Donald Trump on Wednesday night defended his past treatment of Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe who Trump mocked for gaining weight and then turned her diet regimen into a media spectacle.
“She did not do well. She had a lot of difficulties, and, you know, they wanted to fire her. The company itself wanted to fire her. I saved her job,” Trump told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.
Trump’s fat-shaming of Machado in the 1990s was resurfaced by Hillary Clinton in the Monday night debate, prompting Trump to double down on Tuesday and say that Machado had “gained a massive amount of weight.”
The Republican nominee told O’Reilly that he barely interacted with Machado when she was Miss Universe and emphasized that his actions saved her job.
“I’ll bet you if you put up and added up all the time I spoke to her, it was probably less than five minutes,” he said. “I had nothing to do with this person, but they wanted to fire her. I saved her job because I said, ‘That’s gonna be ruinous.’ And I’ve done that with a number of the young ladies, where I saved their job.”
Trump complained that he was punished for his actions.
“And you know what happened? Look what I get out of it. I get nothing,” he said.
“I saved her job because they wanted to fire her for putting on so much weight — and it is a beauty contest,” Trump added. “Say what you want, Bill, I mean, they know what they’re getting into.”
He also worked in a reference to reports that Machado allegedly threatened a judge, saying that she “got involved in all sorts of problems.”
