THE POWER OF SHAMELESSNESS

Aug 21, 2025

ACCORDING TO BRENÉ Brown, shame is the intensely painful feeling of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection. It's a focus on self, a feeling of "I am bad," as opposed to guilt, which is a focus on behavior, or "I did something bad." Shame can be triggered by various situations and events, and it often leads to feelings of isolation, powerlessness, and being trapped.

Naturally, Donald Trump doesn’t have the good taste to feel shame. And narcissists like him are unwilling to acknowledge their flaws, so they typically project their shame onto others. They criticize and devalue others as a way of focusing attention away from their own feelings of worthlessness, and in that way they bolster their own shaky self-esteem. And don’t forget the narcissist’s lack of empathy. Stamp it on his forehead: NO EMPATHY.

Donald Trump nesting dolls on red textile — Photo by Jørgen Håland on Unsplash

So even though Donald Trump ought to feel shame for his abysmal lack of presidential honor in Alaska on behalf of our country—and of democracy in general—he and his team aren’t smart enough to recognize that something is fundamentally wrong with them and to hate their shameful selves. And even though it’s ironic and horrible that true world leaders like Zelenskyy, Starmer, Macron, Meloni, Stubb, and others must suck up to manage Trump, they do what they have to do to manipulate and survive the Trump destruction.

AND WHAT ABOUT Trump’s friend Jeffrey Epstein? Did he also have the power of shamelessness?

In the July 25, 2025, New York Times episode of “Interesting Times,” Ross Douthat interviewed Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald investigative journalist who wrote the award-winning “Perversion of Justice” series that blew the Jeffrey Epstein child trafficking case back into the forefront of American consciousness and was the beginning of the end for him. From Ms. Brown’s articles, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman obtained fresh evidence to file new charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors against Epstein in the Southern district of New York in July 2019.

This was an attempt by the smart, experienced U.S. Attorney to actually hold Epstein accountable, which had not happened in the June 2008 plea deal that made light of Epstein’s crimes as well as of his victims’ suffering. There is no doubt that Epstein had help from people in high places, people who could change his criminal fortunes. In that mockery of justice, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in jail and was required to register as a sex offender (sort of), but he served less than 13 months and was allowed to leave the jail daily for a romp of a work-release program, including flying to his private island. This plea deal was made with then-U.S. Attorney (and later Trump’s Secretary of Commerce) Alex Acosta and was controversial to say the least, as it allowed Epstein to avoid a potentially much harsher federal prosecution that could possibly have also affected his fellow rich and powerful abusers. The deal included a non-prosecution agreement that granted immunity to Epstein and potentially his co-conspirators.

Uh-huh, you get the drift. Then, almost five years after Epstein’s death…

According to a January 4, 2024, piece on NPR:

Federal Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan unsealed the documents, revealing the names of numerous individuals described in a 2015 civil lawsuit as associates, affiliates or victims of Epstein.
The documents include references to former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, the magician David Copperfield, Prince Andrew, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, actor Kevin Spacey, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, the late New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and former Vice President Al Gore, among others.
The fact that people were named in these documents doesn't mean any of them face allegations or evidence of wrongdoing.
… Most of those publicly named have denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein's criminal activities previously.
…According to one suit filed in 2014, Epstein arranged sexual encounters for "numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders."

Ms. Brown also wrote the book Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein story, which I have just read. And the Douthat interview of Ms. Brown is a concentrated Cliff Notes of the complex, corrupt, and tragic case that she persisted and persisted in uncovering. She was determined to dig up the truth, and she did. If you’re like me, you kept up with the broad strokes of this story but not the details, and the details are worth knowing. I highly recommend her book. But first….

In Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter of August 17^th, she wrote about Putin’s manipulation and humiliation of Trump in Alaska. Of course. Who would expect anything else? Putin is smarter and craftier than Trump. And if the Christian nationalists hadn’t written his authoritarian playbook with the Tech Bros pumping money and energy into the whole scene—especially with DOGE—Trump would still be fumbling around like the clown he was in his first term. Then and now—and to this country’s detriment—Trump is a Russian stooge. But, as the brilliant Ms. Richardson wrote, “There is one thing Trump’s military deployments against the American people have accomplished though: media mentions of the Epstein files have plummeted.”

