Former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado claimed Tuesday that she did not suffer from eating disorders until after the 1996 Miss Universe pageant and the ridicule she received from Donald Trump, but she said in an interview at the time that she was anorexic and bulimic before the contest.
Machado has entered the campaign spotlight after Hillary Clinton relayed at the first presidential debate that Trump called Machado "Miss Piggy" for gaining a large amount of weight after winning the Miss Universe crown. Machado has since done a round of media appearances alleging cruel statements by Trump about her weight, and she also said his behavior contributed to her eating disorders.
She was challenged on those details Tuesday by Fox News host Megyn Kelly, and Machado told Kelly she "never had any problem before" the Miss Universe pageant. However, according to an article from 1997 published in the Washington Post, Machado described being "anorexic and bulimic" in the run-up to the pageant:
She’s skinny again, though not quite as skinny as when she won her title. But back then, when she was declared the most beautiful woman in the world, she was just beginning her fight back from what she describes as the beauty-pageant plague.
"I was anorexic and bulimic, but almost all of us are," Machado says without so much as a blink. "When I was preparing for Miss Universe, it was an obsession for me to not gain weight. By the time I won, I was actually recovering. But the year leading to it, I didn’t eat at all. And whatever I ate, I threw up. I weighed 116 pounds when I won. I was skeletal."
"Without diminishing anything that you went through after Trump, it does sound like you had an eating disorder prior to his comments and prior to winning, no?" Kelly asked.
"No, I’m sorry, but that was not true," Machado said. "Maybe, in that moment ... they manipulated a lot of information about me. I’m here because I know [Trump], and he’s not a good person. That is the point. The point is, no more abuse for us. No more abuse for the girls. If you gain weight, if you don’t look [like] the most beautiful girl, you have your mind, you have your heart, you are intelligent."
Trump addressed the controversy Tuesday morning on Fox & Friends without being prompted, saying Machado gained a "massive amount of weight and it was a real problem."
CNN’s coverage of Machado’s weight gain at the time had a story headlined, "Expanding Miss Universe works to shed pounds," leading to derision on social media for its flippant language.
this is how @cnn covered Alicia Machado, Trump, & the forced exercise in 1997 https://t.co/UmqECNEOHl pic.twitter.com/vFTo0IHjgR
— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) September 27, 2016
Machado was also challenged on her past Tuesday by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who mentioned allegations that she was a getaway driver in a murder and once threatened to kill a judge. Machado waved off the question and said she was "not a saint girl."