The MSM are lining up behind this accused accomplice to murder.
When Hillary Clinton told the 84 million people watching the presidential debate how Donald Trump disparaged Alicia Machado’s weight and ethnicity during her tenure as Miss Universe, the former beauty queen, watching at home in Los Angeles, began to cry.
Then she began to tweet: first a message supporting Clinton, then a pledge to vote, complete with a picture of her smiling with her U.S. passport, bestowed when she became a citizen after leaving her native Venezuela.
Clinton’s crisp recitation of the insults Trump lobbed at Machado was a breakout moment in Monday’s lively debate. Machado, now an actress at age 39, has since emerged as Clinton’s latest breakout political weapon: a walking embodiment of Trump’s political vulnerabilities.
His crass nickname for Machado following her weight gain, “Miss Piggy,” got immediate attention as alienating to women. Less noticed, but also potentially toxic, was his other nickname for her: “Miss Housekeeping,” a dig at her ethnicity.
“It’s a dignified job, but he said it in a way that was meant to insult me,” Machado told The Times on Tuesday. “It really is a reflection of how he feels about Latinos.”
By personifying Trump’s crass interactions with Latinos and women, Machado could make an efficient appeal on Clinton’s behalf to key voting groups.
The Clinton campaign is “trying to raise the decibel with its own base” of Latinos, said GOP strategist Mike Madrid, as well as “trying to peel off Republican women.”
“There’s no question that this is a two-fer,” he said.
Machado, who has been campaigning for Clinton since June, said she was surprised to hear the Democratic nominee tell her story Monday night. Her self-professed shock belied the obvious groundwork laid by the Clinton team: a slickly produced campaign video was rolled out online within an hour, a well-timed interview and photo shoot with Cosmopolitan magazine landed by midday Tuesday.
The attention gave Machado ample chance to rehash her unhappy history with Trump.
Machado was crowned Miss Universe in 1996, the same year the real estate magnate purchased the pageant organization.
About eight months into her tenure, she approached Miss Universe officials about seeking help to lose weight. To her surprise, Trump got involved and convened a media scrum to watch Machado, then 20 years old, work out.
“When you win a beauty pageant,” Trump told People magazine at the time, “people don’t think you’re going to go from 118 to 160 in less than a year, and you really have an obligation to stay in a perfect physical state.”
Trump was unapologetic Tuesday about his comments on Machado’s weight.
“She was the worst we ever had, the worst, the absolute worst. She was impossible,” he said in a television interview. “She was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight and it was a problem.”
In the 20 years since her Miss Universe tenure, Machado’s life has at times resembled the telenovelas she starred in. In 1998 she was accused of being an accomplice to an attempted murder. A judge later said there was insufficient evidence to arrest her and ordered only her boyfriend’s arrest. The judge later accused Machado of threatening his life.
She’s posed twice for Playboy and six years ago launched a foundation that supports single mothers. She’s also become an outspoken advocate to raise awareness of eating disorders, which she herself suffered from.
Machado moved to Los Angeles six months ago in hopes of jump-starting her English-language acting career.
Time hasn’t softened her views on Trump. Machado often uses the hashtag #NaziRat to describe Trump on Twitter.
Steve Sailer nails it:
NEW YORK TIMES Doubles Down Defending the Virtue of Alicia Machado, Conquistador-American Adventuress
This is now the top news story on the New York Times home page.
Furthermore, the New York Times Editorial Board editorialized:
Hillary Clinton’s Everywoman Moment
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD SEPT. 27, 2016
… When Mrs. Clinton finally got to unload what felt like the pent-up frustration of Everywoman, it was powerful. “This is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs, and someone who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers, who has said women don’t deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men,” she said. “And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. 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.”
Granted, there’s no proof that brand new American citizen and Hillary voter Alicia Machado drove the getaway car when her boyfriend shot his dead sister’s husband at her funeral in Venezuela. That’s just what multiple eyewitnesses said.
And the Venezuelan judge who then accused the telenovela actress of threatening to have him ruined by the president of Venezuela and then murdering him herself for investigating the shooting didn’t ultimately have her convicted.
And nobody seems to have done a DNA test to prove or falsify the Mexican Attorney-General’s allegation that the father of Machado’s daughter is narco cartel boss “El Indio.”
And the sex tape of her cheating on her fiance, Phillies slugger Bobby Abreu, with a fellow contestant on a Mexican reality TV show that caused the ballplayer to dump her may just have been kayfabe for all I know.
Sure, Ms. Machado has been relentlessly pursuing publicity, good, bad, or indifferent, for the last 20 years, but you can hardly expect the Clinton Campaign or the New York Times to fact-check ahead of time anything about her credibility. After all, most all the hundreds of stories about her were in some funny foreign language.
Look, the point is that Alicia Machado is a woman. And a Latina. And an immigrant. Therefore, unlike you, she’s on the right side of history.
Because of that, Alicia Machado has earned the American Dream: to help elect Hillary Clinton President.
That’s just who we are.
