Bimbo. Disgusting. Piece of ass. This is what we've heard Donald Trump call women in public. But what about in his private life?

Two New York Times reporters launched an all-out investigation into the billionaire's treatment of women, interviewing and reading memoirs of 50 former co-workers, girlfriends and acquaintances. The anecdotes reveal — among other things — Trump's playboy lifestyle, his obsession with looks, and his outdated views on women in the workforce.

One interviewee recently claimed the New York Times twisted her words, but most of the quotes speak for themselves. Don't believe us? Check out the 9 worst ones, below.


Donald Trump
photo: Flick/Gage Skidmore

He was aggressively forward with women — even strangers.

"He kissed me directly on the lips," former Miss Utah Temple Taggart said of the first time she met Trump. "I thought, 'Oh my God, gross.' He was married to Marla Maples at the time. I think there were a few other girls that he kissed on the mouth."

And he was brutal in his assessment of their bodies.

"Donald Trump walked out with his entourage and inspected us closer than any general ever inspected a platoon," Carrie Prejean, a former Miss USA competitor, wrote in her memoir. "He would stop in front of a girl, look her up and down, and say, 'Hmmm.' Then he would go on and do the same thing to the next girl ... It became clear that the point of the whole exercise was for him to divide the room between girls he personally found attractive and those he did not. Many of the girls found the exercise humiliating. Some of the girls were sobbing backstage after he left."

Sometimes, his critiques had lasting effects.

When former Miss Universe Alicia MachadoI found herself gaining weight, she reached out to the pageant operators for help. The operators flew her to a hotel in New York, where she was met by Trump, along with a barrage of reporters.

"I was about to cry in that moment with all the cameras there," Machadol said. "I said, 'I don’t want to do this, Mr. Trump.' He said, 'I don’t care.' ... After that episode, I was sick, anorexia and bulimia for five years. Over the past 20 years, I’ve gone to a lot of psychologists to combat this.”

He stands behind his father's controlling treatment of his first wife.

His first wife, Ivana Trump, recalled a dinner with Trump's father, in which he bullied her into ordering steak instead of the fish she wanted. When asked about the incident, Trump told the Times:

“He would’ve said that out of love. He would have said that only on the basis that he thought, ‘That would be better for her.’"

And even engaged in some of his own.

Trump turned over the presidency of a prominent casino — Trump's Castle — to Ivana, but reportedly paid her a salary of only $1 per year. Despite her essentially free labor, Trump later said he regretted giving his wife control.

“My big mistake with Ivana was taking her out of the role of wife and allowing her to run one of my casinos in Atlantic City, then the Plaza Hotel," he wrote in 1997's The Art of the Comeback. "The problem was, work was all she wanted to talk about.”

Ivana wasn't the only family member Trump targeted.

"'Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?’” Former Miss Universe Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee recalls Trump asking about his daughter, Ivanka. "I was like, ‘Really?’ That’s just weird. She was 16. That’s creepy.”

He treated attractiveness as a job requirement.

"We had a big meeting once," former Trump construction executive Barbara Res recalled. "I grabbed one of the women in the office and sent her in to get lunch orders. Donald said, 'Not her.' She didn’t look great. He got another woman to take the lunch orders."

And addressed even his superiors in diminutive terms.

"He was dismissive," Alair A. Townsend, the former New York City deputy mayor for economic development, said. "It was always, 'Hon,' 'Dear.' Things he wouldn’t have said to a man. It was designed to make you feel small. And he did that repeatedly."

His female peers didn't even stand a chance.

"Donald Trump stared at me throughout that meeting," Jill Harth said of a meeting she and her boyfriend, George Houraney, took with Trump about a beauty pageant. "... In the middle of it he says to George, 'Are you sleeping with her?' Meaning me. And George looked a little shocked and he said, 'Well, yeah.' And he goes, 'Well, for the weekend or what?'"

All in all, the article paints a disturbing portrait of the presumptive Republican nominee.

Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising, given the billionaire's frequent, vile comments about women in the public sphere. But it is tempting to write this off as a macho facade — just another scribble in the Donald Trump caricature. The New York Times' anecdotes are decidedly more terrifying, because of the deep-seated, long-held beliefs that they reveal.

Business-mogul Trump sees the women in his life as trophies to display, pawns to be played, and prizes to be won. How would President Trump, then, see the women of America? 

I shudder at the thought.