Alicia Machado Fires Back: Misogyny One Of Trump’s ‘More Frightening’ Traits

FILE - In this June 15, 2016, file photo, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado speaks during a news conference at a Latino restaurant in Arlington, Va., to criticize Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Mac... FILE - In this June 15, 2016, file photo, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado speaks during a news conference at a Latino restaurant in Arlington, Va., to criticize Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Machado became a topic of conversation during the first presidential debate between Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on Sept. 27, 2016. (AP Photo/Luis Alonso Lugo, File) MORE LESS
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Former Miss Universe Alicia Machado fired back at Donald Trump on Friday after the Republican nominee sent off a fusillade of tweets calling her “disgusting” and falsely claiming that she appeared in a “sex tape.”

In an Instagram post, Machado dismissed his attacks as “slanderous and cheap lies” in keeping with his history of derogatory remarks about women.

“Through his campaign of hate, the Republican candidate insists on discrediting and demoralizing a woman, which is definitely one of his more frightening characteristics,” Machado wrote in Spanish, alongside a photo of her posing draped in the American flag. “With this, he’s looking to distract attention from his real problems and from his inability to claim to be the leader of this great country.”

“When I was barely a young woman, the now-candidate publicly humiliated me, insulted me, disrespected me publicly, as he usually did in private in the cruelest way,” she continued, charging that Trump repeated the behavior “with other women for decades.”

The former pageant queen found herself at the center of the news cycle this week after Hillary Clinton highlighted Trump’s past comments calling Machado “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” during Monday’s presidential debate.

Clinton’s campaign then released a video touting an endorsement from Machado, who claimed Trump humiliated her for gaining weight after she earned the Miss Universe crown in 1996. Trump has continued to criticize the “massive amount of weight” she gained, and remained fixated on her comments this week even as his surrogates tried to redirect attention towards former President Bill Clinton’s past sex scandals.

In the tweets he sent Friday morning, he called Machado his “worst Miss U” and referenced her purported role in a sex tape, which both fact-checking site Snopes and the Daily Beast have reported does not exist. Machado did participate in a Spanish reality TV show in 2005, where she had a romantic relationship with another contestant, and previously posed for Playboy.

Trump’s wife Melania also appeared in several risqué photo shoots for magazines like GQ during her modeling career, and his daughter Ivanka previously posed for the German edition of Maxim.

The Clinton campaign called Trump’s early-morning tweetstorm about Machado “unhinged,” asking, “What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?”

View Machado’s post below:

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