The Hillary Clinton campaign may have paid ex-beauty queen Alicia Machado to accuse Donald Trump of calling her "Miss Piggy" after she gained wait as Miss Universe 1996, former Rep. Michael Flanagan of Illinois believes.
"I'm sure something like that happened," Flanagan, founder of the Washington, D.C. lobbying firm Flanagan Consulting LLC, said Thursday to J.D. Hayworth on Newsmax TV's "America Talks Live."
"Look behind the curtain, look at the totality of it. You have [CNN's] Anderson Cooper … talking to this person. You have her the mainstream media darling for the last couple of days.
"This was not accidental, she just didn't appear out of the cement. This was part of the debate strategy to build the narrative afterward that Trump is a train wreck."
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Trump has been under fire for sexism after Machado made media rounds Tuesday saying Trump called her "Miss Piggy" in reference to her weight and "Miss Housekeeping" in a jab to her Latin heritage.
The alleged insults by Trump were first raised by Clinton at the tail end of Monday's presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.
Trump denied the allegations, though he did publicly call her an "eating machine" and dragged the press along to watch Machado work out at a gym.
Flanagan said despite polls showing that Clinton trounced Trump on Monday during the first of three televised debates, it's the billionaire real-estate tycoon who actually emerged victorious.
"He won the debate … I think he could have prepared a lot better. But I think the campaign wanted him to look presidential and they got that box checked. There was no major gaffe," Flanagan said.
"What Hillary did was designed to build to where we are now and where she wants to go, and that is blunt his progress and get her own campaign restarted after her falling episode. And that's where they're trying to get to.
"And unfortunately they've hooked their star to a telenovela star that's going to train wreck them, I think, before this is over if they stay attached to her … I think they drop her like a hot rock in the next couple of days."
Flanagan said Trump must skip the fluff and talk about the issues in the next two debates.
"If he comes in and talks about her the way that she's talking about him, the mud doesn't help him. Come in and talk about the issues. He's right on the issues, he'll win on the issues," he said.
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