ABCNews.com(CORAL SPRINGS, Fla.) — After Donald Trump doubled down on his attacks on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado with a series of tweets earlier Friday, Hillary Clinton slammed the Republican nominee for finding “it a lot easier to insult women than to talk to the president of Mexico about building a wall.”
“Who gets up at 3 o’clock in the morning to engage in a Twitter attack against a former Miss Universe. I mean, he hurled as many insults as he could. Really? Why does he do things like that?” Clinton asked the crowd of 2,300 in Coral Springs, Florida.
She continued, “I mean, his latest Twitter meltdown is unhinged, even for him. It proves, yet again, that he is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander in chief.”
Machado, who won the Miss Universe title in 1996, was mentioned toward the end of Monday’s presidential debate when Clinton claimed Trump had called the beauty queen “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.”
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?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016
Clinton called Machado Friday to thank her for what she’s done for the Clinton campaign and for the courage she’s shown after being thrust into the 2016 race, according to Clinton’s spokesman Nick Merrill.
Machado told the Democratic nominee that she’s supported her for a long time and is looking forward to voting for Clinton in November, the first time Machado will have the opportunity to participate in a U.S. election, Merrill said. Machado, 39, is a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Merrill said the two did not specifically touch on Trump’s controversial tweets.
I’m almost @realDonaldTrump‘s age, so get the urge to get up in the middle of the night, but impt safety tip: don’t reach for your phone.
— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) September 30, 2016
Machado also posted a lengthy response to Trump’s tweets on her Instagram account next to a picture of her wrapped in the U.S. flag.
“The Republican candidate and his campaign team are again generating attacks, insults, and attempting to revive defamations and false accusations about my life,” she wrote in Spanish. “All this with the goal of intimidating me, humiliating me and throwing me off once more. The attacks that have come up are slanderous and cheap lies with bad intentions, that have no foundation.”
“Thus, I will keep standing, sharing my story, my absolute support in the name of woman going to Secretary Clinton, for my sisters, aunts, grandmothers, female cousins, female friends and the female community,” she wrote.
On Tuesday morning, hours after leaving the debate stage at Hofstra University, Trump called into Fox and Friends and talked about how Miss Universe pageant organizers “had a tremendously difficult time with” Machado.
“She was the winner, and, you know, she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem,” Trump said. “We had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude, and we had a real problem with her.”
Copyright © 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.