Donald Trump’s first foray into beauty pageants ended with a bitter legal battle and charges he made unwarranted sexual advances on one of the pageant’s founders, according to a report in the Boston Globe on Sunday.
The report on Trump’s short-lived role in the American Dream Calendar Girls pin-up competition documents several instances of alleged misogyny by Trump in the early nineties. It is the latest report describing misogyny by the current GOP presidential front-runner.
Trump partnered up with a Florida couple George Houraney and Jill Harth who operated the pageant, which featured winning girls in wall calendars.
A bitter legal fight ensued after the couple alleged Trump cheated them of a $250,000 fee and cost them $5 million in future business.
Harth, the vice president of American Dream, “alleged in court documents that Trump repeatedly came on to her and groped her under the table during the Oak Room dinner before the party piled into his limousine,” the Globe reported.
Harth also said that Trump kissed, tried to fondle and restrained her in a bedroom often used by his daughter Ivanka, then 11, when the couple visited his home.
Harth said in the lawsuit that she found Trump’s advances so off-putting that they caused her to “vomit profusely.”
One of contestants in pageant, then 22, found the then-46 year old Trump in her bed when contestants stayed at his estate, the lawsuit alleged. He suggested she sleep with him, according to the suit.
The lawsuit also alleged that Trump insisted that black women be excluded from the contest.
Trump denied the allegations in an interview with the Globe. “It’s all false,” Trump said.
A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment by the Examiner on Sunday.
He disputed the case, but settled in court in 1997. Harth dropped related lawsuit alleging sexual misbehavior, the Globe said.
In another instance, a model named Rhonda Noggle told the Globe that she was in a limo with Trump when the real estate mogul said that “all women are bimbos” and most were “gold diggers.”
Noggle said she exited the cab. She said she told Trump “I would rather be with a trash man who respected me than someone who was a rich, pompous ass. And I got out. And I took a cab ride home.”
Trump told the Globe he doesn’t remember the incident.
Trump has made many comments on the campaign trail that some consider sexist. He has trained his fire at Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly and former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, among others.
But disputes those characterizations. “I have more respect for women than anybody,” he told the Globe.
After his ordeal with the American Dream, Trump bought the Miss Universe pageant. He sold the pageant in September 2015, a few months after jumping into the presidential race last June.
Trump remains well ahead in the polls in New York ahead of that state’s primary on Tuesday. He is up 52 percent to 23 percent for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and 17 percent for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average.
