Donald Trump Asks Audience Member to Pull His Hair to Bash NY Times
By Lisa de Moraes
Donald Trump continues to stump political journalists with his reality-TV antics and ensuing reality hit TV ratings and polling stats. Giving a speech today, the former Apprentice star-turned-GOP front-runner instructed a woman in the audience to come up onstage and pull his hair. The stunt was by way of attacking The New York Times for what Trump described as a front-page inaccuracy – NYT being today’s Donald Trump Media Target. Never any downside to blasting the media, which Trump has used to his headline-grabbing advantage, following his grilling by FNC moderators at the first GOP debate and by Univision star Jorge Ramos at a recent news conference.
“I’m always in the front page of The New York Times now … I’m going to set a record for that too,” the real estate mogul simpered at the top of his speech to the Upstate Chamber Coalition’s Presidential Series in Greenville, SC. The sold-out event had about 100 members of the media in the hall, according to local press coverage (including CNN, which was the only cable news network covering it live, until it eventually cut him off).
He pulls out his reading glasses (“The print gets smaller and smaller and smaller as they lose more and more money – it’s tough”) and reads the front-page headline: “Donald Trump Gets Earful in Spanish as Latino Outlets Air Disdain” and the piece’s anecdotal lead about a Spanish-language drivetime radio show in host LA who calls Trump “El hombre del peluquín” — “the man of the toupee.”
Related: Donald Trump’s Behavior “Beneath Contempt” Says Univision CEO
‘I don’t wear a toupee! I swear! We’re gonna settle this. Come up here — you have to do an inspection,” he directed a woman sitting in the front of the room. She confirms it is his hair and that she has never met him before. He calls her “somebody’s … very nice wife.”
“The first sentence says I wear a toupee. And I don’t! Now, it goes on and it gets worse,” Trump says ominously, suggesting he’s going to read the entire article – a prospect so terrible even CNN jumps out.
“We’re going to pop in here for a moment,” the network’s Ashley Banfield interrupts, explaining, “It’s very unusual seeing a candidate have someone come up and touch his hair” (see Political Journalists Stumped By Trump’s Reality-TV Antics, above).
“Just so you know, this is not a campaign event,” Banfield says of Trump’s shenanigans. “It’s a chamber of commerce, and he’s technically a guest. But everything’s a campaign event when you’re in a campaign,” she concedes.
South Carolina does something for/to Trump. When he gave his first campaign rally in the state last month, he gave out fellow GOP candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone number.
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