http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/09/28/trumps-personal-feuds-threaten-his-own-campaign/?mod=djemCapitalJournalDaybreakWith Pageant Winner Dispute, Trump Again Lets Personal Feud Become Campaign IssueBy BYRON TAU
Sep 28, 2016 8:05 am ET
In what has become a recurring theme on the campaign trail this year, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has once again elevated a personal feud to the level of a campaign issue in a way that risks causing lasting damage to his political prospects just six weeks before Election Day.
At Monday’s debate, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carefully baited Mr. Trump by recounting a previously reported but little recounted story about Alicia Machado, a Miss Universe pageant winner who says she was mocked and demeaned by Mr. Trump in the mid-1990s after she gained too much weight after winning the beauty contest.
On the debate stage, Mr. Trump didn’t deny the story. And in a Tuesday interview on Fox News, he brought up the exchange with Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Machado’s weight issue, saying “she was the winner and you know, she gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem. We had a real problem.”
Mr. Trump, who owned the organization that runs the Miss Universe pageant, suddenly found himself again embroiled in a very public feud with Ms. Machado at a time when his campaign is struggling to attract support from female voters.
Shortly after the debate, a video featuring Ms. Machado was put out by the Clinton campaign. In the video, she recounts being called “ugly,” “fat,” and “Miss Piggy,” and the video notes Mr. Trump “blindsided her by inviting reporters to watch her work out.” Ms. Machado, who is Hispanic, also said that Mr. Trump called her “Miss Housekeeping” and deprived her of revenue from the commercials and advertising she appeared in after winning the pageant.
The video is “devastating,” wrote Republican consultant Ana Navarro on Twitter. “She’s not political. She speaks from personal experience. Reminds us what a gross jerk he is.”
Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said “voters can see through Hillary Clinton’s shameless attempts to turn the conversation back to Mr. Trump.”
“Here’s the reality: Ms. Machado misses the limelight and sees an opportunity to get back in it 20 years later by attacking Mr. Trump, and
we’re not going to take the bait,” he said. “Instead we’re going to talk about jobs, keeping our families and communities safe, and renegotiating these terrible trade deals that the Clintons have given us the last several decades.”
This is far from the first time Mr. Trump’s personal disagreements have threatened to derail his ability to stay on his core political campaign message about trade, immigration and the failure of conventional politics.
In many of these cases, Mr. Trump picked very public fights with people with sympathetic stories: a judge who was raised by immigrant parents, a family whose son lost his life in the Iraq War and Ms. Machado.
Mr. Trump spent several days this year accusing Gonzalo Curiel, a Hispanic-American federal judge born in Indiana, of bias in a fraud trial concerning one of Mr. Trump’s companies due solely to the judge’s Mexican heritage.
He spent several days after the Democratic National Convention feuding with Khizr Khan and Ghazala Khan, Muslim-Americans whose son, a U.S. Army captain, died in Iraq. They criticized Mr. Trump in a primetime speech to the DNC for his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.
Mr. Trump took issue with Mr. Khan in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” for questioning whether Mr. Trump had read the U.S. Constitution and for saying he had “sacrificed nothing.” The Republican nominee then generated more controversy by saying Mr. Khan’s wife had been “extremely quiet” on stage at the convention and perhaps she “wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.”
Mr. Trump has also carried on public feuds with members of the media such as Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell.
“You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals,’” Ms. Kelly said to Mr. Trump at a Republican debate in 2015.
“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Mr. Trump fired back. That debate exchange ignited a protracted disagreement between Mr. Trump and Ms. Kelly after Mr. Trump made a comment on Ms. Kelly’s performance as a debate moderator that many interpreted to be about menstruation: “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her… wherever.”
At Monday night’s debate, he added that he had said “very tough things” about Ms. O’Donnell and “I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.”
LOL! You already took the bait, genius.