We liberal Southern women will not let the Epstein secrets go. And today I’m going to take a detour through the Trump-Epstein friendship with a look into what might be considered skeletons in Trump’s closet. I admit we may not discover exactly what they mean, but they point us in a certain young-girl direction as a continuing theme in Trump’s life. And at the very least, we will not forget the questions surrounding Epstein…and Trump. So bear with me.

man in black jacket and pants sitting on bench — Photo by Luke Zhang on Unsplash

WE KNOW THAT Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had a long-term, public friendship with dinners and parties and plane trips back and forth from Florida to New York on Epstein’s jet. And from their looks in the photos—a flamboyant social life in moneyed society—they certainly seemed festive together. We also know about the birthday sketch that Trump allegedly sent Epstein with a note that said “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump denies he sent it, of course.

There are reports that Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell introduced Melania to Donald, which the Trumps also deny. What we do know is that Melania came to this country from Slovenia on a tourist visa. We also know that former modeling agent Paolo Zampolli sponsored her immigration to the United States in 1996, and there are some reports that he was the one who introduced them. But the Trumps also say they met at a party.

Inevitably, it’s a small world—or is this in the tangled-web-someone-weaves department? But, of course, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell also were connected to Zampolli—and there’s a crossover with Zampolli and the Clintons. And although there is no evidence suggesting Zampolli was involved in Epstein's sex trafficking crimes, Epstein and Maxwell were—like the Trumps—in the same modeling sphere and social circles as Zampolli. In another Epstein-Maxwell connection, Zampolli joined the board of Ghislaine Maxwell's TerraMar Project, a supposed ocean nonprofit, in 2012. The organization shut down abruptly after Epstein's arrest in 2019.

Zampolli has had, let’s say, an interesting and varied career. After he quit the modeling business, he worked with several United Nations environmental projects. Wikpedia says this:

In 2011, he was officially named Minister-Counsellor to the Permanent Mission of the Commonwealth of Dominica at the United Nations.^[11] In October 2013, The Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit appointed Zampolli as United Nation Ambassador and Ambassador For Oceans and Seas for the Commonwealth of Dominica.^[12] In June 2014, Keith Mitchell Prime Minister of Grenada, appointed Zampolli's wife Amanda Ungaro as United Nations ambassador in charge of Post 15th Agendas and responsible of the second committee with United Nations Ambassador Ranking.^[3]^[13] Ungaro has worked under the 69th United Nations Vice President of the UN General Assembly for the Blue Economy.^[14]

Hmm. Zampolli is Italian. He grew up in Milan. I can’t help wondering why the Commonwealth of Dominica and Grenada gave this Italian and his Brazilian wife/girlfriend/partner (?) these positions? Zampolli’s background is varied and complicated. So he went from a modeling agent to international development to real estate in New York to being a diplomat and somewhere in there is renewable energy? On October 26, 2020, Page Six reported this about Zampolli: modeling-agent-turned-property-mogul has moved into a 14,000-square-foot, $17 million Georgetown pad.

In a sad turn of events on June 18, 2025, Zampolli’s former wife/partner Amanda Ungaro was arrested in Florida for an unlicensed cosmetic surgery business. She and Joao Batista Cunha De Araujo were facing charges including unlicensed practice of medicine, grand theft and organized scheme to defraud. Unlike those of Zampolli, her fortunes significantly changed.

BUT BACK TO Zampolli’s relationship with Melania. His Metropolitan International Management agency paid for Melania’s rent, lent her money, and covered her pager expenses. On August 31, 2016, The New York Times reported on Mr. Zampolli and his relationship with the Trumps as well as the Clintons, who evidently attended Donald and Melania’s wedding. (Isn’t it a very small, in fact tiny world?) This piece says that John Casablancas is the one who suggested Zampolli move to New York and that Zampolli and the Trumps were having dinner one night with David Copperfield after a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. Remember that Epstein client and friend Les Wexner owned Victoria’s Secret?

A couple of weekends ago, Paolo Zampolli received a text message from Melania Trump, the wife of the Republican candidate for president, urging him to give her a call. The next day, Mr. Zampolli, a former modeling agent who had discovered the Slovene 20 years ago in Milan, listened as Ms. Trump expressed anguish over a gossipy report in the British tabloid The Daily Mail accusing her and Mr. Zampolli of operating an escort service in the 1990s.

Hmmm. Before the 2016 election, AP contacted the agency where Melania Trump worked in the 1990’s to learn more about her immigration history. Reporters were looking for her paid work records. This was important since in Trump’s campaign he insisted that immigrants’ legal status should be verified before they were allowed to work and get paid. And we know how much further he’s taken it now, making all immigrants—and not just criminals as he campaigned in the 2024 election—victims of a fascist U.S. government, whose agents cover their faces with masks, set up their innocent victims and drag them away from their families, beat them, and put them in concentration camp detention centers. For this, I am ashamed of my now fascist country. Not even Hitler’s Gestapo covered their faces as thugs in the darkness. They were murderers in the light of full face.

