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Donald Trump Bashes Alicia Machado Again, Alleging a ‘Sex Tape’ (Without Evidence) As America Sleeps, Donald Trump Seethes on Twitter
(about 11 hours later)
Donald J. Trump went on a morning Twitter tirade on Friday, denouncing the former Miss Universe winner he once shamed for gaining weight and directing the American public to seek out a sex tape that he said she participated in as evidence of her sordid past. The tweets started around 3:20 a.m. on Friday. Inside Trump Tower, a restless figure stirred in the predawn darkness, nursing his grievances and grabbing a device that often lands him in hot water.
The attack, in a flurry of tweets on the topic posted from 5:14 to 5:30 a.m. Eastern time, was the latest effort by Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to discredit the beauty queen, Alicia Machado, after Hillary Clinton used her as an example of his sexism during the debate on Monday night. Fact-checkers have found no evidence that Ms. Machado, who was featured in Playboy, appeared in a sex tape. Her critics may be referring to a risqué scene that she appeared in on a reality television show. On his Android phone, Donald J. Trump began to tap out bursts of digital fury: He mocked Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe and a popular Latin American actress, as a “con,” the “worst” and “disgusting.”
Mr. Trump maintained this week that Ms. Machado’s weight and attitude were problematic after she won the 1996 pageant and his campaign circulated information about her previous brushes with the law. In a final flourish, before the sun came up, the Republican presidential nominee claimed — without offering any evidence — that she had appeared in a “sex tape.”
On Friday, Mr. Trump suggested that there was more to be revealed about Ms. Machado and offered the theory that Mrs. Clinton, his Democratic opponent, helped her attain American citizenship. The tirade fit a pattern. It is when Mr. Trump is alone with his thoughts, and untethered from his campaign staff, that he has seemed to commit his most self-destructive acts.
Mr. Trump had been modulating his tone in the weeks before the debate, but his uneven performance appears to have caused him to lash out. He has increasingly flirted with leveling more personal attacks on Mrs. Clinton’s history of marital problems and he has doubled-down on his charges that the news media is rigging the election. “There has always been this dangerous part of him that will go too far and do something that backfires,” said Michael D’Antonio, the author of “The Truth About Trump,” a new biography of the real estate mogul.
While Mr. Trump had little to say when Mrs. Clinton brought up Ms. Machado on the debate stage, he said in his Friday tweets that she “duped” Mrs. Clinton. He called this a sign of bad judgment. “His worst impulses,” he added, “are self-defeating.”
“Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an ‘angel’ without checking her past, which is terrible!” Mr. Trump wrote. Over the past few days, those instincts have been on vivid display. In quick succession, Mr. Trump has repeated his critique that Ms. Machado gained a “massive amount of weight” after she won the Miss Universe crown in 1996; suggested that former President Bill Clinton’s infidelities are fair game for campaign attacks; and urged his followers to “check out” a sex tape that may not exist. (Ms. Machado appeared in a risqué scene on a reality television show, but fact-checkers have discovered no sex tape.)
Ms. Machado, who told CNN this week that she is “not a saint girl,” was also accused in the late 1990s of abetting an attempted murder committed by her then-boyfriend, who shot a family member in Caracas, Venezuela. The eruptions could further damage Mr. Trump’s reputation with women and Latino voters at a time when he can scarcely afford to alienate either group, five and half weeks before Election Day.
She was said to have been seen driving a getaway car, but did not face charges. Yet for close students of Mr. Trump’s career and campaign, it all has a familiar ring. Over the years, he has issued a stream of needlessly cruel and seemingly off-the-cuff insults — both on and off social media — that have inflamed the public. He declared on Twitter that Kim Novak, a reclusive 81-year-old actress at the time, “should sue her plastic surgeon,” sending her into hiding. He derided the appearance of a rival, Carly Fiorina, angering female voters by asking: “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” And he criticized the mother of a slain American soldier, musing that as a Muslim woman, she was not “allowed” to speak.
