% off the Vantage plan for unlimited access to world wide news coverage through my link. #ad Daily Beast investigative reporter Tom Latchem joins Joanna Coles to discuss his explosive new reporting for his new Punch Up Substack. He reveals how former Miss Switzerland runner-up Beatrice Kuel accuses Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein, of exploiting the beauty pageant world. And how she alleges Trump attacked her, and how she now live sin fear for being brave enough to speak out. They also examine the latest developments inside the Trump administration, from a controversial new ICE appointment to shifting power dynamics within the White House, and what it could mean for immigration policy and the future of the administration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. She has alleged that when she was at this pageant, that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her, groped her after this beauty palaging in 1993, and then claims that he threatened her afterwards,

warning bad things can happen to you if you speak out. She says a lot of the women who have made similar allegations and then there were 28 of them we count have made allegations against Donald Trump in this particular regard have also received threats. So she says that she fears for her life a lot of the time for speaking out. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast

and today we have a fascinating conversation for you. It's by our correspondent, Tom, Blacham, who is the author of the Punch Up Substack newsletter. And this week, he's written a three-part series with the most alarming allegations against Donald Trump, brought by a former Miss Switzerland, a beauty pageant queen who ran into Donald Trump while she was summoned to meet Donald Trump when he was running the pageant. And of course, Jeffrey Epstein was also involved. It's a really fascinating story.

Before we get to it, I just want to remind you, the reason we can bring you these independent conversations is because we are independent media. We appreciate your support. We would love you to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And you can become a friend of the Daily Beast, which has all sorts of tantalizing membership perks. So subscribe away. And now let's get into it with Tom Latcham. Tom. For those who haven't yet subscribed to Punch Up,

and I'm sure by the end of this conversation, they will have, what can they expect? What have you been writing about? Just explain it to people. Why haven't you subscribed? That's the big question. We've been going for three months. Yeah, three months now.

And the ambition was, I've done everything in the media, but my more recent hat is being an investigative journey. and doing a punch up. I want to say gets in the weeds, because that sounds boring and it's not boring. The entire point is it isn't boring. It's called punch up for a reason.

And the reason is we punch up to power, we punch up to authority, and we like a punch up. I am based in the UK. I'm trying to bring some of the skills that I learned as a tabloid journalist, which I have been for 20 years, on Fleet Street.

the better qualities of those skills rather than some of the nefarious ones which I know that the sleet should can be famed for. But those skills that are seen as the best in the world for rightfully, I think, but bringing it to an American audience and doing it for good and representing the people,

the American taxpayer, who are getting ripped off by this government. Okay, so Tom, you've got a three-part series on Punch-up on Substack this week. Why don't you explain what it's actually about? Because it's a riveting story. So we obviously want people to go and read it. So I'll try to be not give too much away.

But we dropped the first one on Monday and then the second part on Wednesday and then the final part today on Friday. And it's an interview with a woman named Beatrice Kuhl And she was a former Miss Europe runner-up, Miss Switzerland in the early 1990s, but also a banking executive. And she had a very brief foray into the world of Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and others in that world, as we know. Donald Trump used to put on beauty pageants. Well, he owned the Miss Universe contest, right?

A lot of it was held in Donald Trump's hotel, in the plaza. And she's previously spoken out, actually. She's one of 28 women who've made in the past. I think the tally is 28, who have made allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump. He has denied all of them, but he has not sued any of them, which I find intriguing. So, Tom, what is it that Beatrice Kuhl is actually alleging? She was a former Miss Switzerland.

and she was a runner-up as Miss Europe. She met Donald Trump as part of the beauty pageant world. What is she alleging exactly? Well, she has alleged that when she was at this pageant, that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her, groped her after this beauty pageant in 1993, and then claims that he threatened her afterwards, warning bad things can happen to you if you speak out.

But she now is in the 50s, and she says that she's faced similar threats since from anonymous sources where people, for instance, when Virginia Geoffrey died, she received a message from an AI spoofed phone number with a spoofed message saying, we know where you are and we're going to get you. Now, we're not suggesting that Donald Trump initiated that. She says a lot of the women who have made similar allegations, and then there were 28 of them we count have made allegations against Donald Trump. in this sort of regard, have also received threats.

