Donald Trump just said Virginia Giuffre was one of the people Jeffrey Epstein "stole" from the "spa" at Mar-A-Lago in an interview on Air Force One.

Here is audio of the question and answer, and the transcript. But the audio is stunning, not only for the admission, but also for the casual way he refers to these young underage women as his property.

Q: I'm just curious, were some of the workers that were taken from you, were some of them young women?

TRUMP: Some of them young women? Well, I don't want to say, but Everyone knows the people that were taken and It was the concept of taking people that work for me is bad, but that story's been pretty well out there, and the answer is yes, they were the people that work in the spa.

I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar a Lago, and people were taken out of the spa, hired by him, in other words, gone, and Other people would come and complain this guy is taking people from the spa.

I didn't know that.

And then when I heard about it, I told him I said, Listen, we don't want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa.

I don't want him taking people.

And he was fine and then not too long after that he did it again and I said out of here.

Q: Mr. President, did, did one of those stolen, you know, persons that include Virginia Giuffre?

TRUMP: I don't know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people, yeah, he, he stole her.

"He stole her." And keep in mind here, Giuffre was employed in the "spa" at Mar-a-Lago to give massages to members. She was being groomed by Ghislaine Maxwell, who ultimately lured her into Epstein's employ. It was nothing more than a meat market for men who wanted young women to exploit in one way or the other.

Charlie Kirk is having a helluva time trying to spin this, but he is trying.

I mean, it looks terrible because suddenly he is saying this after years of silence or simply suggesting it the split was over business deals gone bad. So yeah, it's really not possible to make this worse than it is.

Keep in mind that Trump had a history in the 90s of exploiting young women through his modeling agency and beauty pageant businesses. John Paul Kirkpatrick writes:

In the late 20th century, John Casablancas (founder of Elite Model Management) built the original model: turn teenage girls into glamorized assets. Jean-Luc Brunel took it international, founding MC2 and receiving at least $1 million from Jeffrey Epstein to expand operations. Paolo Zampolli cornered the visa angle, using U.S. immigration loopholes to bring in young foreign models — often from Eastern Europe and South America — under false pretenses.

Then came Mister Donald Trump.

In 1999, Donald Trump launched Trump Model Management. His agency followed the exact same pattern: bring girls in on tourist or “extraordinary talent” visas, overcrowd them in overpriced apartments, charge them for every service, and send them to work illegally while racking up debt they could never repay. Former models from his agency say they were instructed to lie to customs and start working immediately upon arrival.

But there's more:

Around the same time, Trump purchased the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss Universe pageants — contests where he would later admit to entering dressing rooms unannounced. “I’ll go backstage before a show… and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant,” he told Howard Stern in a 2005 interview. “You know, they’re standing there with no clothes… and so I sort of get away with things like that.” His comment echoed real allegations: Tasha Dixon, Miss Arizona USA 2001, said Trump “just came strolling right in” while contestants were changing. Another contestant, Mariah Billado of Miss Teen USA, said he entered their dressing room too — when many girls were still minors. Though Look of the Year was separate, the access and entitlement Trump described were part of a broader system where youth, beauty, and silence were routinely exploited.

This was not viewed as a scandal. It was a business model.

Of course it was. So when Epstein hired away the young women Trump kept at Mar-a-Lago, it was a step up for them. They got to live the high life with Maxwell guiding them, just as long as they kept Epstein's friends and associates satisfied.

I'm going to include this clip from the Meidas Touch Legal AF podcast with author Michael Wolff. Please assign it whatever weight you think it should have, if you can keep yourself from gagging when you hear it.

And then think about Trump telling reporters that these girls were HIS and Epstein STOLE THEM.

Just chattel.

Digby notes: