Thread: ‘She Has a Name,’ Alicia Machado, and It Is Everywhere

‘She Has a Name,’ Alicia Machado, and It Is Everywhere

By AMY CHOZICK and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUMSEPT. 28, 2016

In the final minutes of Monday night’s debate, Hillary Clinton told the story of a 1996 Miss Universe winner and how Donald J. Trump had called her names because she had gained weight. “Donald, she has a name,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Now her campaign is making certain that her name, Alicia Machado, is becoming ubiquitous.

With the Clinton campaign’s help, Ms. Machado has gone on a publicity blitz since Mrs. Clinton told her story on the debate stage at Hofstra University. This explosion of interest is the combination of a political attack that resonates with two key constituencies for Mrs. Clinton — suburban women and Hispanics — and a made-for-television battle between the Republican nominee for president and a beauty queen.

In 48 hours, Ms. Machado has been written about in more than 150 print news articles, referred to on TV more than 6,023 times and mentioned on Twitter nearly 200,000 times. She appeared on NBC’s “Today” show, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Univision and Telemundo.

“It was a golden opportunity for the Clinton campaign,” said Katie Packer, a Republican strategist who does not support Mr. Trump. “It’s every woman’s worst nightmare, but it also speaks beyond just women, to Latinos.

Mrs. Clinton had these demographic groups in mind when she attacked Mr. Trump for supposedly calling Ms. Machado, who is Venezuelan, “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, Jessica Ditto, said that Ms. Machado’s claims that Mr. Trump humiliated her were “totally baseless” and that he never called her those names. But the Clinton campaign released video of Mr. Trump, who was an executive producer of the pageant, saying of Ms. Machado, then 19, “This is somebody who likes to eat.”

Much like Mr. Trump’s refusal to apologize to Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a Muslim soldier who died in Iraq whom he insulted this past summer, Mr. Trump has been unrepentant.

On Tuesday, he told “Fox and Friends” that Ms. Machado had “gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”

His response has allowed Democrats to fan their well-oiled outrage machine and turn a passing attack into a full-blown news media storm. And the story is resonating beyond partisan circles.

Clinton campaign aides have arranged many of Ms. Machado’s appearances and released two online ads telling her story, one of which is called, simply, “Degrading.” She has campaigned for Mrs. Clinton in Florida and could do additional events, an aide said.

On Tuesday, the campaign hosted a conference call for political reporters to talk to Ms. Machado.

“For me, this election has been like a bad dream, watching this guy again do the stupid things and stupid comments so misogynous and so machista,” Ms. Machado said on the call.

Ana Navarro, a Republican political commentator, noted that Ms. Machado, who is also an actress in telenovelas, is a particularly powerful messenger to reach Hispanics, whom Mrs. Clinton desperately needs to win over in battleground states like Florida, Colorado and North Carolina.

On Tuesday, Ms. Navarro said that she had heard Mr. Trump’s comments to Ms. Machado discussed three times in one hour on Spanish news radio. “Hell knows no fury like a Latina who’s been called fat,” she wrote on Twitter.

Ms. Machado is at ease with the spotlight; she is represented by a Los Angeles-based public-relations firm and has said she is writing a tell-all book about her experiences with Mr. Trump, to be titled “Donald Trump y Yo” (or “Donald Trump and Me”). On Tuesday, she promoted her line of perfume on Twitter. “Feel like a queen,” she wrote.

Ms. Ditto, the Trump spokesman, said Ms. Machado had “lobbed a public smear campaign in order to gain notoriety at the expense of Mr. Trump’s name and reputation.”

At least part of the story line that has unfolded after Mrs. Clinton first mentioned her name has the eerie echo of one of the sloshy melodramas she starred in.

In the late 1990s, after her reign as Miss Universe, Ms. Machado was accused of abetting an attempted murder committed by her then-boyfriend, who shot a relative in Caracas. Ms. Machado was reportedly seen driving a getaway car, but she did not face charges. Later, the judge in Venezuela presiding over the case said that Ms. Machado had threatened him, which she denied.

Asked about the episode on CNN on Tuesday, Ms. Machado told Anderson Cooper: “I have my past. Of course, everybody has a past. And I’m not a saint girl. But that is not the point now.”

She also criticized Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, saying in an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine, “I think I speak more English than her,” Ms. Machado said. “I don’t see anything about this girl. She’s a doll. She’s a decoration.”

In an appearance Tuesday on Fox News, the anchor Megyn Kelly asked about a 1997 article in The Washington Post in which Ms. Machado suggested that she had been anorexic before competing in that year’s Miss Universe pageant. Ms. Machado, who has said that Mr. Trump’s behavior led to an eating disorder, denied that, although the clip was being widely shared by conservative-leaning sources on Wednesday.

