Barbara Pilling met a middle-aged Donald Trump at a party in New York during the late 1980s. When he learned that she was only 17, she says that he responded with "Oh, great. So you're not too old and not too young. That's just great."
Pilling added that with Trump in the room, she felt that she was "in the presence of a shark," Vice News reported on Monday. She also says that she wasn't even the youngest girl in the room, as party guests included girls as young as 14.
Pilling's encounter with the president was one of several that the BBC shared in a new program titled "Trump: Is the President a Sex Pest?" The investigative series aired on Monday, just days before President Trump was scheduled to make a diplomatic visit to the United Kingdom after this week's annual NATO summit.
The BBC said that the inspiration behind the series was the fact that Trump has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior by more than 20 women but has dismissed them all by calling them liars. Now one of those women, Summer Zervos, is suing him for defamation and his many attempts to stall the lawsuit have failed. Zervos was a former contestant on the Trump-hosted reality show The Apprentice and she claims that the president once groped her. Trump fired back against Zervos and her fellow accusers, prompting her lawsuit.
After another woman named Rachel Cooks accused the president of forcibly kissing her when she worked in Trump Tower in 2006, Trump aggressively defended himself in a Twitter post, saying that the incident "never happened" and mocked the alleged kiss for only being "two minutes."
A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago. Never happened! Who would do this in a public space with live security......
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2018
Another woman named Heather Braden told the BBC that she saw Trump in Miami at a party that included over 50 female models and only four men.
"I felt like a piece of meat in a market," Braden said. She added that she felt like she could have been "auctioned off in some sort of a sex slave ring."
"It was like a predator in action."
"It was like a predator in action."
— Panorama 🌐 (@BBCPanorama) July 9, 2018
Tonight's programme is about @realDonaldTrump's alleged behaviour towards women in the 80s and 90s.
Watch Trump: Is the President a Sex Pest? On @BBCOne at 8:30pm. pic.twitter.com/671LGOQZhr
The entire BBC report is not available online outside of the United Kingdom, but has been widely reported on.
The White House has not commented on the allegations or the series.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Alexandra Hutzler is currently a staff writer on Newsweek's politics team. Prior to joining Newsweek in summer 2018, she was ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
