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Donald Trump’s purchase of the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants in 1996 gave him another chance to indulge in one of his favorite pastimes: surrounding himself with beautiful women. And the woman who won the Miss Universe crown that year, Venezuela’s Alicia Machado, found out what happened when you slipped below Trumpian standards.
After Machado won Miss Universe in May 1996, she gained some weight. As she explained to the Washington Post in 1997, that was probably because she’d been starving herself in the run-up to the pageant. “The year leading to it, I didn’t eat at all,” Machado said. “And whatever I ate, I threw up. I weighed 116 pounds when I won. I was skeletal.” She said she gained back 19 pounds, putting her in what the Post reported was “within the healthy range” of American Medical Association weight charts.
Trump didn’t see it that way. After he bought a controlling stake in pageants in the fall of 1996, he demanded Machado lose weight, allegedly called her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” in a dig at her roots and, in February 1997, made her exercise in front of the media at Exude Gym in Manhattan to prove that he was cracking the whip. “When you win a beauty pageant, people don’t think you’re going to go from 118 to 160 in less than a year, and you really have an obligation to stay in a perfect physical state,” Trump told reporters, making his own estimate of Machado’s weight.
Trump portrayed the photo op as a sign of his support for Machado. “We want her to stay as Miss Universe and she is working on her problem,” he said, referring to rumors that the organization wanted to take her crown. Machado remembered it differently. “I asked him to please send me to a trainer or a nutritionist or something because I needed some orientation, and he sends me to a gym in New York,”? she said in the 1997 Post interview.
Apparently she didn’t meet Trump’s standards. The mogul wrote in The Art of the Comeback, his 1997 book, that he attended the Miss Universe pageant that year and saw Machado “sitting there plumply…The best part of the evening was the knowledge that next year, she would no longer be Miss Universe.” Nor is the feud over. Machado attacked Trump earlier this year for his comments about Mexicans, and told Billboard last July that she’s planning to return the favor with a book about “all the details, abuses of power, arrogance, and racism on Donald Trump’s part that she suffered in the flesh.” No release date has been announced.
Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:
- Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
- Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
- Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
- Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
- Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
- Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
- Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
- Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
- Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
- Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
- Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man
- Trump Files #12: Donald Can’t Multiply 17 and 6
- Trump Files #13: Watch Donald Sing the “Green Acres” Theme Song in Overalls
- Trump Files #14: The Time Donald Trump Pulled Over His Limo to Stop a Beating
- Trump Files #15: When Donald Wanted to Help the Clintons Buy Their House
- Trump Files #16: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word “Trump”
- Trump Files #17: He Dumped Wine on an “Unattractive Reporter”
- Trump Files #18: Behold the Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In Manhattan
- Trump Files #19: When Donald Was “Principal for a Day” and Confronted by a Fifth-Grader
- Trump Files #20: In 2012, Trump Begged GOP Presidential Candidates to Be Civil
- Trump Files #21: When Donald Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Gorbachev and an Impersonator
- Trump Files #22: His Football Team Treated Its Cheerleaders “Like Hookers”
- Trump Files #23: The Trump Files: Donald Tried to Shut Down a Bike Race Named “Rump”
- Trump Files #24: When Donald Called Out Pat Buchanan for Bigotry
- Trump Files #25: Donald’s Most Ridiculous Appearance on Howard Stern’s Show
- Trump Files #26: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal
- Trump Files #27: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible
- Trump Files #28: When Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
- Trump Files #29: Donald Wanted to Build an Insane Castle on Madison Avenue
- Trump Files #30: Donald’s Near-Death Experience (That He Invented)
- Trump Files #31: When Donald Struck Oil on the Upper West Side
- Trump Files #32: When Donald Massacred Trees in the Trump Tower Lobby
- Trump Files #33: When Donald Demanded Other People Pay for His Overpriced Quarterback
- Trump Files #34: The Time Donald Sued Someone Who Made Fun of Him for $500 Million
- Trump Files #35: Donald Tried to Make His Ghostwriter Pay for His Book Party
- Trump Files #36: Watch Donald Shave a Man’s Head on Television
- Trump Files #37: How Donald Helped Make It Harder to Get Football Tickets
- Trump Files #38: Donald Was Curious About His Baby Daughter’s Breasts
- Trump Files #39: When Democrats Courted Donald
- Trump Files #40: Watch the Trump Vodka Ad Designed for a Russian Audience
- Trump Files #41: Donald’s Cologne Smelled of Jamba Juice and Strip Clubs
- Trump Files #42: Donald Sued Other People Named Trump for Using Their Own Name
- Trump Files #43: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers
- Trump Files #44: Why Donald Threw a Fit Over His “Trump Tree” in Central Park
- Trump Files #45: Watch Trump Endorse Slim Shady for President
- Trump Files #46: The Easiest 13 Cents He Ever Made
- Trump Files #47: The Time Donald Burned a Widow’s Mortgage
- Trump Files #48: Donald’s Recurring Sex Dreams
- Trump Files #49: Trump’s Epic Insult Fight With Ed Koch
- Trump Files #50: Donald Has Some Advice for Citizen Kane
- Trump Files #51: Donald Once Turned Down a Million-Dollar Bet on “Trump: The Game”
- Trump Files #52: When Donald Tried to Shake Down Mike Tyson for $2 Million
- Trump Files #53: Donald and Melania’s Creepy, Sex-Filled Interview With Howard Stern
- Trump Files #54: Donald’s Mega-Yacht Wasn’t Big Enough For Him
- Trump Files #55: When Donald Got in a Fight With Martha Stewart
- Trump Files #56: Donald Reenacts an Iconic Scene From Top Gun
- Trump Files #57: How Donald Tried to Hide His Legal Troubles to Get His Casino Approved
- Trump Files #58: Donald’s Wall Street Tower Is Filled With Crooks
- Trump Files #59: When Donald Took Revenge by Cutting Off Health Coverage for a Sick Infant
- Trump Files #60: Donald Couldn’t Name Any of His “Handpicked” Trump U Professors
- Trump Files #61: Watch a Clip of the Awful TV Show Trump Wanted to Make About Himself
- Trump Files #62: Donald Perfectly Explains Why He Doesn’t Have a Presidential Temperament
- Trump Files #63: Donald’s Petty Revenge on Connie Chung
- Trump Files #64: Why Donald Called His 4-Year-Old Son a “Loser”
- Trump Files #65: The Time Donald Called Some of His Golf Club Members “Spoiled Rich Jewish Guys”
- Trump Files #66: “Always Be Around Unsuccessful People,” Donald Recommends
- Trump Files #67: Donald Said His Life Was “Shit.” Here’s Why.
- Trump Files #68: Donald Filmed a Music Video. It Didn’t Go Well.
- Trump Files #69: Donald Claimed “More Indian Blood” Than the Native Americans Competing With His Casinos
- Trump Files #70: Donald Has Been Inflating His Net Worth for 40 Years
- Trump Files #71: Donald Weighs In on “Ghetto Supastar”
- Trump Files #72: The Deadly Powerboat Race Trump Hosted in Atlantic City