Trump gets ugly over beauty queen
DONALD Trump this week falsely accused a former Miss Universe of having made a sex tape and suggested Hillary Clinton had helped her gain US citizenship.
Trump’s string of tweets on Friday centred on Alicia Machado, a Venezuelan actress and Miss Universe 1996, who has become a focal point of Clinton’s campaign as the Democratic nominee seeks to portray Trump as sexist and unfit to serve as president.
“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?” Trump asked on Twitter.
“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” in 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 presidential debate on Monday, claiming Trump had called her “Miss Piggy” after she won the beauty title because she had gained weight and “Miss Housekeeping” because of her Latina heritage.
Trump subsequently defended those remarks on 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 porn 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