New allegations surfaced on Saturday linking Donald Trump once again to Jeffrey Epstein. This time they came from model Cleo Glyde, who spoke to The Daily Beast about her experiences with Epstein in the 1990s and a strange meeting involving Trump. Her story adds to the long list of women who have described encounters connecting Trump to Epstein. Trump himself has already been found liable for sex abuse in the past.
“A one-time friend of Jeffrey Epstein has laid bare the extraordinary way he tried to impress Donald Trump. Cleo Glyde, a model who knew Epstein in the ‘80s and ‘90s, before his horrific crimes came to light, spoke exclusively to The Daily Beast Podcast about how Epstein used her and a close friend as ‘trophies on display’ during a bizarre encounter with Trump.” The outlet noted that Glyde first met Epstein through a mutual friend when she was only 22 years old.
At that time, Epstein’s reputation was far different from what it would later become. Glyde described him as being seen as “way more James Bond than Darth Vader.” She said he was charming, glamorous, and well connected, not yet the convicted predator the world would later know.
Glyde described what she called a “bizarre encounter with Trump. According to her, Epstein often bragged about being friends with Trump and once decided to make a show of it. He told her and her friend to wear white dresses and join him at Trump Tower. Epstein allegedly said, “Why don’t we both go over to Donald’s and you both look like nurses, and I’ll just knock on the door and we’ll go to Trump Tower and it’ll be hilarious.”
When they arrived at Trump Tower, Glyde said it was obvious Epstein was trying to show off. “He probably was showing off Donald to us and us to Donald,” she said. She remembered that Trump smiled and laughed when they came in. According to the Beast, Glyde recalled, “Obviously, Jeffrey’s thinking, ‘I’m literally walking down Fifth Avenue with two nurses…’ [Trump] laughed, but not in a way that made me uncomfortable at the time.”
When asked for comment, the White House dismissed Glyde’s story outright. Officials called her testimony a “hoax,” a word Trump has used repeatedly whenever Epstein resurfaces in the headlines. Trump has long tried to distance himself from Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Despite these efforts, the connection continues to follow him.
The Beast noted that Trump has at times pleaded with his supporters to move on from the Epstein scandal, but it has not gone away. Glyde’s account is just the latest in a series of stories that keep pulling the president back into a controversy he would rather leave behind. It also highlights the way Epstein sought to leverage his friendships with powerful men to elevate his own image. For Trump, even decades-old encounters are proving impossible to shake as more people come forward.