This week, the Guardian published a pre-election bombshell alleging that Donald Trump sexually assaulted a model in 1993—the latest in a string of dozens of similar accusations dating back decades. Stacey Williams, now 56, claims that Trump groped her during a visit to Trump Tower, in an encounter she said was orchestrated by Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier and convicted sexual predator, whom she had been dating. Williams told the Guardian that Trump felt up her breasts, waist, and buttocks. “I just had this really sickening feeling that it was coordinated,” she later told CNN. “I was rolled in there like a piece of meat in some kind of weird twisted game.” Williams also told her story during a public “Survivors for Kamala” Zoom call on Monday night. The Trump campaign denied the accusations.

With the election less than two weeks away, Trump’s treatment of women is now back in the spotlight, at the same time as his harsh disparagement of immigrants has taken on an increasingly dark and vitriolic air. “This election cycle,” wrote my colleague Isabela Dias, “former President Donald Trump has made mass deportation his foremost campaign promise.” It is a long-standing promise, Isabela reported, as she recapped Trump’s 2016 pledge to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants; his sweeping worksite raids; his Muslim-ban; and brutal family separations. As Isabela showed, Trump’s plans for a second term would escalate these policies significantly: He has pledged “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

These two big themes of Trump’s presidency—his treatment of women and his far-right immigration policies—first fused for me in reporting I did during Trump’s 2016 campaign. At the time, my investigation revealed that models working for his prized firm, Trump Model Management, were brought into the United States on tourist visas that did not allow them to work. Former Trump models told me they were encouraged to mislead federal officials and instructed to lie on customs forms. Once here, they were housed in a cramped, basement apartment, charged sky-high rent, and levied with dizzying fees and expenses, leaving many in debt and in legal precarity. “It is like modern-day slavery,” one model told me. Another said in a lawsuit she “felt like a slave.”

Here’s a video recap of the media storm that ensued after publication:

As Trump ramps up “zero tolerance”, don’t forget the foreigners Trump’s own company had zero issues with letting into the US to work without authorization: models at his NYC agency @TrumpModels. Here’s a video reminder my 2016 @MotherJones campaign exposé https://t.co/R5bvuhBdkF pic.twitter.com/KfVl6sFn6i

— James West (@jameswest2010) July 7, 2018

My investigation—eight articles over eight months in all—became a potent example of Trump’s duplicity. And it foreshadowed his double standards, as Trump mixed his business practices with the presidency. The story created an instant shockwave through the campaign, albeit briefly during what was a scandal-plagued race to the White House. Models began fleeing Trump Model Management, with insiders attributing the firm’s rapid decline to Trump’s increasingly controversial public persona. The once-celebrated Trump brand, they said, had become tainted.

Ultimately, after my reporting, Trump Models joined the list of defunct Trump ventures, alongside Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Airlines, and Trump Magazine—yet another shuttered firm run by the man who continues to tout himself as an expert businessman who, alone, can fix everything.

Read my original investigation here.

Reneé White, 57, was standing on the bleachers right behind former President Donald Trump in the “tight shot” for the campaign cameras on Saturday afternoon in Butler, Pennsylvania. It was a long day waiting in the baking heat and White, who had traveled from Newland, North Carolina, was decked out in a pale “Tiffany” blue “Mean Tweets” T-shirt and a matching Make America Great Again t-shirt she picked up from Bedminster, Trump’s golf club in New Jersey. (The color was an ode to the former First Lady, Melania, she said.) She enthusiastically cheered on her candidate, as she has done at more than 30 previous rallies.

Then she heard gunshots. “Everybody’s dropping around me. And I’m just sitting there like it’s like an out-of-body experience, okay?” she said, still wide-eyed with adrenaline—and wearing the same clothes—two days later when I met her in Milwaukee, where she’s attending the Republican National Convention. “Then I heard ‘shooter down, shooter down.’ And then I was like, oh my gosh. Like, this is really happening.”

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Amidst the “crying and shaking” all around her, White saw Trump emerge, an image now seared in her mind as a singular, historic vision of defiance. “He’s saying ‘the fight is on.’ We’re going to fight harder. We’re going to keep going.”

