Donald Trump is claiming he saved the job of a former Miss Universe winner as another pageant contestant came forward to charge the Republican presidential candidate had made derogatory comments about her appearance.
Trump launched a new defense of himself Wednesday against attacks that he was verbally abusive to Alicia Machado, the Miss Universe who had charged he called her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeper.”
Trump, who owned the pageant at the time, said Wednesday on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, “She did not do well. She had a lot of difficulties. And you know, they wanted to fire her. The company itself wanted to fire her. I saved her job.”
He added, “I had nothing to do with this person, but they wanted to fire her. I saved her job because I said that is going to be ruinous … And you know what happened? Look what I get out of it. I get nothing.”
There’s no evidence to back up Trump’s claims.
Machado, who represented Venezuela and was crowned in 1996, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday Trump was “really aggressive.”
“He was really rude. He was a bad person with me,” she told Cooper.
Machado became national news Monday when Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton told her story during the presidential debate.
In another development, former Miss Australia Jodie Seal called Trump “controlling” during her time competing in the 1996 Miss Universe pageant. He called the contestants “some pretty horrible names,” she told “Inside Edition” on Wednesday.
“He said to me, ‘Suck your stomach in, or suck your gut in,'” Seal said. “He always wanted us to be sexy.”
“He’d walk by while we were eating,” she added. “He put a lot of the girls down.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN.
