Former Miss USA Nia Sanchez Shares A 'Creepy' Encounter She Had With Trump

Nia Sanchez won Miss USA in 2014. She also, according to a podcast interview this week, learned that year what it felt like to rehearse in front of a room full of strangers her boss had personally invited in.

Sanchez, who now stars on Bravo’s The Valley, brought up the memory on Amanda Hirsch’s Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast while discussing her pageant years under Donald Trump’s ownership of the Miss USA/Miss Universe organization. “There was one time when he brought all of his golf buddies to come watch all of us rehearse,” she said. “It was actually kind of creepy.”

The discomfort came down to exactly who showed up to do the watching.

“We were in the middle of rehearsals, and he brought all of these older men in to watch us perform,” Sanchez said, adding that the group then requested photos with the contestants. She wasn’t inclined to just smile through it. “I definitely, very intentionally, grabbed and released one of their hands very specifically,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘Don’t ever put your hands on me without asking.'”

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None of this derailed her pageant run. Sanchez went on to place as Miss Universe first runner-up that same year, and she’s said elsewhere on The Valley that the Miss USA title continues to generate brand partnerships for her more than ten years on.

Trump’s tenure running the Miss Universe Organization stretched from a 1996 partial purchase to a 2015 exit, when NBC cut ties over his campaign comments about Mexican immigrants.

In a 2005 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Trump himself described a different kind of access he granted himself as owner. “I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else,” he told Stern. “And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it.” He continued: “Is everyone OK? You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.”

Former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon backed up the pattern in her own account, describing her first introduction to Trump at a dress rehearsal. “He just came strolling right in,” Dixon said. “There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Other girls were naked.” She added: “I’m telling you Donald Trump owned the pageant for the reasons to utilize his power to get around beautiful women. Who do you complain to? He owns the pageant. There’s no one to complain to.”