‘Don’t Worry, Ladies, I’ve Seen It All Before’
Four Miss Teen USA Beauty pageant contestants say Donald Trump in 1997 walked in to the dressing room while they and other contestants were changing. “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before,” former Miss Vermont Teen USA Mariah Billado remembers Trump, who owned the pageant at the time, told them, according to Buzzfeed News.
“I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here,’â€Â Billado told Buzzfeed.
“At the time,” another contestant who was 17 at the time, told Buzzfeed, “you’re a teenager, you’re intimidated — it’s Donald Trump, he runs the pageant.â€Â
And it felt, she said, like “it was his given right†to enter the dressing rooms “because he owned the pageant.â€Â
“Three other women,” Buzzfeed adds, “who asked to remain anonymous for fear of getting engulfed in a media firestorm, also remembered Trump entering the dressing room while girls were changing. Two of them said the girls rushed to cover their bodies, with one calling it ‘shocking’ and ‘creepy.'”
On Saturday, CNN released audio of Trump telling radio shock jock Howard Stern in 2005, “I’ll tell you the funniest is that before a show, I’ll go backstage and everyone’s getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it.”
“You know, I’m inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good,” Trump said.
“You know, the dresses. ‘Is everyone okay?’ You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that,” he continued. “But no, I’ve been very good.”
Buzzfeed adds, “Until now it was never alleged that this behavior extended to the teen pageant, in which contestants can be as old as 19 or as young as 14.”
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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license