In league with Trump, who shouted “fight” several times in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, White suffused our interview with defiant language. She used the word “fight” or “fighting” over 20 times across our roughly 25-minute conversation. Her message to Donald Trump: “Keep fighting the fight, and we’ve got your back. Keep fighting the fight. We’ve got your back, for sure.”

The Butler rally was a galvanizing moment for White, 57, and her fellow travelers (one of whom livestreamed our interview to MAGA fans). “This will make them more determined to go and be a part of it,” she said of campaigners and rallygoers fueling Trump’s campaign. The shooting created new momentum, White said, and “the supporters won’t want it to stop.”

After sleeping in her car all night after the attack, she made the flash decision to drive from Pennsylvania to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “I thought, hell, when you fall off that bike, you get right back up,” she said. “I’m going to the RNC.” She didn’t have credentials to be in the room; she just knew she wanted to show her support.

What now? White says her movement has never been more unified. “I think his poll numbers will go up incredibly,” she said. “I think it’s going to bring unity because like after 9/11 and after John F. Kennedy or Reagan or whatever, people came together because they’re appalled that something like this could happen.”

White wanted to be at the January 6 rally that led to the Capitol insurrection, and railed against the treatment of attendees that day while reeling off a litany of now-familiar grievances about what Trump fans see as injustices caused by attacking Trump, and liberals pitting “one color, or one race or one religion against each other.”

White, the definition of the Trump faithful, knows she’ll remember Saturday and the assassination attempt forever. “I’m glad I was there,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Reneé White, 57, was standing on the bleachers right behind former President Donald Trump in the “tight shot” for the campaign cameras on Saturday afternoon in Butler, Pennsylvania. It was a long day waiting in the baking heat and White, who had traveled from Newland, North Carolina, was decked out in a pale “Tiffany” blue “Mean Tweets” T-shirt and a matching Make America Great Again t-shirt she picked up from Bedminster, Trump’s golf club in New Jersey. (The color was an ode to the former First Lady, Melania, she said.) She enthusiastically cheered on her candidate, as she has done at more than 30 previous rallies.

Then she heard gunshots. “Everybody’s dropping around me. And I’m just sitting there like it’s like an out-of-body experience, okay?” she said, still wide-eyed with adrenaline—and wearing the same clothes—two days later when I met her in Milwaukee, where she’s attending the Republican National Convention. “Then I heard ‘shooter down, shooter down.’ And then I was like, oh my gosh. Like, this is really happening.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mother Jones (@motherjonesmag)

Amidst the “crying and shaking” all around her, White saw Trump emerge, an image now seared in her mind as a singular, historic vision of defiance. “He’s saying ‘the fight is on.’ We’re going to fight harder. We’re going to keep going.”

In league with Trump, who shouted “fight” several times in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, White suffused our interview with defiant language. She used the word “fight” or “fighting” over 20 times across our roughly 25-minute conversation. Her message to Donald Trump: “Keep fighting the fight, and we’ve got your back. Keep fighting the fight. We’ve got your back, for sure.”

The Butler rally was a galvanizing moment for White, 57, and her fellow travelers (one of whom livestreamed our interview to MAGA fans). “This will make them more determined to go and be a part of it,” she said of campaigners and rallygoers fueling Trump’s campaign. The shooting created new momentum, White said, and “the supporters won’t want it to stop.”

After sleeping in her car all night after the attack, she made the flash decision to drive from Pennsylvania to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “I thought, hell, when you fall off that bike, you get right back up,” she said. “I’m going to the RNC.” She didn’t have credentials to be in the room; she just knew she wanted to show her support.

What now? White says her movement has never been more unified. “I think his poll numbers will go up incredibly,” she said. “I think it’s going to bring unity because like after 9/11 and after John F. Kennedy or Reagan or whatever, people came together because they’re appalled that something like this could happen.”

White wanted to be at the January 6 rally that led to the Capitol insurrection, and railed against the treatment of attendees that day while reeling off a litany of now-familiar grievances about what Trump fans see as injustices caused by attacking Trump, and liberals pitting “one color, or one race or one religion against each other.”

White, the definition of the Trump faithful, knows she’ll remember Saturday and the assassination attempt forever. “I’m glad I was there,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”