TRUMP HITS OUT AT BEAUTY QUEEN

•Donald Trump falsely accused a former Miss Universe of having made a sex tape and suggested Hillary Clinton had helped her gain U.S. citizenship, in tweets sent in the early hours of Friday.

Trump’s string of online posts spanned from 3:20 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. and centred on Alicia Machado, a Venezuelan actress and Miss Universe 1996.

She has become a focal point of the Clinton campaign after Trump’s comments about her weight during the 1990s, as the Democratic nominee seeks to portray her opponent as sexist and unfit to serve as president.

Trump risked giving credence to that characterization with his Twitter posts, which were met with consternation when most of the U.S. awoke Friday.

“Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a US citizen so she could use her in the debate?” he asked.

“Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U,” he wrote.

“Hillary floated her as an ‘angel’ without checking her past, which is terrible!”

Clinton called Trump “unhinged” her response to the posts and described the tweets as a “Machado meltdown.”

“What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?” she asked.

Clinton first mentioned Machado during the first presidential debate on Monday, claiming Trump had called her “Miss Piggy” because she had gained weight and “Miss Housekeeping” because of her Latina heritage.

The Republican presidential nominee subsequently defended those remarks telling Fox News: “She was the winner, and she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”

The “sex tape” Trump mentioned may have been either a pornographic video that has been falsely attributed to Machado online, or an incident from a Spanish reality show when she was filmed in bed with another contestant.

The woman has faced questions about her past after her sudden rise to prominence in the campaign.

Machado responded Friday, accusing Trump of spreading “cheap lies with bad intentions.”