Mika: Trump's Miss Universe Attack 'Cut to the Core' of Issues With Women

Donald Trump's post-debate attacks on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado's weight gain marked comments that emphasize his continuing attitude toward women, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" panel agreed on Wednesday, and show a side of the GOP candidate that could cost him support from many women in the United States.

"It cuts to the core of everything that's wrong with Donald Trump as it pertains to women," show co-host Mika Brzezinski commented during the early show's opening, noting that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign is already focusing advertising on the incident.

Toward the end of Monday night's debate, Clinton commented that Trump had been known to call a Latina woman, a winner from the Miss Universe pageant "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping" after she gained weight after winning the crown.

On Tuesday, when Trump appeared on Fox News' "Fox & Friends," he doubled down on the complaints about the winner, later identified as Machado, complaining she'd gained a "massive amount of weight" and that her attitude made her the "absolute worst" pageant winner in the beauty contest, which he owned for a period of time.

"Hillary Clinton's campaign has put out a video that actually shows him in real time during the pageant era when this woman won and he actually says, 'Well, she's gained a lot of weight,'" Brzezinski noted Wednesday. "'She clearly likes to eat a lot.' And walked away."

The new video features Machado talking about her experiences with Trump, as well as showing her having to work out at one of Trump's resort spas as reporters circled around her.

Show host Joe Scarborough noted that out of the debate and its aftermath, the Miss Universe comments are what people are talking about, not issues like NATO or the economy.

"This is something people can understand," Bloomberg Politics editor Mark Halperin commented. "They say this about a lot of what Donald Trump has done in this campaign. It's unbelievable he tried to — he chose to recover from a bad debate performance by attacking this woman, saying she was a bad contestant and worst they had . . .

"Of all of the things he's done in the campaign, this could linger in a way that could hurt him. He must do better with female voters to win."

Brzezinski was also astounded that the rival Fox News panel didn't corner Trump on his comments.

"That conversation went on and no one said to him, 'What? Excuse me?'" said Brzezinski. "I've never seen a more awkward interview in my life and quite frankly, the most unfulfilling interview in my life."

But turning the talk back to Trump, Scarborough said it was "unbelievable" that the candidate doubled down on his comments, rather than backing away.

"Leave aside the window into his attitude that this represents," said Halperin. "Leave that aside. I'm not minimizing it. In the Clinton campaign they constantly look at things Trump does and they cannot believe he's giving them the political opportunity.

"This is the exact thing they have thought for months, they would win the election on Trump's attitude toward women and many other people. It's just not something the country is going to see as fit for president. This is exactly what they would want to have happen," Halperin continued.

"The fact that she's Latina and a woman, the fact she's an Hispanic woman, they couldn't script it any better. It will be on 'Saturday Night Live' on Saturday."

The issue also points to Trump's temperament, New York Times columnist Harold Ford Jr. commented.

"That's the word that stood out for me. He talked about it during the debate. It was interesting and bewildering to say that his temperament was better than Hillary Clinton's. He had every right to say that. He's entitled to his own opinion. The immediate body of work from the debate shows that he doesn't have the temperament."

Scarborough commented that Trump has moments where he "attacks the weak, the vulnerable . . . whether it's a reporter with a disability or whether it's a woman who is overweight or whether it's somebody that just doesn't measure up to what his image is of what should be the superior race. It's one after another."

"He turned this into an oops moment after the fact by saying what he said yesterday morning," Halperin agreed. "Her crime was she had a weight problem. An eating problem. That was her crime. To be so ungracious compared to what we want in our leaders, I just think it's going to be something they'll bring up over and over again."

BBC World News Washington anchor Katty Kay, a frequent guest on the morning program, commented later in the morning that Trump's comments about the former pageant winner will not help him get more votes from women.

"We circle the wagons when somebody talks about our own size and when somebody talks about our friends' size in that way," said Kay. "I felt that that video particularly of him inviting the cameras in to watch her exercise was the most grotesque exercise in humiliation of a woman I have almost ever seen on television.

"The idea that these cameras had a right to watch this woman workout because she put on too much weight and Donald Trump wasn't happy with it."