Clinton taunts Trump over ‘latest Twitter meltdown’

Hillary Clinton derided Donald Trump’s latest Twitter flap by tweeting early Saturday morning about one of her policy proposals.

“It’s 3:20am. As good a time as any to tweet about national service,” the Democratic nominee wrote, adding several more tweets about her plan to expand the number of young volunteers in the U.S.

The timing of her tweets was a clear dig against Trump. She had unveiled the proposal the day before at a Florida rally at which she also had repeatedly mocked the mogul for his early-morning Twitter attacks against Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe.

“I mean, really, who gets up at 3 o’clock in the morning to engage in a Twitter attack against a former Miss Universe? I mean, hurled as many insults as he could. Really, why does he do things like that?” Clinton asked her supporters in Coral Springs, Fla. “His latest Twitter meltdown is unhinged, even for him.”

In the wee hours of Friday morning, Trump attacked both the media and Machado, who was Miss Universe about 20 years ago when Trump purchased the pageant. Machado has accused Trump, who once held a press conference to discuss her weight loss, of privately calling her “fat,” “Miss Piggy” and “ugly.”

Trump then released a flurry of tweets a little after 5 a.m. on Friday, deriding Machado as “disgusting” and urging the public to review what he characterized as her “sex tape.”

He also floated the theory that Clinton somehow helped Machado become a U.S. citizen so that she could cite the former beauty pageant winner at Monday’s debate. Clinton had argued that Trump’s body-shaming comments fit into a larger pattern of sexism.

On Friday afternoon, Clinton quipped, “I have said it before and I’ll say it again: A man who can be provoked by a tweet should not be anywhere near the nuclear codes!”

Machado, now a well-known actress in Latin America, responded to Trump on Instagram, where she criticized the GOP nominee’s “campaign of hate.”

For his part, Trump had his own retort to critics of his early-morning Twitter attack:

This post was updated Saturday, Oct. 1, to include Clinton’s early-morning tweets.