But here’s what the AP reporters found:

Finally, the documents turned up, and when the worker pointed AP to them, they became the basis of a story showing that the future wife of Donald Trump, who has taken strict stands on immigration enforcement, was paid for modeling jobs worth tens of thousands of dollars before she had permission to work in the U.S.

The connections among all these people are woven across long years, careers, fortune, and friendships. One might wonder if “shady doings” is also appropriate. Like all things related to Trump, there is a sniff of smarminess.

In any case, the hypocrisy and deceptions of the Trumps, while not new, are endless and nevertheless startling. They-who-are-without-shame are brazen in their lack of integrity, morality, and ethics. I would like to wish a heavy burden of shame on them.

Share A Liberal Southern Woman by Beth Arnold

MODELING AGENCIES ARE a known vehicle for trafficking girls. Epstein funded his associate, modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, in his MC2 Model Management agency. Brunel was accused of sexual abuse for decades—and also of procuring young girls for Epstein and his pedophile friends. Brunel was finally arrested in late 2020 and was found hanged in his Paris jail cell in February, 2022, less than three years after Epstein was found dead in his. Coincidence—or something more nefarious?

Before Jeffrey Epstein exploited teenaged Virginia Giuffre, she was abused by Ron Eppinger who owned another modeling agency called Perfect 10, which he used as a front for his international sex trafficking business. One ponders how common sex-trafficking pedophiles are? A few disturbing human trafficking facts:

Today, there are 49.6 million people in modern slavery worldwide, and 12 million of them are children. 54% of those trapped in modern slavery are women and girls. Sex trafficking is the most common type of trafficking in the U.S. There were 88 million child sexual abuse material (CSAM) files reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) tip line in 2022. Forced commercial sexual exploitation generates $173 billion in illegal profits annually. Human trafficking is the second most profitable illegal industry in the U.S.

And here’s another coincidence. At one time, Donald Trump owned a modeling agency. In a March 2020 piece, The Guardian reported on Trump hosting Elite Model Management’s “Look of the Year” modeling competition in 1991 and 1992, which was a big deal. This competition had launched the careers of Cindy Crawford, among others, and the prize was a $150,000 contract with the Elite agency. Elite was owned and managed by John Casablancas, then the king of the industry. In this article, the reporters described young contestants—ages 14 through 19—being on a boat with a bunch of men old enough to be their fathers and grandfathers. One contestant recalled how the contestants were encouraged to parade downstairs, one by one, and dance for Trump, Casablancas, and others.

The Guardian turned this up:

The stories we have heard suggest that Casablancas, and some of the men in his orbit, used the contest to engage in sexual relationships with vulnerable young models. Some of these allegations amount to sexual harassment, abuse or exploitation of teenage girls; others are more accurately described as rape.

Trump was not included in these allegations, but The Guardian asked this question about him: Why would a man in his 40s, whose main business was real-estate development, want to host a beauty contest for teenage girls?

And, you may recall, Trump also owned the Miss Universe Organization and pageant, which included Miss USA and Miss Teen USA from 1996 - 2015.

In 2023, The 19^th, an independent nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, and policy reported:

Dozens of women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct dating back to the 1970s, and he has been found liable in court for sexual abuse. Several women have described Trump forcibly reaching under their skirts, others said he kissed them without consent, and a handful of beauty pageant contestants claimed Trump inappropriately walked in on them in changing rooms. In total, about two dozen women have spoken out publicly to accuse Trump…

WHICH BRINGS US back to the Julie K. Brown “Interesting Times” interview with Ross Douthat. What I’ve highlighted here is the part I believe we’re all most interested in.

