Meet the Woman Donald Trump Called “Miss Piggy”

The Clinton campaign’s new web ad takes aim at his treatment of women.


After the presidential debate Monday night, Hillary Clinton’s campaign put out a brutal new web video attacking Donald Trump for how he described a former Miss Universe.

Near the end of the debate, Clinton blasted Trump for how he had treated Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe pageant in 1996, representing Venezuela. (Trump owned the Miss Universe pageant from 1996 until 2015.) “One of the worst things he’s said was about a woman in a beauty contest,” Clinton said. “He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she’s Latina.” Trump criticized Machado for gaining weight and invited the media to watch her exercise.

In the video, Machado narrates in Spanish, filling in the details of her interactions with Trump. “He was overwhelming,” she says. “I was very scared of him. He’d yell at me all the time.”

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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