Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham has a retort for his 2016 rival Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, Trump read aloud Graham’s personal phone number while ridiculing him at a campaign stop in the senator’s home state.
In a satirical clip titled “How to Destroy Your Cell Phone with Sen. Linsdey Graham,” the South Carolina lawmaker can be seen smashing his smartphone in countless ways — via blender, meat cleaver, golf club and fire, just to name a few — in slow motion, set to a classical music score. After the action settles down, Graham says: “Or, if all else fails, you can always give your number to ‘The Donald.’”
Graham added, “This is for the veterans,” before chucking his phone off screen.
The video, produced by the Independent Journal Review, comes in the wake of a wave of bipartisan criticism of Trump, for remarks he made about Sen. John McCain’s war record. During a Q&A at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa last weekend, Trump said of McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Ten seconds later he said, “He’s a war hero because he was captured. Okay, I believe—perhaps he’s a war hero.”
Graham, a close personal friend and colleague of McCain’s, drew the real estate mogul’s ire by calling him a “jackass” during a “CBS This Morning” interview on Monday. Trump said Tuesday that Graham was “not a bright guy” and claimed that the senator sought a “good reference” for him to get appearances on Fox News.
On Wednesday, Trump, the new GOP presidential front-runner, said he isn’t sorry he made Graham’s phone number public.
“People are tired of incompetent leadership,” he told the Washington Post. “They’re tired of the Lindsey Grahams of the world.” When pressed about why he revealed Graham’s number, Trump told the newspaper: “So people can call him; so he can get something done.”
Adam Howard