The New York Daily News marked Donald Trump’s New Hampshire Republican primary win with another of its string of social media friendly covers: Trump as evil clown, with the headline “Dawn of the brain dead: Clown comes back to life with N.H. win as mindless zombies turn out in droves.” Classic tabloid stuff for the Facebook age. Could Trump ignore that provocation?
Of course not. This is Donald Trump we’re talking about. Trump fired off a series of frankly predictable tweets in response:
But in the mean time, Donald, their covers are being widely shared and that means a lot of people are seeing you as a clown. That gets under your skin, doesn’t it? Your thin, thin skin. That’s what all this bluster is about, right? No matter how much you say you’re the winningest winner ever to win?
Trump also assailed the newspaper’s market value and wrote that “Like the worthless @NYDailyNews, looks like @politico will be going out of business. Bad reporting- no money, no cred!” (To which one Marco Rubio supporter replied “well, if anyone knows about failing businesses it's you.”)
Coming from most candidates, tweets like this would look like a dangerous distraction from campaigning. But this is how Trump has been campaigning all along—and Tuesday night, the Trump way of campaigning got him a win in New Hampshire.