The Daily Beast 29%
Trump’s Beauty Queen Accuser Beatrice Keul: Why I Live in Fear
By Julia Ornedo, The Daily Beast Podcast - 7/3/2026, 8:05 PM - 680 words
Faulty reasoning signals
- Confirmation Bias - 7.8% (53 hits)
- Anchoring Bias - 0%
- Availability Heuristic - 15.9% (108 hits)
- Representativeness Heuristic - 11% (75 hits)
- Hindsight Bias - 0%
- Overconfidence Bias - 0%
- Framing Effect - 10.1% (69 hits)
- Loss Aversion - 0%
- Status Quo Bias - 0%
- Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
- Optimism Bias - 0%
- Pessimism Bias - 4% (27 hits)
Article text
Trump’s Beauty Queen Accuser Beatrice Keul: Why I Live in Fear
A beauty queen who made sexual assault allegations against President Donald Trump said she continues to live in fear three decades after a “horror show” pageant night in New York.
Beatrice Keul, 55, first came forward in October 2024, alleging that Trump—then a 47-year-old businessman, while she was a 23-year-old banking executive and part-time model—summoned her for a “private meeting” in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, where he allegedly groped her.
Keul revealed to the Daily Beast’s Tom Latchem that she pushed back, at which point Trump threatened her.
“She made a fuss, kicked off, and then was, she claims, told by him that ‘You keep quiet about this,’” which Keul took as a threat, Latchem told The Daily Beast Podcast host Joanna Coles.
“And then said, ‘The show must go on,’
More than 30 years later, the incident continues to haunt Keul due to persistent anonymous threats.
“Now, she’s in her 50s, and she says that she’s faced similar threats from anonymous sources,” Latchem said.
“For instance, when [Jeffrey Epstein victim] Virginia Giuffre 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.’
In 2024, Keul told the Daily Mail that she was a runner-up in the Miss Switzerland pageant and a contestant in the Miss Europe competition in 1992, which put her on Trump’s radar.
The real estate mogul then offered her an all-expenses-paid trip to New York and New Jersey for his Donald J.
Trump American Dream Pageant in November 1993.
When they met, Trump was “so fond” of her, Keul recalled.
Later, one of Trump’s employees told her he wanted a “private meeting” in one of the “big suites” upstairs, and she agreed.
Keul recalled the disturbing “meeting” in a three-part interview with Latchem for PunchUp, a new Substack publication by the Daily Beast.
The six-foot-tall beauty queen said Trump “jumped” on her, kissed her, and tried to lift her dress.
“He was grabbing and touching my body everywhere he could,” she claimed, adding, “It was violent, it was quick, it was intense.
I was screaming for help, and nobody came.
It was bad.”
“It felt to her as though this wasn’t the first time he’d done it,” Latchem said on the podcast.
“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.”
Keul also alleged that Epstein made moves on her that same day, introducing himself as “Don’s best friend” and telling her she was his “prey.”
She told Swiss outlet NZZ, “First, the sexual assault by Donald Trump, and then Jeffrey Epstein wouldn’t let go of me—it was like a horror show.”
Karoline Leavitt, who was Trump’s press secretary for his 2024 presidential campaign, said at the time that Keul’s claims were “fake allegations.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson earlier defended the president in a statement to the Daily Beast and PunchUp.
“Just as President Trump has said, he’s been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein,” she said, adding that Trump “has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”
Keul is one of 28 women who have accused the president of sexual misconduct, including New York writer E.
Jean Carroll, who won a $5 million jury verdict in a sexual abuse and defamation case against Trump that the Supreme Court upheld on Monday.
“She feels that the more people that speak out, the more likely it is that it’s going to elicit other people to speak out,” Latchem said.
“And she feels like a dam will burst.”
New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday on YouTube, and on other podcast platforms the next morning.
Follow our new feed on your favorite podcast platform at beast.pub/dailybeastpod and subscribe on YouTube to watch full episodes.