Payback: Trump holds up rival’s phone number after criticism

Published 8:11 am Wednesday, July 22, 2015

BLUFFTON, S.C. — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has pulled a classic adolescent prank on a rival who dared to criticize him, a bit of payback reminiscent of writing the phone number of a nemesis on a wall with the message “Call me.”

After Sen. Lindsey Graham called Trump “the world’s biggest jackass” during a television interview, the billionaire developer read Graham’s personal cellphone number and showed it to TV cameras at a campaign event. Graham joked that he would have to buy a new phone. His voice mail quickly filled up.

The back-and-forth is the latest chapter in an ongoing feud between Trump and those who criticize him. He is now at odds with much of the Republican establishment after a series of incendiary comments, topped by his weekend mocking of Arizona Sen. John McCain’s experience as a tortured prisoner of war in Vietnam.

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Since then Trump has intensified his criticism of McCain and his record on veterans issues in the Senate, even as politicians from both parties and veterans groups have rushed to McCain’s defense.

In a speech Tuesday to hundreds of supporters in Bluffton, South Carolina, Trump kept on McCain, accusing him of being soft on illegal immigration.