Trump, the Russians and Alicia Machado
By Marc Giller | May 12, 2017, 11:18am | @MarcGiller You probably remember it as one of the most frustrating moments of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton, understanding that her opponent was, shall we say, easily distracted, trotted out a woman named Alicia Machado to tell the world about how Trump had said nasty things about her weight when she was Miss Universe. This was supposed to cement Trump’s reputation as a misogynist and all around male chauvinist P-I-G, thus rallying the female vote to Hillary’s side. It was also a pretty good way of putting him on the defensive, getting him to talk about what was essentially a non-issue while Hillary skated on her own ethical problems with the Clinton Foundation and the criminal investigation into her use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.
As it turned out, however, those few extra pounds weren’t the only baggage that Machado was lugging around. She was like a character straight out of a telenovela, the former girlfriend of a drug kingpin who allegedly threatened to kill a judge but somehow managed to escape conviction for driving a getaway car after an attempted murder. Trump could have easily brushed Machado off like so many Twinkie crumbs–but instead, he allowed her to get under his skin, and spent days on Twitter denouncing her and only compounding a problem that should have been left to fizzle out on its own.
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http://theresurgent.com/trump-the-russians-and-alicia-machado/
