Near the end of the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Clinton introduced Americans to a woman who had won the Miss Universe pageant twenty years earlier.
Her name was Alicia Machado.
What might have been a brief debate attack instead became a four-day controversy — in large part because Trump kept talking about her.
The dispute began with allegations about how Trump had treated Machado after she gained weight following her 1996 Miss Universe victory.
It ended with the Republican presidential nominee awake before dawn, using Twitter to tell millions of followers to investigate Machado's past and “check out sex tape.”
And all of it happened just over a week before another controversy involving Trump's comments about women would explode across the campaign.
“Donald, She Has a Name”
During the September 26 debate at Hofstra University, Clinton criticized Trump's history of comments about women.
Then she brought up Machado.
Machado, representing Venezuela, had been crowned Miss Universe in 1996.
Trump had recently become an owner of the Miss Universe organization.
Clinton said Trump had called Machado “Miss Piggy” after she gained weight and “Miss Housekeeping” because she was Latina.
Trump interrupted:
“Where did you find this?”
Clinton continued:
“Donald, she has a name.”
Then she identified her:
“Her name is Alicia Machado.”
Machado had recently become an American citizen, Clinton added, and intended to vote in November.
Trump responded:
“OK.”
The debate moved on.
The controversy didn't.
Machado's Weight Had Been a Public Story
Machado's difficulties with her weight following the Miss Universe competition weren't something invented during the 2016 campaign.
They had been discussed publicly twenty years earlier.
After Machado gained weight following her victory, Trump discussed it with reporters.
At one point he told the media that Machado had gone from approximately 117 or 118 pounds to considerably more.
He remarked:
“This is somebody that likes to eat.”
Machado also participated in a workout before assembled reporters and television cameras.
She later described the experience as humiliating.
Machado said Trump had referred to her as “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.”
Trump's public criticism of her weight is well documented.
The specific nicknames became more difficult to independently establish from contemporary recordings; Machado said Trump used them, and Clinton repeated her account during the debate.
Trump Could Have Let It Go
The following morning, Trump appeared on Fox & Friends.
Rather than moving away from the subject, he criticized Machado again.
Trump called her “the worst we ever had.”
He said she had been difficult for the Miss Universe organization.
Then he returned directly to her weight.
“She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”
Trump also criticized Machado's attitude.
The comments ensured that Clinton's debate attack wouldn't disappear after a single news cycle.
Trump had been confronted over his treatment of a former beauty-pageant winner.
His response the following morning was to criticize her weight again.
“I Saved Her Job”
Trump continued discussing Machado.
During a September 28 interview with Bill O'Reilly, Trump said Miss Universe officials had wanted to remove Machado because of her weight.
Trump claimed that he had intervened on her behalf.
“I saved her job,” he said.
Trump argued that the controversy needed to be understood in the context of a beauty competition.
Contestants entered knowing appearance was part of the business, he said.
His position was essentially that he had helped Machado rather than mistreated her.
Machado remembered the experience very differently.
She described Trump's treatment as humiliating and said his comments about her body had caused lasting emotional harm.
By then, Machado was openly supporting Hillary Clinton.
Then Came the Early-Morning Tweets
The story might still have faded.
Instead, shortly before dawn on September 30, Trump returned to it again.
Between roughly 3 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., Trump posted a series of messages attacking Machado.
He called her “my worst Miss U.”
He called her a “con.”
And then he posted the message that attracted the most attention.
Trump asked:
“Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?”
The tweet was sent at approximately 5:30 in the morning.
No evidence subsequently emerged establishing the existence of the sex tape Trump told his followers to check out.
Machado responded by accusing Trump of attempting to humiliate and intimidate her.
Machado Had Controversies of Her Own
Machado's background also received scrutiny.
She had been linked in media reports to a 1997 criminal investigation in Venezuela and accused of threatening a judge.
She was never charged in connection with those allegations.
Trump and his supporters argued that Clinton had presented Machado as an innocent victim without adequately examining her past.
That was a legitimate subject for factual scrutiny.
But it didn't establish Trump's claim about a sex tape.
And it didn't change the documented comments Trump himself had made about Machado's weight.
The political question increasingly became why Trump remained focused on a decades-old dispute with a former beauty queen when he was weeks away from a presidential election.
The Argument Becomes About Trump
By this point, the controversy had changed.
It was no longer simply about what Donald Trump had said to Alicia Machado in the 1990s.
It was about how Trump responded when challenged.
Clinton had raised Machado's story during the debate.
Trump could have disputed Machado's account and moved on.
Instead, he discussed her weight the next morning.
He discussed her again with Bill O'Reilly.
Then he spent part of the early morning hours of September 30 posting attacks against her on Twitter.
The episode therefore became another debate about Trump's temperament and use of social media.
Trump argued that fighting back was part of his personality and that Machado's history deserved examination.
His critics argued that a presidential nominee shouldn't be spending the predawn hours attacking a former beauty-pageant winner.
A Controversy About Women — Days Before a Much Bigger One
The timing would soon become remarkable.
Throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump's comments about women had repeatedly generated controversy.
Megyn Kelly had confronted him about that record during the first Republican primary debate more than a year earlier.
Now Hillary Clinton had used Alicia Machado to raise the issue again during the first general-election debate.
Trump's response kept the subject alive for nearly the entire week.
Then, only seven days after Trump's September 30 tweets about Machado, the campaign would be hit by something far more damaging.
On October 7, 2016, The Washington Post published a recording made eleven years earlier while Trump was preparing for an appearance on Access Hollywood.
The recording captured Trump making vulgar comments about women and describing conduct involving kissing and grabbing them.
The Machado controversy therefore occupies an important place in the chronology of the 2016 campaign.
Before the Access Hollywood tape appeared, Trump's treatment of women was already dominating political coverage.
A Story Trump Wouldn't Let End
The Alicia Machado controversy started with approximately one minute near the end of a presidential debate.
Clinton introduced Machado's story.
Trump asked where Clinton had found her.
The debate ended.
That could have been the end of it.
Instead, Trump kept responding.
He criticized Machado's weight.
He criticized her behavior as Miss Universe.
He said he had saved her job.
He attacked her credibility.
And before dawn four days after the debate, the Republican nominee told millions of followers to investigate her supposed “sex tape.”
No such tape was substantiated.
The controversy wasn't simply about something Donald Trump allegedly said twenty years earlier.
By the end of the week, it was about what Donald Trump was saying right then — with the presidential election only weeks away.