Surprise! He vetoed Miss Universe contestants from what he calls shithole countries
by digby
It’s been reported before that Trump had veto power over the finalists and winners in the Miss Universe pageant and he used it, often to help him nudge the government of the winner to help him with a business deal. He always uses whatever levers he has at his disposal to enhance his personal profit and Miss Universe is no exception. Neither is the US presidency.
However, he is also a stone cold racist with a strong white nationalist aesthetic. This is yet another excerpt from the Isikoff-Corn book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump
Specifically, one former Miss Universe staffer tells them that Trump would personally “make changes” to the list of finalists “if there were too many women of color” on it.
Another former Miss Universe staffer similarly tells them that Trump would weed out candidates who were too “dark-skinned.”
“He often thought a woman was too ethnic or too dark-skinned,” the staffer explains. “He had a particular type of woman he thought was a winner. Others were too ethnic. He liked a type. There was Olivia Culpo, Dayanara Torres [the 1993 winner], and, no surprise, East European women.”
One former staffer does say, however, that Trump could be persuaded to change his mind about a woman of color being worthy of his pageant “by telling him she was a princess and married to a football player.”
Recall the New Yorker piece about the Playboy model Karen McDougal:
On the night of the Miss Universe pageant McDougal attended, McDougal and a friend rode with Trump in his limousine and the friend mentioned a relationship she had had with an African-American man. According to multiple sources, Trump remarked that the friend liked “the big black dick” and began commenting on her attractiveness and breast size.
His imagination runs in one direction.
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