Donald Trump is not happy with the New Hampshire Union Leader because, for the second time this year, the conservative daily has savaged the GOP front-runner in a scathing editorial. Trump hit back at the paper’s publisher, Joe McQuaid, during a radio interview ahead of his campaign rally in Nashua, New Hampshire, Monday. Via Politico:
“He’s a real lowlife, there’s no question about it,” Trump said on New Hampshire television station WMUR on Monday in response to a front-page editorial by McQuaid that compared the Republican presidential candidate to the villain Biff Tannen from the “Back to the Future” movie series. “He’s a very dishonest man,” Trump added.
Trump pointed out during the interview that he had “performed many favors for McQuaid, including buying ads and visiting his country club.”
He also suggested that the tough editorial was payback for his non-participation in the Union Leader-sponsored candidate forum last August.
“Joe McQuaid wanted me to do his debate desperately,” Trump said. “He called me practically begging to do the debate. The debate turned out to be a total farce and a joke. It was … very destructive to Jeb Bush.”
He continued, saying “very few people attended, very few people watched it on television, and then the next night Fox had their debate and it set a record in the history of cable television.”
“I think I should get credit for vision, because his debate was a joke,” Trump added. “I knew when I didn’t do the debate he would take action against me.”
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The Trumpless GOP forum was held in Manchester, New Hampshire, on August 3 — three days before the August 6 Fox News debate that included Trump.
Trump’s office initially said he would not participate in the forum because the Union Leader had published a scathing editorial in July that lampooned his remarks about Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) war record.
Candidate Trump bowed out because, an aide said, he was upset with an editorial this week that mocked him for saying that U.S. Sen. John McCain was not a war hero. McCain, shot down by the North Vietnamese, suffered years of torture after refusing to be released early because his father was an admiral.
In his editorial on Monday, McQuaid said that Trump insults New Hampshire’s intelligence with his “bathroom humor and verbal bullying.”
McQuaid told Politico in an email that in June Trump called McQuaid a “fantastic man” and said the Union Leader is “terrific.”
“This is typical Trump,” noted McQuaid.
The Union Leader responded on Monday to Donald Trump’s attack. The Hill reported:
New Hampshire Union-Leader publisher Joe McQuaid has struck back at Donald Trump after coming under attack from the GOP frontrunner. McQuaid says Trump become hostile only after it became clear that the influential newspaper would not endorse him.
McQuaid added that Trump had panned him surrounding a candidate forum the paper held in August before trying to win his endorsement.
“He wrote me a letter two days before the debate saying he was a great judge of business and his instinct was that I was not going to endorse him so he wasn’t going to do my lousy event,” McQuaid said on Monday’s “MTP Daily” on MSNBC.
“Two days after the event, he sent me another letter, which I have in my coat pocket, in which he says, ‘The debate was terrible, Bush was terrible, everybody said I was a genius not to do it, and oh, by the way, when you get around to it, would you please endorse me for president?'”
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