The Venezuelan beauty queen Hillary Clinton mentioned during the debate with Donald Trump Tuesday night has a dark history with the law, it has emerged. While she was still living in Venezuela, Alicia Machado was accused of driving the getaway car after an attempted murder but “got off” due to lack of evidence. She also stands accused of threatening a judge.
Clinton cited Machado — the first woman to win the Miss Universe beauty contest after Donald Trump took over the reins in 1996 — as an example of Trump’s boorish misogyny.
“One of the worst things he’s said was about a woman in a beauty contest — he loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them,” Clinton said with a smug smile while Trump grimaced in the background. “And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado!”
What Clinton left out of this harrowing sob story is the fact that Machado had broken her contract with the Miss Universe pageant by allowing herself to gain nearly 60 pounds — ballooning from 118 to 178 pounds — since she won Miss Universe. And when the media started fat-shaming her, Trump defended her.
In January of 1997, CNN reported that “as her universe expanded, so did she, putting on nearly 60 pounds.”
“Some people when they have pressure eat too much. Like me. Like Alicia,” said Donald Trump, the executive producer of the Miss Universe Pageant.
Since winning the crown, the former Miss Venezuela went from 118 pounds to — well — a number that kept growing like the size of the fish that got away.
Rumors also surfaced that she might be forced to give up her Miss Universe crown.
But Trump, as co-owner of rights to the pageant, said he would never let that happen. “We had a choice of: termination or do this,” he said. “We wanted to do this.”
The pageant’s meaning of “do this” was for Machado to get her weight down to about 130 pounds. At a recent photo op, Machado — hardly a blimp at 5-foot-7 — pedaled a stationary bicycle and jumped rope in front of a pack of photographers and reporters who could themselves use a little training.
“A lot of you folks have weight problems. I hate to tell you,” Trump told the rowdy pool of reporters.
In private, Trump admits to “fat-shaming” Machado in order to inspire her to lose the weight. As Jeff Dunetz put it: “Trump’s reaction was no different than any coach or manger faced with an athlete who let themselves go.” Arguably, this episode was not one of his finest moments — but it’s still light years better than the time Hillary gleefully defended a child rapist (since we’re bringing up stories from decades past).
Machado has complained that the humiliation she suffered because of Trump was unbearable: “After that episode, I was sick, anorexia and bulimia for five years,” she said. “Over the past 20 years, I’ve gone to a lot of psychologists to combat this.”
This brought to mind the story of Kathy Shelton, who was just 12 years old when a 41-year-old drifter brutally raped her on the side of an Arkansas road in 1975. Hillary Clinton defended the animal and got his sentence reduced from first-degree rape to “unlawful fondling of a minor.”
Shelton said she was physically beaten during the attack.
‘I can’t cuss, but [Taylor] was calling me the ‘b’ word, and [saying] ‘You like it, you know it’,’ said Shelton. ‘Slapping me and hitting me with his fist.’
A witness to the assault told the prosecutor that ‘he overheard Thomas Taylor having had sexual relations with the victim’.
Medical examinations ‘reflected that the victim herein had, in fact, had sexual relations consistent with the time stated by her wherein she was attacked,’ according to court filings.
Shelton said she managed to escape her attackers to a nearby house that had a light on, and later woke up in the hospital.Shelton recounted the brutal assault that she said left her with severe internal and external injuries. She said she was knocked into a coma, and later required stitches in her genital area.
‘When I came out of the coma, I had several stitches down there. They tore me up bad,’ she said. ‘The doctors said there was a 99 percent chance I couldn’t have kids. I have been with a couple men after that, it took me a long time to grow there. But I never had any kids.’
As a result of the attack, Shelton said doctors told her it was unlikely she would ever be able to have children. She said she was devastated by the prognosis.
‘When I was younger I really wanted a kid so bad,’ said Shelton, who has never had children. ‘I love kids.’
Shelton told the Daily Beast in an emotional interview in the summer of 2014 that she was afraid of men for many years after that, and dealt with anger issues well into her adulthood.
At one point, she turned to drugs, a path that ultimately led her to prison. Now 52, she has never married or had children. She said she has been sober for several years and has achieved a level of stability, although she remains unemployed and living on disability assistance.
“Hillary Clinton took me through hell,” Shelton said.
“I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing,” Clinton, then named Hillary D. Rodham, wrote in the affidavit. “I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body. Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”
Clinton also wrote that a child psychologist told her that children in early adolescence “tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences,” especially when they come from “disorganized families, such as the complainant.”
The victim vigorously denied Clinton’s accusations and said there has never been any explanation of what Clinton was referring to in that affidavit. She claims she never accused anyone of attacking her before her rape.
“I’ve never said that about anyone. I don’t know why she said that. I have never made false allegations. I know she was lying,” she said. “I definitely didn’t see older men. I don’t know why Hillary put that in there and it makes me plumb mad.”
Later on, Clinton would laugh about the case with Arkansas reporter Roy Reed, who was researching an article on the Clintons that was ultimately never published.
In the reporter’s audio recordings (uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon), Clinton “appears to acknowledge that she was aware of her client’s guilt, brags about successfully getting the only piece of physical evidence thrown out of court, and laughs about it all whimsically.”
“He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,” Clinton says on the recording, failing to hold back some chuckles.
This from a woman who bills herself as a leading advocate for women and children. Apparently, as far as Clinton is concerned, Trump’s “fat-shaming” was far, far worse than her blaming the child victim of a brutal rape.
But it turns out Machado — who is now an American citizen and urging other women to vote for Clinton in November — is perhaps not the best character witness:
In February of 1998, the Associated Press reported that Machado threatened the judge handling the above investigation:
A Venezuela judge said Thursday a former Miss Universe threatened to kill him after he indicted her boyfriend for attempted murder. Venezuelan beauty queen Alicia Machado threatened “to ruin my career as a judge and … kill me,” Judge Maximiliano Fuenmayor said on national television.
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The victim’s family accused Machado of driving the getaway car, but Fuenmayor has not indicted her, citing insufficient evidence. The judge said there were no witnesses to place Machado at the scene _ or to back up her claim she was home sick at the time.
Machado could not be reached for comment Thursday. She was in the city of Maracay filming a soap opera Thursday, according to Mariela Castro of Venevision TV network. Machado’s lawyer was also unavailable for comment.
Fuenmayor said he planned to open a new case against Machado for Wednesday’s threatening phone call.
Machado told Inside Edition she’s voting for Clinton in November and she hopes her story will urge others to do the same.
Kathy Shelton — for one — will not be heeding her call.
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