Brown: Well, my background was mostly crime reporting. I was on The Miami Herald’s investigative team, and I was covering prisons. I needed a change of pace, so I thought I would try to find a mystery to write about. And the Jeffrey Epstein case had been written about before, mostly focused on the celebrity aspect of his life, who he knew, his plane, his private island.
But whenever I ran across a story about him, it never really explained fully to me why he was able to get away with the crimes that he did. And as I was looking for something to do around that time, Donald Trump, who was our newly elected president, nominated a guy by the name of Alex Acosta as his labor secretary. I knew that Acosta was the prosecutor who signed off on this sweetheart deal, so to speak, that Epstein had gotten way back in 2008.
So I thought at the time that at Acosta’s Senate confirmation hearing, they were going to ask him a lot of questions about this case. And to my surprise, it seemed like everybody had almost forgotten about it. They asked him maybe one or two questions, and I don’t really think he gave very good answers, but they satisfied the senators because he was ultimately confirmed…
And I’d like to stick with what I know.
Douthat: Yeah, stick with what you know there.
Brown: He (Trump) was friends with Epstein in the 1990s, and they were in the same social circles together. We see the video of him at a party at Mar-a-Lago. My understanding is there were two things that led to their falling out. One was that Epstein hit on a member’s daughter at Mar-a-Lago and Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago.
Douthat: Once again, Donald Trump is standing up for sexual ethics in America.
Brown: Right. And the other involved a real estate transaction, of course, money where they were bidding on the same property — a very big property. And Epstein lost, and Trump won the deal, and so they had a falling out over that property. So those were the two things. But up until then, Trump had been flying on Epstein’s plane. He entertained some of Epstein’s family at one of his casinos. So they were somewhat friendly.
Douthat: But there’s no reason in the public record in what we know to think that out of all of Epstein’s friends and acquaintances, Trump would be someone who you would expect to have actually been deeply enmeshed with Epstein in some way?
Brown: There was no evidence, right now, that Trump was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s businesses or his sex trafficking or his crimes.
Douthat: So then — and again, I don’t want to make you speculate too much — but then to you watching Trump essentially say: It’s time to bury this story. It’s time to get my own supporters to move on from it. What does that look like to you? Similar to the desire of prosecutors not to have to deal with potential fallout from other names coming out? Is that your reading?
Brown: I don’t know, it doesn’t make any sense to me, to be honest with you. I really honestly don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense that you would promote doing this and saying you’re going to do it over and over again and have the people that you appoint go forward with going public on TV in a very public way, promising to do something and then switch gears. I really honestly don’t know why he would do something like that.
Douthat: He gave an interview during the campaign — I think during the campaign. He was asked about the files, and in part of the answer he said something like: Well, we should release something. But then he said: You don’t want to release things that aren’t true….
Brown: I wish I understood why our government isn’t treating this like the crime that it is. It’s a serious crime that happened here. I don’t think there’s any dispute. I mean, this is something that actually happened. This isn’t a hoax. This happened to these women when they were very young.
It is surprising to some degree that they’re treating this as such a political issue and not treating it like it should be treated, which is a crime. And if the files are unsatisfactory or don’t contain credible evidence, then maybe they need to look a little deeper.
Maybe the answer is that we still have questions and we’re going to look into this more. But that’s not the answer the government gave. The answer they gave was: There’s nothing here. There’s nothing more to investigate. We’re done with this story. And I think the answer should be that obviously the public has a lot of questions and the victims still want justice, so we’re going to look at this a little further.
Douthat: But in the end, for that to be worth doing, Epstein himself is dead, so your assumption in making this argument — and I think it’s a very compelling argument — but the core of the argument is there are other people out there who are guilty ——
Brown: That’s correct.
Ross Douthat: ——of Epstein’s crimes, who should face justice and haven’t.
Brown: Yeah, let me be clear: Epstein did not do this all by himself. He barely tied his shoes by himself. He had butlers and assistants doing everything for him, including the compiling of his contact lists, his musical playlists. He had people doing that for him. His computers — he had lots of people helping him. So he did not do this alone. There were other people helping him. And there were other men who he sent some of these women to.

In the movie The Reader, an illiterate female guard at Auschwitz (played by Kate Winslet) is eventually tried for her part in the horrors that happened there. In court, the question is what she actually did at Auschwitz and why. A law professor brings his students to watch the proceedings and contemplate the issues during the trial. The professor tells his students…

“Societies think they operate by something called morality. But they don’t. They operate by something called law. You’re not guilty of anything merely by working at Auschwitz. Eight thousand people worked at Auschwitz. Precisely 19 have been convicted and only six for murder. To prove murder, you have to prove intent. That’s the law. The question was never was it wrong, but was it legal? And not by our laws, no. By the laws at the time…Oh, yes, the law is narrow. On the other hand, I suspect people who kill other people tend to be aware that it’s wrong.”

If you think about it, no wonder Trump believes he can get away with anything. He already has. Evidently, he has never had any need for shame.

And what about Ms. Maxwell? It seems the Trump Administration has just made a deal for her like the one Epstein got from Acosta. What is Trump et al. trying to hide about his relationship with Epstein? Heather Cox Richardson wrote:

Trump has faced a rebellion among his QAnon supporters as he and administration officials have refused to release information from the federal investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and have moved Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted of sex trafficking children, to a minimum-security prison camp and given her work-release privileges. It appears he’s working to make QAnon supporters forget that he was named in those files and to lure them back to his support.

Please send any questions or comments, so our community can address and respond to them.

Peace. 🕊️ 🕊️🕊️ We are one.

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