Since he reshuffled his campaign’s leadership in August, Mr. Trump’s team has tried to instill a more disciplined approach that has been heavier on scripted speeches and policy. Twitter, however, has continued to be an outlet for Mr. Trump to vent without a filter, and rants such as the one unleashed on Friday undermine his efforts to appear presidential. Such fulminations have almost always arisen from Mr. Trump’s wounded pride, after he has been attacked or has suffered a setback. And they have frequently played out on Twitter, at hours of the day when much of America is asleep.
Backers of Mrs. Clinton seized on Twitter storm as more evidence that Mr. Trump is unfit to be president. The early-morning tweets about Ms. Machado were a reminder, said the Republican strategist Charles Black, that Mr. Trump “cannot let something drop until he proves he’s right, and it’s beside the point who’s right.”
Correct the Record, a “super PAC” that supports the Democratic nominee, suggested that Mr. Trump was showing frustration about a recent batch of weak polls. Around midnight one night during the primary campaign, he posted an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz, the wife of a Republican rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Early one morning, he alleged a sexual affair between two well-known television anchors who had criticized him. Early one Saturday, he distributed an image of Mrs. Clinton, surrounded by falling cash and a six-pointed star that many said was a Star of David and was anti-Semitic. And at 11 one evening, he shared a digitally altered image of Jeb Bush appearing to pick his nose.
And John Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, advised that Mr. Trump might want to resist the urge to grab his phone when he wakes up “in the middle of the night.” “Late night Twitter-drunk Donald is back at it!” an aide to Mr. Bush replied at the time.
Mrs. Clinton responded later in the morning on Twitter by calling Mr. Trump “unhinged” and said his treatment of Ms. Machado was unwarranted. On Friday, Mr. Trump was at it again between 3:20 and 5:30 a.m., issuing a series of indignant messages that mocked Ms. Machado and Mrs. Clinton, who raised the experience of the former beauty queen to hurt Mr. Trump during the debate.
Mrs. Clinton, he wrote “was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an “angel” without checking her past, which is terrible!”
A few minutes later, Mr. Trump theorized — again, without offering any evidence — that Mrs. Clinton had helped Ms. Machado become a United States citizen so that the Democratic nominee could mention the beauty queen in the debate to hurt Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump, in an interview on Friday afternoon, said he remained proud of his tweets.
“Why would I have regrets? I’m a very truthful person, and I’m telling the truth. Now people understand it. And before the tweets, people didn’t understand it.”
It is unusual for a major party presidential nominee to directly control any online communications, let alone issue provocative, unsubstantiated claims without the filter of a campaign aide.
But Mr. Trump is fixated on Twitter. He has nearly 12 million followers and has reveled in watching his stray thoughts become viral sensations on the social media platform. He has been fond of quoting a fan on Twitter, who described him as “the Ernest Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters.”
So like a car careening down a highway with no guardrails, Mr. Trump on Friday sent out one message after another. His suggestion of a sex tape featuring Ms. Machado sent his most zealous followers hunting for images. A few of them posted pornographic images of women who they believe resembled Ms. Machado.
Ms. Machado on Friday called Mr. Trump’s online assault “cheap lies with bad intentions” and said that she would not be intimidated.
Aides to Mrs. Clinton, who have long warned of his reckless ways on Twitter, said Mr. Trump’s behavior had once again bolstered their argument that he is mentally unfit for the presidency.
“I mean, his latest Twitter meltdown is unhinged, even for him,” Mrs. Clinton said on Friday.
“Really, who gets up at 3 o’clock in the morning to engage in a Twitter attack against a former Miss Universe?” she asked.
Many wondered aloud on Friday whether Mr. Trump’s erratic late-night behavior is the result of disorienting insomnia, since he regularly boasts of needing only a few hours of sleep. But Mr. Trump quickly rejected that theory.
“For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o’clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.
Not everyone in his life seems so sure. Asked this year which habit she wished her husband would quit, Melania Trump gave a one-word answer: tweeting.