Mother Jones illustration; Shutterstock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files”—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current president—on September 15, 2016.

Donald Trump’s purchase of the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants in 1996 gave him another chance to indulge in one of his favorite pastimes: surrounding himself with beautiful women. And the woman who won the Miss Universe crown that year, Venezuela’s Alicia Machado, found out what happened when you slipped below Trumpian standards.

After Machado won Miss Universe in May 1996, she gained some weight. As she explained to the Washington Post in 1997, that was probably because she’d been starving herself in the run-up to the pageant. “The year leading to it, I didn’t eat at all,” Machado said. “And whatever I ate, I threw up. I weighed 116 pounds when I won. I was skeletal.” She said she gained back 19 pounds, putting her in what the Post reported was “within the healthy range” of American Medical Association weight charts.

Trump didn’t see it that way. After he bought a controlling stake in pageants in the fall of 1996, he demanded Machado lose weight, allegedly called her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” in a dig at her roots and, in February 1997, made her exercise in front of the media at Exude Gym in Manhattan to prove that he was cracking the whip. “When you win a beauty pageant, 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 told reporters, making his own estimate of Machado’s weight.

Trump portrayed the photo op as a sign of his support for Machado. “We want her to stay as Miss Universe and she is working on her problem,” he said, referring to rumors that the organization wanted to take her crown. Machado remembered it differently. “I asked him to please send me to a trainer or a nutritionist or something because I needed some orientation, and he sends me to a gym in New York,”? she said in the 1997 Post interview.

Apparently she didn’t meet Trump’s standards. The mogul wrote in The Art of the Comeback, his 1997 book, that he attended the Miss Universe pageant that year and saw Machado “sitting there plumply…The best part of the evening was the knowledge that next year, she would no longer be Miss Universe.” Nor is the feud over. Machado attacked Trump earlier this year for his comments about Mexicans, and told Billboard last July that she’s planning to return the favor with a book about “all the details, abuses of power, arrogance, and racism on Donald Trump’s part that she suffered in the flesh.” No release date has been announced.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate