Donald Trump's History With Women Problematic: NYT Report

Donald Trump seems to have had a problematic history of his professional and personal links with women, says The New York Times report.

His crude references to various women such as Ted Cruz's wife Heidi, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and the one-time primary competitor Carly Fiorina have stirred a lot of storms.

The Times report examined the women he employed in the Trump Organization as well as in various beauty pageants. He comes across as rather contradictory, for he "both elevated women professionally and yet still treated them with blatant disrespect."

There was a woman in the beauty pageant industry who said Trump, the Miss USA owner, kissed her on the lips. "He kissed me directly on the lips. I thought, 'Oh my God, gross,'" Temple Taggart, Miss Utah in 1997, said to the Times. "He was married to Marla Maples at the time. I think there were a few other girls that he kissed on the mouth. I was like 'Wow, that's inappropriate.'"

Carrie Prejean was the 2009 Miss California who recorded that at one pageant, women "were told to put on our opening number outfits -- they were nearly as revealing as our swimsuits -- and line up for him onstage."

He had one strange question to ask Miss Alabama: "who's the most beautiful woman here?"

She replied that she found Miss Arkansas "sweet," which made Trump retort: "I don't care if she's sweet. Is she hot?"

After he finished inspecting the girls during the pageant, a few "were sobbing backstage," Prejean explained, as they had been "devastated to have failed even before the competition really began."

However, Trump totally denied these encounters to the Times. He said that firstly, he would not have been comfortable "pressing his lips to those of strangers." Secondly, he would not have evaluated the competitors in the manner described by Prejean, Trump said that he would not have done it as "that's hurtful to people."

The 1997 Miss Universe, Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee recalled another incident with his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who helped host the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant. At that time, Trump asked Lee what she thought about Ivanka.

"'Don't you think my daughter's hot? She's hot, right?'" Lee said. "I was like, 'Really?' That's just weird. She was 16. That's creepy."

Alicia Machado, the 1996 Miss Universe, said that Trump had once "publicly shamed her into losing weight" after she became the winner of her contests. Trump's people took her to a gym and "exposed her to 90 media outlets" after she had told the Miss Universe Organization to help her "recuperate after the event."

"I was about to cry in that moment with all the cameras there," Machado said. "I said, 'I don't want to do this, Mr. Trump.' He said, 'I don't care.'"

Due to that she began her own fight with anorexia and bulimia, she told the Times.

His attitude to other professional women was equally strange and mixed.

Barbara Res, Trump's chief of construction for a number of years in the 1980s, said that he once told her casually after she gained weight: "You like your candy."

Still, Res said that she appreciated his appointing her as the chief of construction.

"'I know you're a woman in a man's world," Trump told her. "'And while men tend to be better than women, a good woman is better than 10 good men.'... He thought he was really complimenting me."

However, Trump seems to be fairly dismissive of things when he wants to be. He told the Times that "a lot of things get made up over the years."