WASHINGTON – Donald Trump urged voters on Friday to check out the supposed ‘’sex tape’’ of a former Miss Universe backing his rival Hillary Clinton, provoking the Democrat to label him ‘’unhinged’’ in a surreal new turn to the White House race.
In a pre-dawn Twitter rant, the Republican nominee accused Clinton of helping Alicia Machado obtain citizenship in order to exploit her story against him.
The Venezuela-born Machado, who claims the billionaire bullied her mercilessly after she won the Trump-owned beauty pageant in 1996, has shot to public attention since Clinton raised her case at this week’s presidential debate.
‘’Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a US citizen so she could use her in the debate?’’ said Trump, in one of a series of virulent tweets.
Clinton has lashed out at Trump’s history of abusive remarks that included humiliating Machado over her weight gain and Latina origins, nicknaming her ‘’Miss Piggy’’ and ‘’Miss Housekeeping.’’
The Democrat said that Trump’s overnight attacks on the former beauty queen as new evidence that he is lacks the steadiness to be president.
‘’This is… unhinged, even for Trump,’’ Clinton said in her own series of pointed tweets in response to his sex tape allegation.
‘’Who gets up at three o’clock in the morning to engage in a Twitter attack against a former Miss Universe?’’ Clinton later asked supporters at a Florida rally.
‘’It proves, yet again, that he is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander in chief.’’
Trump wrote on Twitter: ‘’For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o’clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!’’
By highlighting Machado’s case, Team Hillary managed to provoke Trump into a potentially damaging outburst with just five weeks left in the race.
The Machado issue helps Clinton with both women and Hispanics, key voters in a battleground state like Florida.
Clinton’s spokesman Nick Merrill said the former first lady called Machado to offer her support. She thanked the former beauty queen ‘’for all she had done and the courage she has shown,’’ Merrill said.
Machado, meanwhile, accused Trump in a new press release of issuing ‘’slanders and false accusations about my life in order to humiliate, intimidate, and unbalance me.’’
She repeated her pledge of ‘’absolute support for Secretary Clinton, on behalf of all women.’’ (AFP)