In her televised interviews, Ms. Machado seemed well-aware that supporters of Mr. Trump would seek to undermine her. “I’m not pretending to be Mother Teresa,” she said in an interview on the “Today” show on Wednesday. “I know they will try distractions about my story.”

Clinton aides said Ms. Machado, who recently became a United States citizen and can vote, contacted the campaign during the Democratic primary, wanting to help. The campaign declined to say whether Ms. Machado’s background had been vetted. But a spokesman for the campaign, Jennifer Palmieri, said Wednesday night, “Trump should stop bullying Alicia Machado once and for all and apologize for his offensive comments both 20 years ago and the morning after the debate.”

Many Republicans seemed to agree with Ms. Palmieri, expressing frustration and puzzlement that, with 40 days left before the election, their party’s nominee had allowed his fight with Ms. Machado to dominate the news cycle.

“It makes no sense,” Frank Luntz, a G.O.P. strategist said. He said that focus groups that he had conducted had shown that Mr. Trump should be hammering Mrs. Clinton on issues like the national debt and the Islamic State.

“Instead, he’s in a fight with a beauty queen,” Mr. Luntz said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/us...race.html?_r=0

Sorry, Frank, it makes perfect sense. American Hispanics are not going to believe or associate or connect with trash like this, despite the extreme efforts of Katie Packer and Ana Navarro (who need to put the cookies down themselves) and the rest of the NeverTrumpers who I expect were involved in this whole nasty charade. I'm glad they found a cure for Bulimia and Anorexia though:

1. run and breed with Mexican drug lords
2. make porn movies
3. assist in a Venezuelan murder
4. threaten to kill the judge presiding in the murder trial
5. hitch your booty to Hillary Clinton
6. become Hillary's Poster Girl and a Queen with your own book and perfume line.

Sounds just like the type of Presidential Candidate that would appeal to Laura Bush, Barbara Bush, George Bush I, George Bush II and wandering Jeb.

Thank God, George P had more sense. GOOD FOR HIM for supporting Trump, and shame, shame, shame on the others.

I mean what will they be saying in Kennebunkport after this!!

September 30, 2016, 09:55 am

Gingrich: Former Miss Universe is 'the new Benghazi lie'
By Mark Hensch
3

Greg Nash

Hillary Clinton’s use of a former Miss Universe winner to attack Donald Trump resembles her handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, according to former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

“This is the new Benghazi lie,” he said Thursday on “The Sean Hannity Show,” as first reported by BuzzFeed.

“What Hillary tried to set up and what they apparently spent months preparing is an ambush as false as Benghazi,” Gingrich said of Clinton’s defense of Alicia Machado.“It was as false as her claim she was under fire in in Bosnia. It was as false as the lies she told on her emails. The elite media, which is Clinton, I mean, they totally identify with her, they took it hook, line and sinker.”

Clinton brought up Machado, a 39-year-old former beauty queen from Venezuela, to attack Trump during the first presidential debate.

“He called this woman ‘Miss Piggy,’ then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina,” she said last Monday at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

“Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado, and she has become a U.S. citizen, and you can bet she’s going to vote this November.”

Machado says Trump insulted her attractiveness and weight while she was Miss Universe in 1996. Trump owned the pageant at the time.

Gingrich on Thursday said the media was eager for a story like Machado’s they could use for discrediting Trump.

“They clearly had set it up to be triggered at the debate,” he said. "At the last minute, Hillary suddenly realizes she hasn’t gotten it in yet.

“So you have this total detour to make sure she has gotten the story planted so all that all the news media that are lined up — all of it’s embargoed, all of it’s sitting there waiting,” the former Speaker added.

“[They’re] quivering, just waiting for Hillary to give them the signal. We all got sucked in at the very last second.”

An ad released by the Clinton campaign shortly after the debate included footage of a press event where Trump invited reporters to watch Machado exercise. In one of the clips, Trump talks about Machado gaining 60 or 70 pounds and says she is “somebody who likes to eat.”

Trump on Friday said Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, was “duped” into promoting Machado despite the Venezuelan’s “terrible” past.

The Republican presidential nominee also urged voters to “check out” an alleged “sex tape” of Machado.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/...w-benghazi-lie

I can't believe this story grew the wings it did. Trump stepped dead in this well baited trap. He should have just denied her allegations and moved on. There is no documented evidence that he called her Miss Piggy or Miss Housekeeper. This was a very calculated trap set into place prior to the debate because the Clinton campaign knew Trump would jump all over it. Time to stop being so predictable Mr. Trump. Being predictable is not smart when in a campaign against a well oiled liberal campaigning machine. As Newt Gingrich has said, these people know how to fight in the mud.

This lady is obviously a money grubber out to pad her bank account. Instead of attacking Mr. Trump, she should have been thankful that he took her under his wing and saved her job as Miss Universe. Her weight gain was an obvious breech of contract.