Donald Trump’s hot mic moment from a 2005 interview with Billy Bush for Access Hollywood has caused the Republican nominee countless problems since Friday. Combined with his doubling down on a sexist diatribe made against a former Miss Universe winner and an old Howard Stern interview concerning his “inspecting” Miss USA pageant contestants backstage, it seems the Donald can’t get any grosser. Alas he can, for separate reports by BuzzFeed News and CBS Los Angeles behavior have brought to light additional — and really gross — transgressions at Trump’s beauty pageants.
According to BuzzFeed, former Miss Vermont Teen USA winner Mariah Billado recalled “putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here.'” When she and three other contestants, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of Trump’s penchant for responding to such accusations, realized what was happening, the pageant owner tried to settle their concerns. “Don’t worry, ladies,” Billado alleges Trump told the girls. “I’ve seen it all before.”
Despite these claims, 11 other former contestants reached by BuzzFeed denied them, saying they didn’t remember seeing Trump in the dressing room. Many also believed, despite the mogul’s status as pageant owner at the time, he couldn’t have been allowed back there with them while they were preparing for their next events. However, as former Miss New Hampshire Bridget Sullivan told BuzzFeed on Sunday, “we were all naked” when Trump visited the girls’ dressing room like a “creepy uncle.”
Plus, as former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon told CBS Los Angeles on Tuesday, Trump did much of the same when she competed in 2001:
“Our first introduction to him was when we were at the dress rehearsal and half naked changing into our bikinis,” Dixon recalled. “He just came strolling right in. There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Other girls were naked.”
She said she and her fellow contestants were put in an awkward position when “the owner come waltzing in when we were naked or half naked in a very physically vulnerable position and then to have the pressure of the people that worked for him telling us to go fawn all over him, go walk up to him, talk to him, get his attention.”
The Trump campaign has yet to respond officially to either report. Seeing as how the Republican nominee told Stern in 2005 all about his visiting the dressing rooms, which was “the funniest” thing about his owning the pageants, it seems there’s little to be said that won’t make things worse.
(Via New York Magazine, BuzzFeed News and CBS Los Angeles)