So she says that she fears for her life a lot of the time for speaking out. And what kind of an assault was it? And of course the irony is you've been running the story this week, the very week that the Supreme Court threw out Donald Trump's accusations against E. Jean Carroll for having defamed him. Yeah, she says that he, told he she was summoned to his room by an aide and Donald Trump was there and he groped her and she made a big fuss screamed kicked off and was only able to get away she

felt because she was a she's a banking executive so she's got a different life she's not a particularly vulnerable woman in or she wouldn't regard herself as such and so she says that in a different me or a different person might well have just just not done a anything, but she didn't. She made a fuss, kicked off, and then she claims was told by him that you keep quiet about this, effectively, you keep quiet about this, or bad things will happen to you, and then said, a show must go on. So he says to her, the show must go on. So he's, she alleges, groped her, sort of grabbed her. She fights him off because she's not looking to make a future as a beauty queen. This is something that she does in her spare time.

she's actually a banking executive. So she fights him off, she's screaming, she's making a lot of fuss, and he goes, never mind, the show must go on. What did that signal to her? Well, it felt to her as though this wasn't the first time we've done it. It was easy. It was an easy thing. It's like, well, show must go on,

just as though this was not his first rodeo, so to speak. And when these allegations were first brought, Caroline Levitt said that they were fake allegations. So why is Beatrice Kool speaking out to you now? I mean, you've got a lot of detail here. Well, she has been heartened by Michael Wolfe, for example, and feels that his evidence around Epstein has led to an empowerment among survivors like her of Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, etc., etc. And she feels that the more people that speak out, the more likely it is that it is that it's,

going to elicit other people to speak out and she feels like a dam will burst. There will come a point where a dam will burst. I admire her optimism. I hope that there are more answers for these people, but all we can do as reporters is report their stories and their testimonies and hope that it does do that. So, Tom, Beatrice said that she understood this was happening to other young women who were beauty pageant contestants too, right? Yes. She doesn't feel like she was the sole target of any of this, no. And she saw that contestants were picked out from one particular project called the American Dream pageant, and they were moved on to private gatherings with men that they barely knew

by Geoffrey Epstein, who at this point was one of Donald Trump's close friends. Yeah, she says that nothing, so she's a beauty pageant veteran. So she's been to plenty of beauty pageants that were reputable in the past. We talk about Miss Schoer, Miss Switzerland, et cetera, et cetera. But she says nothing about this was normal. It wasn't a normal. And you talk about being picked out, going to private things. Even her own story about being asked to go to the suite with Donald Trump by an aide.

Not normal. That isn't normal. That isn't what happens of beauty pageants. And she said that it just felt iffy and off. At the time, I don't think she necessarily realized what was going on, because she was 23. She was coming from a normal beauty pageant background, and this wasn't.

But now in retrospect, she feels like there was, I mean, certainly Jeffrey Epstein was using them to target and prey upon young women, whether or not Donald Trump knows Donald Trump has denied any involvement in any of this. She alleges after she was gross, we're talking about that, you know, Donald Trump saying the show must go on, etc. One of the questions he asked her, she says, is, have you spoken to Jeffrey? By which, of course, she meant Jeffrey Epstein. It's not a common name. There was a time where most of us could agree on the basic facts.

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through my link. Do you think that Geoffrey Epstein was trying to recruit her as he had done Gillen Maxwell to his network? Yes, she said

he felt like she felt like she was prey to Jeffrey Epstein, fresh meat. These girls were fresh meat, prey. They're the sort of words

that Beatrice used pretty incendiary words, but words that she genuinely believed were applied to her. So what did Beatrice tell you about Geoffrey Epstein? What did she say about him? Well, she said that he'd introduced himself backstage at that beauty contest in New York as, quote, Don's best friend. And she says that he invited her to a party

at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort and promised, I'll take care of you. I mean, she thought he was gross. She thought Jeffrey Epstein was out. absolutely gross, not interested in the slightest in him. She said he was a complete chancer. He felt like a, he was a bluffer. And everything he said was a bluff.

