http://www.npr.org/2016/09/27/495611105 ... ers-weightIn Post-Debate Interview, Trump Again Criticizes Pageant-Winner's Weight
At the end of Monday night's presidential debate, Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of taunting one of his former Miss Universe contestants about her weight.
Clinton said the Republican nominee's criticisms of Alicia Machado, a Venezuelan who won the Miss Universe contest in 1996, was "one of the worst things he said" about women. "He called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina."
While Trump appeared to dispute Clinton's accusation on the debate stage, he called into Fox and Friends Tuesday morning and once again called Machado fat.
"I know that person. That person was a Miss Universe person," Trump told the Fox News morning show. "And she was the worst we ever had, the worst, the absolute worst, she was impossible," he said. "She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem. We had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude."
Trump has long struggled to appeal to women — polls show Clinton regularly outperforming Trump by double digits with female voters. And Trump has also alienated Latino voters throughout the campaign, with his harsh rhetoric about immigrants living in the country illegally.
With his past statements about Machado playing into critiques Clinton wanted to make at Monday night's high-profile debate, the Clinton campaign was quick to pounce. An hour after the debate ended, her campaign tweeted a two-minute video about Machado's experience with Trump.
"He was very overwhelming. I was very scared of him," she says in Spanish. "He'd yell at me all the time. He'd tell me 'you look ugly' or 'you look fat.' Sometimes he'd 'play' with me and say 'Hello Miss Piggy, hello Miss Housekeeping.' "
The Clinton campaign's video also includes archived footage of Trump telling reporters "she weighed 118 pounds, or 117 pounds, and she went up to 160 or 170. So this is somebody who likes to eat."
Machado told the campaign that the experience led to long-term eating disorders. "I wouldn't eat, and I would still see myself as fat, because a powerful man had said so."
"He always treated me like a little thing. He always treated me like trash," Machado said Tuesday in a conference call organized by the Clinton campaign.
She said she was caught off-guard when Clinton talked about her Monday night. "I started to cry because I never imagined that someone so important would care about my story," she said, speaking in Spanish.
"I'm very sorry that I might be an uncomfortable person for Mr. Trump," Machado said, "but that's how things happen, that's how things go."
This is a pattern I have observed a number of times with Trump...
When he finds himself mired with a negative narrative in the news,(in this case, his overall poor performance in the debate) he will frequently say or do something to try to change the narrative to some other negative focus about himself, which he has calculated will be less damaging...
Many times he has called the right shot, but In this case I believe he has badly miscalculated...
I don't think changing the negative narrative focus in the news about him from his overall bad debate performance to his cruel and oafish misogyny is real smart move...
In choosing to highlight this, he is directly undermining his effort to appeal to white women, (particularly college educated white women) a demographic group where polls show him badly trailing Mitt Romney's performance, and a group critical to any chance he has of winning...
One of the things Trump has complained about is that his misogynist comments used in commercials are old, or taken out of context, or just about Rosie O'Donnell and the feud he had with her, blah blah blah...
Well now he has obligingly created a whole set of new, in context, not about Rosie O'Donnell, misogynist comments for his opponent to exploit....I'll be very surprised if Team Clinton doesn't have commercial out featuring clips from what he has said about this lady by tomorrow at the latest...
And he's made it a twofer, because once again, he's offending Latinos as well...
Additionally, he has once again (as he did with Mrs. Khan and the disabled reporter to name but two) chosen a sympathetic and compelling figure to make the object of his bullying wrath...
Which completely undermines his efforts to improve his standing on having the temperament and judgement to serve as President...
Which really makes this boneheaded play a threefer...
Of all the bait Hillary skillfully tossed in the debate, this has clearly landed the biggest fish...
) he said he was going to vote for Gary "What's Aleppo?" Johnson, because Trump has no chance of carrying NY, and therefore he didn't feel the need to have to vote for Hillary. 