The man loses his cool, can’t let go of a grudge, lashes out, and miscalculates the political metrics of his actions.
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Donald Trump isn’t happy with former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. After calling her “Miss Piggy” for gaining weight during her reign as Miss Universe, Trump went one step further and also called her “Miss Housekeeping,” presumably because of her Latino heritage. After Hillary called him out on it during the debate, he didn’t back off. He doubled down. And it just keeps getting uglier. This all took place within the context of a debate in which Trump at one point declared himself as having the best temperament to be President.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign felt Machado’s story needed to be told. After the first debate, Trump responded by posting a stream of late night tweets attacking Machado, including this tweet suggesting she was in a sex tape.
So Buzzfeed promptly went out and found a Playboy soft core porn video in which Trump appeared in 2000.
Buzzfeed writes: “Trump on Friday attacked former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who has spoken out about how Trump treated her in the late 1990s, for her “sex tape” — a grainy night-vision video of her having sex while appearing on a reality show. False rumors spread on right-wing websites earlier this week that Machado appeared in a number of online porn videos. The videos under her name on porn sites around the web don’t feature the former beauty queen.”
Although there is no sex tape featuring Machado, Trump himself does appear in Playboy’s soft core film. He is, of course, clothed but other sections of the film show what Buzzfeed describes as “fully nude women posing in sexual positions, dancing naked, touching themselves while naked, touching each other sensually, rubbing honey on themselves, taking a bath, and dressing in costumes.”
Buzzfeed’s unearthing of Donald Trump’s appearance in this film is a classic Trump moment. He has attempted to smear Machado for expressing the kind of sexuality that he clearly endorses, having appeared in the very kind of film that he accused her of being in. That double standard alone is dizzying.
But in the moment that he smears Machado for something she has never actually done, he also ignores his own wife’s racier photo shoots, attacks yet another Latino, burying himself deeper with women and Latino voters, and most alarmingly, conjures the image of some wide-eyed lone wolf tapping away on Twitter in the early morning hours, presumably alone and without coordinating with his political team.
He’s done this kind of loose canon reactive behavior over and over again. Attacking an American born judge of Mexican decent, asking the Russians to hack Hillary’s emails in a public press conference, continuing to suggest Mexico will pay for his border wall even after the President of Mexico has clearly refused, launching an all out war against gold star parents. The list is endless. And in all cases, he has easily been pushed into irrational behavior by what is arguably the standard hurly burly of the election season. The man loses his cool, can’t let go of a grudge, lashes out, and miscalculates the political metrics of his actions.
And we’re still asking the question “does Trump have the temperament to be President?” No. He does not.
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