Because she's from a world in which, you know, people, I suppose in banking as well, people say bold things and don't mean it. So she's like, I know what a bluffer is. I can tell what a bluffer. He's saying he can do this for me, do that for me, do that for me. And it was just a sales patter. Just a sales patter to get me to his parties.

And she said I was having none of it. So in today's substack, you make an astonishing allegation reporting what Beatrice said about the involvement of Ivana Trump. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I mean, obviously, we want people to go and read it in context in the substack. But this was an allegation that I hadn't. come across before. No. So Ivana's from Eastern Europe, of course, originally. She's from Czechoslovakia. And Ivana Trump, of course, we should just remind people is Donald Trump's first wife. Yes. And she is dead, so she can't defend herself. And that's important to say as well.

But she was from Czechoslovakia. And a lot of the women who were trafficked were from Eastern Europe and around the world. They weren't just young American women, many of the complainants. and she says that Ivano had a role. And I won't say much more than that because I would like to go and read the story, but the story is pretty explosive and I think it's worth a read. And it's interesting how women have a role

in the recruiting of other women and Beatrice felt that Jeffrey Epstein might be trying to recruit her perhaps for that. I mean, she wouldn't know at this point the extent of his network, but she felt there was something more to him than just, I'll look after you at a party. Yeah, she felt it was weird, right? But she's 23.

She has no experience of anything like this before, but she's not stupid. She's not daft. And then as time went by and more and more of this stuff starts coming out, I mean, she won't have known who Jeffrey Epstein is. I mean, he's not exactly a high profile figure, is he? He's just a bloke in a, you know, a badly dressed bloke that says he's Donald Trump's best friend. You'd be like, I don't know who this guy is.

But when time comes out and you put, then you see and survivors start coming forward and obviously mother wolf's work, et cetera, et cetera. She's like, oh, hang about. Yes, okay, that makes complete sense and it brings it into clarity. And she now is working with other survivors as well. You know, they all talk to one another

and discuss the many overlaps and similarities in their testimonies and stories. And often, you know, when people are building, you know, when police are building cases, they're very, very difficult to build these cases, right, against people when it's come to sexual assault because they are innately private. But so what they tend to do is they look at patterns. And so she is talking to these people. And she's seeing these patterns now 30 years ago.

But now they obviously have a huge resonance. And she was, you know, she's really keen to stress in a large part because of Michael Wolf's tapes and Michael Wolfe's work. So that's why she thinks more and more people are beginning to speak out because they're being believed now. And you only see the EG and Carroll stuff that we were talking about earlier. People feel like they're more likely to be believed now. But whether or not they think that it's worth the risk that they might get threatened. For instance, as she says, she has been regularly through these dodgy phone calls for the last year or so, the most recent being about a month ago, whether they'll think it was worth.

doing so is another matter. And that would obviously be a great shame. So what else is Beatrice planning to do with this, Tom? I mean, she came out two years ago and talked about it. She's talked to you. What else does she want to do to get the story out there and to keep the pressure on the authorities to do something? Well, she's writing a book, which is with her lawyers now, in which I believe, as I understand it, she will go further than she has. with what she has with us what that is i'll leave that to her that's her story to tell um but just anything that she can do and this is why she was so keen to do this with me i think she probably would be interested in doing the podcast as well at some point because she does want

to get that story as many people that can hear about this the better she thinks because as i mentioned earlier that she feels like there's a dam going to break and the more water or survivors or voices or whatever it wanted to be will burst that dam and she thinks that's coming up We definitely love to talk to her. And her story is resonant of a story with Stacey Williams, who we've interviewed a few times on the podcast and who's been a very articulate survivor talking about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,

who she alleges took her to Donald Trump's apartment in Trump Tower, where Donald Trump then groped her in front of Jeffrey Epstein. And afterwards, she really, that the whole thing she thought or she alleges have been set up in advance. You talk about the overlaps, Joe. Yeah. That is the overlap. So, you know, you talk about overlaps.

