DIRTY OLD MAN

This was how an angry Janelle ‘Penny’ Commissiong, this country’s first ever Miss Universe Queen, yesterday described the former owner of the Miss Universe pageant and current US Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, over his vulgar comments on women.

Incensed further that Trump would then seek to defend said comments by describing it merely as, “locker room talk”, Commissiong - who won the 1977 Miss Universe crown and in so doing became the first black woman ever to win the title - said his comments were not only derogratory to all women, but are “tantamount to sexual assault.” Trump’s campaign for the White House has been virtually railroaded when remarks he made in 2005 about women, where he said that when you’re a star you can, “grab them by the p**sy. You can do anything.’’ Trump then bragged about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women who were not his wife, in recordings from 2005 obtained by American news outlets The Washington Post and NBC News.

The comments were part of a conversation with Billy Bush, then a host of the television show ‘Access Hollywood’. The remarks were captured by a live microphone that Trump did not appear to know was recording their conversation. Contacted for comment yesterday on Trump’s comments, the usually reserved, soft-spoken Commissiong pulled back no punches as she tore into Trump. She said that Trump’s brag, “about going into the Miss Universe dressing rooms because he owned the franchise and could do that...suggests he is a dirty old man with a weird hairstyle!” As an afterthought, she said, “unless he went in the room to borrow hair spray.” Trump, in his second Presidential Debate on Sunday night at Washington University in St Louis, USA, strongly denied he had sexually assaulted women. Asked if she had ever met Trump and what her impressions were of him, Commissiong said she had met him briefly when Trinidad and Tobago hosted the pageant in 1999. Though she did not think much about him, Commissiong said, “I do remember that he expressed an interest in building and operating a casino in Chacachacare, at the time.” When Commissiong won Miss Universe in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, the Miss Universe company was owned by Gulf and Western and Paramount pictures. Given Trump’s statement about entering the delegates’ dressing rooms, she said, “I would imagine that anyone involved in the pageant would be relieved that he is no longer the owner.” Asked if she could vote in the US elections, would she vote for Trump, Commissiong who has lived for some time in the US said, “Vote for Donald Trump? No way! Hillary has the experience that is required.” She said, “Donald Trump has managed to bring reality TV to the US presidential elections.” Alluding to his reality TV show, ‘The Apprentice’, she said, “He is an apprentice politician and US polls indicate that he is going to be fired.” She quoted Graydon Carter, former editor of Spy Magazine as best describing Trump, as a “short-fingered vulgarian.” Meanwhile, a number of top US athletes have criticised Trump’s comments as “locker room talk” not being true.

Trump, a former owner of the Miss Universe franchise, bought the then operating Miss Universe company in 1996. The winner of that year’s pageant, Miss Venezuela Alicia Machado claimed that Trump shamed her publicly for gaining weight resulting in her suffering from both anorexia and bulimia. In 2015 after he made derogatory statements in his US presidential campaign kick-off speech about illegal Mexican immigrants, the US television giant NBC which had entered into a joint venture with him, ended its business relationship.

Trump bought out NBC’s share in the Miss Universe organisation, and then sold it three days later.

Following the video release, Trump who was neck and neck in most opinion polls in the US with his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton, is now trailing her by several percentage points. The US Presidential elections is due less than a month from now. In 1998, Trinidad and Tobago got its second Miss Universe when Wendy Fitzwilliam captured the crown.