'Don't worry ladies, I've seen it all before:' Teen pageant contestants say Donald Trump walked in on them changing
Donald Trump's treatment of women has come under special scrutiny since a tape was made public last week in which he brags about sexual assault. And on Wednesday, BuzzFeed reported that four women who competed in the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant came forward to describe an incident in which Trump walked into their dressing room while contestants were changing. (Contestants are between the ages of 14 and 19.)
"When he started running for president, that is one of the first things I thought about: Oh, gross, this guy walked in on us in the pageant," Mariah Billado, a the former Miss Vermont Teen USA, told BuzzFeed. "Girls were just scrambling to grab stuff, whatever garments they had. I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, 'Oh my god, there's a man in here."
Trump, in turn, said something along the lines of, "Don't worry, ladies, I've see it all before."
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Three other contestants who chose to remain anonymous also remembered Trump's intrusion, and one called it "shocking" and "creepy." "At the time, you're a teenager, you're intimidated — it's Donald Trump, he runs the pageant," said a woman who competed when she was 17. She added it felt like, "it was his given right" to walk into their dressing room, "because he owned the pageant."
Other former contestants disputed the story, saying there was "too much security" and too many chaperones for Trump to have entered the dressing room. "These were teenage girls," one said. "If anything inappropriate had gone on, the gossip would have flown."
But A former Miss Arizona told CBS that Trump walked in on her and her fellow contestants during a 2001 pageant as well. "Our first introduction to him was when we were at the dress rehearsal and half naked changing into our bikinis," she said. "He just came strolling right in. There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Others girls were naked." She went on:
To have the owner come waltzing in, when we're naked, or half naked, in a very physically vulnerable position and then to have the pressure of the people that worked for him telling us to go fawn all over him, go walk up to him, talk to him, get his attention.
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