Alicia Machado, the woman Trump called Miss Housekeeping, is ready to vote against Donald Trump

By Janell Ross September 27 at 10:21 AM

It took Alicia Machado a long time to speak about all her experiences with Donald Trump, and all that the year she spent working for the then Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant unleashed. Since the late 1990s, all that most people who are aware of Machado have known about her is that she was crowned Miss Universe in 1996, tangled with Trump over her weight and then moved on to a career in TV and movies.

As of this morning, some Americans have no doubt heard a bit more about Machado, a woman mentioned by Hillary Clinton on the debate stage Monday night. She is the woman, Clinton told the world, who Trump often referred to as Miss Housekeeping. And Trump did not deny it.

The Clinton campaign viewed Machado's experience with Trump behavior as so damning that Monday night, the campaign released a new commercial -- almost a short documentary -- featuring Machado. Speaking in Spanish, Machado described Trump as a man filled with grudges, racism and frightening anger, a man who contributing to her struggle with an eating disorder and, in keeping with another Trump critique Clinton raised on the debate stage, the owner of the pageant which did not pay her what she was due under the terms of her contract.

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Machado, who hails from an influential and politically-engaged extended Venezuelan family, left college to compete for the crown and pursue what she hoped would blossom into a career in the U.S. entertainment industry. Trump purchased the Miss Universe pageant just in time to become her boss. All Machado knew was that Trump, a wealthy American businessman, had big plans to boost the pageant's profile and profits.

In the end, she came to view Trump as an insensitive bigot, a misogynist who seemed to view the pageant and pageant contestants alike as his personal property, Machado told me in an interview earlier this year for the Washington Post's Trump biography, "Trump Revealed."

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