On September 26, 2016, Hillary Clinton brought up Machado's statements against Trump during the first presidential debate. The following day, Trump responded on "Fox and Friends", describing Machado as "impossible" and saying that "she gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem. We had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude, and we had a real problem with her." Later that week, Trump made a series of tweets in which he called her "disgusting," condemned Clinton's judgement for not "checking her past", falsely claimed she had appeared in a "sex tape", and baselessly accused Clinton of using her influence to help Machado become an American citizen.