Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump has only one opponent in his race for the White House: Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.  

But after his September 26 debate with Clinton, he seemed more at war with another woman: Former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.  

Clinton had briefly mentioned her in the first of her three debates with Trump: “And he called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina.”  

Trump didn’t deny making such comments. Instead, he claimed that Clinton had “spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me, many which are absolutely untrue.

“They’re untrue and they’re misrepresentations. And I will tell you this, Lester [Holt, the debate moderator], it’s not nice and I don’t, I don’t deserve that.”  

On September 27, Trump attacked Machado via a phone-in interview on Fox News. Then the next day, he attacked her again on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”  

And at 2:14 a.m. on September 30, Trump launched yet a third assault on her character–this time through a series of tweets on Twitter: 

“Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an ‘angel’ without checking her past, which is terrible!”

“Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con.” 

“Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?”  

Subsequent media investigations found no evidence that Machado had starred in a pornographic film.

Republican leaders were dismayed. They wanted Trump to concentrate his fire at Clinton. And here he was, aiming yet another tirade against a woman wholly unimportant to his race for the White House.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media quickly reacted to Trump’s latest rant–and its verdict was overwhelmingly negative.  

According to NBC News: “Still reeling from Monday’s widely panned debate performance, the Republican nominee has found refuge in a fringe media environment where his victory is assured, his setbacks are the result of shadowy plots, and his critics are humiliated by sordid revelations.

“The alleged Machado ‘sex tape’ Trump cited appeared to be a hoax widely promoted in fringe pro-Trump outlets like Infowars. Other sites like Drudge Report have spread grainy stills of a love scene from a reality show Machado starred in.

“Radio host Rush Limbaugh called Machado ‘the porn-star Miss Piggy’ this week. And Trump, desperate for encouragement after his debate, is huffing these sycophantic fumes like never before.”

And POLITICO offered this judgment: “TRUMP JUMPS INTO THE GUTTER.”  

The story’s sub-headline read: “The Republican nominee loses all impulse control, and unleashes a violent Twitter rant against his Miss Universe nemesis.”

Trump–never one to admit error–responded, typically enough, 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!”  

Furthermore, POLITICO noted, Trump’s inability to restrain himself has played “right into the Democratic nominee’s argument that Trump lacks the temperament and impulse control to be commander in chief.”  

Nor was Clinton silent on the matter: “What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?” she posted on Twitter.  

And she followed up: “Trump obsessively bullies Rosie O’Donnell–an accomplished actor.  he insulted Kim Kardashian for her weight–when she was pregnant. Pathetic.”  

On the same day as his Twitter rant against Alicia Machado, Trump demanded that President Barack Obama promise not to pardon Clinton.  Since Clinton has not been charged with or convicted of a crime, such a promise would be wholly unnecessary. 

President Barack Obama

On September 30, Trump called The New York Times and said of Clinton: “She’s nasty, but I can be nastier than she ever can be.”

With that, he opened a new line of attack on his Presidential rival: Her marriage.

“Hillary Clinton was married to the single greatest abuser of women in the history of politics.

“Hillary was an enabler, and she attacked the women who Bill Clinton mistreated afterward. I think it’s a serious problem for them, and it’s something that I’m considering talking about more in the near future.”  

Trump said that his own marital history did not disqualify him from making such an attack.

He has been married three times and divorced twice.

While still married to his first wife, Ivana, he became involved with Marla Maples.  

Ivana divorced him in 1991, and he married Maples in 1993.  They were divorced in 1999.  

He married his current wife, Melania, in 2005.

Asked about his affair with Maples while he was married to Ivana, Trump said: “I don’t talk about it. I wasn’t president of the United States. I don’t talk about it.”

Thus, in one week, Trump managed to infuriate

• Taxpayers
• Women
• NBC News 
• Blacks
• Democrats
• The Wall Street Journal     [which endorsed Clinton]
• The Arizona Republic                        *  
• USA Today                                       *             
• President Obama
• POLITICO
• Hispanics
• The FBI 
• LeBron James (a hero in the key state of Ohio endorsed Clinton).

Political campaigns are about winning voters, not alienating them. Trump appears to believe it’s the other way around.

