David Jackson, and Heidi M Przybyla

USA TODAY

Hillary Clinton set up Donald Trump with embarrassing stories about a former Miss Universe — and now Trump can't seem to let it go.

A bizarre early morning tweet storm by the Republican presidential nominee extended the Alicia Machado story into its fifth day Friday, enabling Clinton and her aides to continue hammering Trump over his treatment of women.

"Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT!" Trump said in one of his morning missives. "Hillary was set up by a con."

In another tweet, Trump said there is a sex tape of Machado, even though there is no evidence such a tape exists.

Though her digital team produced its own tweet storm, Clinton waited until later in the day to publicly comment, ensuring Trump's tweets dominated the news cycle.

"Who gets up a three o'clock in the morning to engage in a Twitter attack against a former Miss Universe?" Clinton said in a rally in Coral Springs, FL. "He hurled as many insults as he could. Really, why does he do things like that? His latest Twitter meltdown is unhinged even for him," said Clinton. "It proves yet again that he is tempermentally unfit to the president and commander in chief," she said.

Earlier the Democratic nominee also called Machado to thank her for “the courage she has shown, particularly as this became elevated through a war of some pretty unpleasant words,” spokesman Nick Merrill told reporters.

The prolonged Machado story is partly the result of long-term planning by the Clinton campaign, which developed a strategy to elevate her even before Monday's presidential debate.

Clinton introduced Machado to the political world during the debate by turning around a question that moderator Lester Holt had asked about Trump saying she lacked the “stamina” to be president.

The Democratic nominee apparently caught Trump off guard when she pointed out that he once described the Miss Universe pageant winner as "Miss Piggy" and also "'Miss Housekeeping" because "she was Latina. Donald, she has a name ... Her name is Alicia Machado."

"Where did you find this? Where did you find this?" Trump responded.

The campaign had already cut a web video featuring the former Miss Universe. Following the debate, the campaign organized a phone call with Machado and journalists. Then, both Cosmopolitan magazine and the Guardian rushed to publish profiles of Machado they’d been working on earlier.

Tuesday morning, Trump himself threw fuel on the fire. He seemed to have remembered Machado, and defended his attacks on her weight.

“She was the winner and, you know, she gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem," Trump said on Fox and Friends. "We had a real problem."

Machado, meanwhile, gave interviews of her own and attacked Trump, also extending the story.

Trump starts looking to second debate, claims first one was 'rigged'

Trump said he was happy with the debate, despite Clinton's "nasty" attacks. The New York businessman has also suggested that he might use the next debate — Oct. 9 in St. Louis — to bring up the affairs of former President Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton's alleged threats to her husband's paramours.

Clinton told reporters Thursday "he can run his campaign however he chooses." She and aides indicated that Trump's treatment of women will continue to be an issue.

As with Trump's attacks on a Muslim couple who lost their son in the Iraq war — an incident that became a major liability for him in August — the Clinton campaign is trying to turn Machado into a symbol of Trump’s attitude towards women voters.

On Wednesday, Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters that “Trump should stop bullying Alicia Machado once and for all and apologize for his offensive comments both 20 years ago and the morning after the debate.”

After Trump's pre-dawn tweet storm, Clinton backer and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean told MSNBC: "There is something the matter with him."

The Clinton campaign also pointed to polls showing that the Democrat has built slight leads in key battleground states in the days since the debate.

Defending his early morning activity, Trump responded Friday on social media: "For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o'clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!"

Some Republican political analysts, meanwhile, shook their heads over Trump's antics.

"He's under a lot of pressure right now and he is not handling it well," said Texas-based GOP consultant Matt Mackowiak. "Attacking the former Miss Universe for an entire week is indefensible."

Republican consultant Bruce Haynes, founding partner of Washington-based Purple Strategies, reached back to military theorist Carl von Clausewitz and his admonition that leaders need to understand the wars they fight.

"This is the central, strategic failing of Trump," Haynes said. "He does not understand the true nature of the conflict in which he is presently engaged."

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