That's the part of take Jeffrey Epstein out of that story. That story is almost exactly the same. So, and she's been heart again, Beatrice has been heartened by seeing Stacey on your podcast. So in a way, that sort of, that's the sort of the proof of the pudding that by speaking out and being, a voice and being regular and talking about it and having no shame there's no no shame attached to any of these women for what they're saying and what they've been through that more will feel hard to come out or someone will hear something and they'll go it'll spark another thought because of course you know bitch is cool was her thought was sparked by Michael Wolfe's story two years

ago so so it's all just these little links connecting parts and just becomes a sort of ground swell that will hopefully lead to, well, what does she want? Justice for everybody. Interesting to be living in Switzerland and watching the story from 4,000 miles away. Yes, but still doesn't feel safe, which is fascinating, I think. Right, and we had another of Epstein's friends, actually on the podcast, Cleo Glide,

who was also a model, who had sort of fought him off on his plane, when he'd come on to her, but didn't take him seriously as a sexual threat. So spent a lot of time tooling around with him, enjoyed the fact that he had access to important people. She enjoyed sort of being in that power circle of his while remaining eyes open as to the kind of guy he was. And then he also took her to Donald Trump's apartment

where he wanted her to dress as a nurse. and in fact he took another of her friends. So the two of them trotted down Fifth Avenue, each of them on Jeffrey Epstein's arms, two Trump's apartment. So again, another synergy with the story that Beatrix's call is telling. And at all, doesn't it, seem to be?

Like, to be honest, like many things that we might even talk about in a minute about the other things I'm doing with Punch Up, so much of it relates to money, doesn't it? You know, it's people show people are attracted to wealth. They're attracted to money. They're attracted to power. And it makes people act in ways that they might not otherwise.

So Tom, what else can we expect to see from Punch Up this week? You had another story here about who is Richard Lance Schroier. Please tell us. He's your new ICE director, ladies and gentlemen. He is the latest pick to replace Todd Lyons. who left in at the end of May. So a lot of the stuff that you'll see on Punch Up, I do plenty on the White House on Donald Trump,

but a lot of things that I do are related to DHS. So here this guy, Shoya, was announced by Donald Trump on Saturday, I think, last Saturday. And so I immediately hit my contacts and said, who is this guy? And everybody said, yeah, we don't know why. It turns out he's Mark Wayne Mullins, old mate. He used to be on his personal security detail in Oklahoma and in fact was so close that

Mark Wayne Mullen would invite him in for dinner I found. So that's just a very small vignette inside a much greater article that I've written. But the biggest and most interesting part of the article I've written, details of power plays that are going on inside the White House is that it had blindsided and that is a quote from a source, but this is multiple sources have told me. It had blindsided both Tom Homan, who is Donald Trump's border czar, but more than that, and more intriguingly than that, also it a blindsided Stephen Miller, who is his Deputy Chief of Staff and Immigration Lead.

Now, if that's true, my sources say that that is very much giving the distinct impression that Stephen Miller is being, boxed out of the White House. So this is Mark Wayne Mullen's friend from Oklahoma, who it should be said, does have a law enforcement background because he was a former highwayman. Yeah, but no, he's not, he's not management experience. He's got, he's never managed a massive budget like this. You know, you're talking like tens of millions of dollars in budget. They've got 32,000, I think 32, 32,000 staff. So, you know, this is a complete other level.

And all my sources say that senior agents on the ground age, senior officials on the ground agents are livid that this guy is coming in to manage. And he's a former highway patrolman. He's like a trooper, yeah. And he's got no experience with the, I think they're called the 287s, which allows law enforcement people to work with ice. He's got no experience of that,

which is a big deal in that world. And it's causing mutiny inside DHS. And actually, not only that, the prediction is that it will cause a mass exercise. us. People will quit ice from, you know, throughout from top to bottom because of it because they think that he's going to make them look like idiots. Well, they can't look more like idiots than Greg Bovino made them look in Minneapolis. Well, we'll be watching Schroier as he progresses in the job, Richard Lance Schroier. It does suggest that Stephen Miller's

power is on the way inside the White House. And that's one to watch. Tom, that will definitely be one to watch. Thank you so much for joining us. And again, we're just referring people to your substack, punch up. It's full of details. No one, as you, as you have pointed out, no one has contact like you do inside the Department of Homeland Security. We thank you for your reporting and we look forward to tracking the new head of ICE, Richard Lance Schroier. Me too. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system.

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