“He appeared to need enemies the way other men need friends, and his conduct assured that he would always have plenty of them.” 

So wrote William Manchester about General Douglas MacArthur in his monumental 1978 biography, American Caesar. But he could have written just as accurately about Donald Trump, the businessman-turned-Republican-Presidential-nominee.  

Donald Trump

What some pundits have called “the worst week in Presidential campaigning history” started–for Trump–on September 26. That was when he finally squared off against Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the first of three debates.

Through a series of bare-knuckled debates, Trump had bullied his way to the Republican nomination. He had mocked his opponents (“Little Marco” Rubio, “Lyin Ted” Cruz) and attacked former Texas Governor Jeb Bush as the brother of the President he blamed for 9/11.

So it was widely expected that he would run over Clinton like a tank going over a rabbit.  

Events proved otherwise.

Moderator Lester Holt–who anchors the weekday edition of NBC Nightly News–gave Trump more airtime than Clinton. But Clinton showed a greater command of foreign and domestic issues.  

Hillary Clinton

Trump repeatedly sniffled throughout the debate, causing some viewers to wonder if he had a cocaine problem.  And he often reached for his water glass, causing other viewers to mock him on Twitter (“Does anyone remember how badly Trump made fun of Marco Rubio for drinking water? Hmm..”).  

For Trump–who had attacked Clinton’s health after she fainted on September 11 at a New York 9/11 commemoration ceremony–it was a disaster. Clinton seemed to be in better shape than he was.  

When Clinton charged that he paid “nothing in Federal taxes,” Trump in effect admitted it: “That makes me smart.”  

Clinton then cornered him on his claim that he had opposed the 2003 Iraq war. Trump replied that he had told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he opposed it. He asked the media to contact Hannity.

Clinton then attacked Trump as “a man who has called women pigs, slobs, and dogs, and someone who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers.”  

From there she segued into his attacks on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado: “And he called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina.”  

Alicia Machado as Miss Universe

This may have proved the worst part of the debate for Trump, because he later felt he had to respond to it–on TV and Twitter.  

By the end of the debate, 62% of CNN viewers voted Clinton as the winner, with only 27% voting it was Trump.  

The next day–September 27–Trump felt the need to renew his attack on Machado, courtesy of a telephone interview he gave to Fox News: “She was the worst [Miss Universe contestant] we ever had. The absolute worst.  She was impossible….  

“She was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight, and we had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude, and we had a real problem with her.”  

On September 28, Trump appeared on Fox News‘ “The O’Reilly Factor.” There he continued his attack on Machado: “It is a beauty contest. They know what they are getting into.”  

He claimed that “I saved her job” because the pageant wanted “to fire her” for gaining so much weight.   

On September 29, Trump added one more enemy to the list: The FBI.  

Addressing a crowd in Bedford, New Hampshire, Trump falsely accused the agency of giving “immunity” to Hillary Clinton:  

“They [the FBI] gave so much immunity there was nobody left to talk to. There was nobody left–except Hillary. They probably gave her immunity, too. Do you think Hillary got immunity? Yeah, she had the immunity.”  

FBI headquarters

Also on September 29, Trump once again attacked a longtime target: President Barack Obama.

Thirteen days earlier, Trump had renounced “birtherism”–the slander that Obama was not an American citizen. It was a slander that Trump himself had created and vigorously promoted since 2011.  

The reason for his renouncing it: His dismal standing among blacks in political polls.

At a press conference on September 16 to promote his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C., Trump said: “Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.  

“I finished it.  I finished it.  You know what I mean. 

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”  

After falsely blaming Clinton for starting the birther lie, Trump seemed content to finally drop the slander campaign.

But on September 29–a mere 13 days later–Trump told a New Hampshire reporter that he was “very proud” of his “birther” campaign:

“I’m the one who got him to put up his birth certificate”–which clearly proved that Obama had been born in Hawaii, not Kenya, as Trump had claimed.  

“[Hillary Clinton] tried [to get Obama to release his birth certificate] and she was unable to do it and I tried and I was able to do it so I’m very proud of that.”  

Thus, the goodwill of black voters he sought on September 16 he cast aside on the 29th.