Trump's War With The Establishment Republicans Keeps On Going

Graham Calls Trump ‘Jackass’ on CNN; Trump Fires Back, Gives Out Lindsey’s Cell Number

July 22, 2015 By Colleen Conley

If Lindsey Graham thought he could shame Donald Trump into backing down from his rhetoric, he apparently thought wrong.

“Run for president, but stop being the world’s biggest jackass,” the South Carolina senator told “CBS This Morning.”  He also stated that “Donald Trump is “a wrecking ball” that’s threatening to dismantle the Republican Party.

Trump fired back during a campaign rally in Graham’s home state, telling a South Carolina audience that Graham is a “stiff” who could never get a job in the private sector.

Trump then told a story about Graham calling him 4 years ago for a campaign endorsement and contribution. Trump claimed he went back through his phone records and found Graham’s private cell phone number. He showed the audience the number, written down on a yellow post-it note, and read the number aloud, encouraging everyone “let’s try it.”

Graham, a GOP presidential contender, said Trump’s recent condemnation of most immigrants as criminals — and the embrace of that message by many conservatives — represents “a defining moment” for the party that Republicans should soundly reject.
“I’m very worried where we’re headed as a party. I don’t think this is the way to get the Latino vote,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

“If we don’t reject this way of thinking — clearly, without any ambiguity — we’ll have lost our way, [and] we’ll have lost the moral authority, in my view, to govern this great nation.”

Trump made headlines recently with his statements about criminal Mexican illegal immigrants crossing the southern border. He then doubled down on those comments in the wake of this month’s killing of a woman in San Francisco, allegedly by an illegal immigrant felon who has been deported 5 times.

“This is merely one of thousands of similar incidents throughout the United States,” Trump said.

Graham said the comments “are not only offensive at every level, [but] you’re telling the Hispanic community who are friends, neighbors and relatives of the illegal immigrant population exactly what we think of you.”

Said Trump of Graham, “It’s amazing, he doesn’t seem like a very bright guy. He actually seems to me not as bright, obviously, as [former Texas Gov.] Rick Perry,”

D.J. Judd, a producer at CBS News, tweeted that CBS confirmed that the number was Lindsey Graham’s cell number.

H/T CBS News