Backstage pass
Former Miss Teen USA contestants disturbed by Trump’s behaviour,
On an April 11, 2005, Howard Stern show, Donald Trump bragged about some of the special perks he enjoyed while owner of the Miss USA pageant. They came not in a lockerroom, but a dressing room.
“I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else,” he said. “And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And therefore I’m inspecting it.” Said Stern: “You’re like a doctor.” Responded Trump: “‘Is everyone OK?’ You know they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.”
Tasha Dixon, Miss Arizona of 2001, told CBS2 Los Angeles that Trump just came “waltzing in” while contestants were nude or half-nude as they changed into bikinis.
Separately, BuzzFeed reported early Wednesday that four women in the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant said he walked into their dressing room while they were changing. Some were as young as 15, BuzzFeed said.
Three spoke anonymously and one allowed her name to be used.
“I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here,’ ” Mariah Billado, a former Miss Vermont Teen USA told BuzzFeed.
According to Tasha Dixon, Miss Arizona of 2001, there was more inspecting than doctoring.
In an interview with the station, she described her experience with Trump as a contestant that year in a dressing room where she and others were changing into bikinis:
“He just came strolling right in. There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Others girls were naked.
“Our first introduction to him was when we were at the dress rehearsal and half naked changing into our bikinis.
“To have the owner come waltzing in, when we’re naked, or half naked, in a very physically vulnerable position and then to have the pressure of the people that worked for him tell- ing us to go fawn all over him, go walk up to him, talk to him, get his attention.”
She suggested that such opportunities were among the reasons Trump owned beauty pageants.
“I’m telling you Donald Trump owned the pageant for the reasons to utilize his power to get around beau- tiful women. Who do you complain to? He owns the pageant. There’s no one to complain to. Everyone there works for him.” Trump was not the only one who “got away with things like that.”
As an eight-time host of Donald Trump’s beauty pageants, Billy Bush joked about wanting to see a naked version of the swimsuit competition and said he kept a “very close, protective eye” on the women competing for crowns. Those were the comments deemed appropriate for prime-time television. By the time Trump and Bush had their now-infamous conversation aboard an Access Hollywood bus en route to a taping of Days of Our Lives, Bush already had hosted Trump’s Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants three times each.
“You’re my man,” Bush says in footage obtained by the Post, as Trump leaves to film a scene for the soap opera.