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Elizabeth Warren Emerges to Attack Donald Trump on Twitter
| New York Times | - |
Republicans
spent an entire primary cycle searching for Donald J. Trump's weak
spot, to little avail. But Elizabeth Warren, a first-term Democratic
senator from Massachusetts, seems to have come up with an answer - or at
least a way to rattle the New ...
Elizabeth Warren Emerges to Attack Donald Trump on Twitter
Republicans spent an entire primary cycle searching for Donald J. Trump’s weak spot, to little avail.
But Elizabeth Warren,
a first-term Democratic senator from Massachusetts, seems to have come
up with an answer — or at least a way to rattle the New York
billionaire.
On
Friday evening, tensions between Mr. Trump and Ms. Warren spilled into a
Twitter war, which spanned four hours and more than a dozen posts and
insults — “Goofy Elizabeth Warren,” he called her; a sexist, racist,
xenophobic “bully,” she countered — on both sides.
The
back-and-forth, which played out in public rat-a-tat-tat bursts, 140
characters at a time, also offered a vivid preview of how the six months
until Election Day could unfold, with the popular Ms. Warren emerging
as a unifier of the Democratic base and Mr. Trump — so far, at least —
still unable to resist small provocations as he tries to become a more
disciplined general election candidate.
Ms.
Warren is one of the few high-profile leaders in either party to
repeatedly challenge Mr. Trump with clarity and directness, portraying
him as both dangerous and a charlatan. She began her assault in a March 21 Facebook post, describing his candidacy as a “serious threat” and calling him “a loser” — one of the worst insults in the Trump lexicon.
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And on Tuesday, the night Mr. Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, she again took to Facebook to denounce him
— a broadside that he seemed to be responding to when, just after 7
p.m. on Friday, he launched a series of Twitter posts deriding her as
“goofy” and as Hillary Clinton’s “flunky.”
“Goofy Elizabeth Warren and her phony Native American heritage are on a Twitter rant,” Mr. Trump wrote in one missive, refering to Ms. Warren’s claims of Cherokee ancestry, which became an issue during her 2012 Senate race. “She is too easy! I’m driving her nuts.”
Mr. Trump first teased Ms. Warren about her ancestry claims in an interview
last summer with the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, saying:
“She’s caught a little wave. Perhaps it’s her Indian upbringing.” He has
since repeated the mockery, calling Ms. Warren “the Indian” at a news conference in Washington earlier this year.
Continue reading the main story
“Trump
has built his campaign on racism, sexism and xenophobia,” Ms. Warren
wrote in her Facebook post on Tuesday. “I’m going to fight my heart out
to make sure Donald Trump’s toxic stew of hatred and insecurity never
reaches the White House.”
Ms.
Warren and Mrs. Clinton, the expected Democratic nominee, have had a
strained relationship at times, and Ms. Warren’s decision not to endorse
Mrs. Clinton so far has irked Democrats who would like to see the
primary wrap up. But Ms. Warren is still often mentioned as a possible
vice-presidential candidate for Mrs. Clinton, who has said she wants a running mate who can act as an attack dog.
And Ms. Warren is embracing a role right now that Mrs. Clinton cannot.
Mrs.
Clinton, the former secretary of state, has made clear that she hopes
to hover at least slightly above the fray, causing some Democrats to
fret privately that their party is not sharply attacking Mr. Trump, who
has so far proved an elusive target.
Ms. Warren, it seems, is more than happy to fill the void.
In a dozen Twitter posts Friday evening, she not only called Mr. Trump a bully who can be defeated “not by tucking tail and running, but by holding your ground,” but also adopted Mr. Trump’s Twitter style, writing:
Mary
Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist based in Boston, said that Ms.
Warren had a history of speaking her mind — “to anybody, on any topic,
at any time,” she said — and that the political moment was ripe for that
type of authenticity.
Ms.
Warren appears to take seriously her role in uniting the party. And in
an emailed statement, she cast herself as someone willing to challenge
Mr. Trump. “Republicans waited way too long to stand up and tell the
truth about Donald Trump’s record, his temperament, and why he is unfit
to be president,” she said. “We can’t repeat that mistake.”
But
Ms. Warren may also be trying to blunt Mr. Trump’s efforts to woo
supporters of Mrs. Clinton’s primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont, no matter how unlikely Mr. Trump is to bring them to his side
in large numbers. She is the person most closely aligned with Mr.
Sanders’s brand of anti-Wall Street populism, and her imprimatur could
help Mrs. Clinton while the Democratic primary race goes on.
In
some ways, Mr. Trump is reprising the Native American attack that
then-Senator Scott Brown used against her, unsuccessfully, in their 2012
contest. Ms. Marsh said that during that race, Ms. Warren won over some
of the working-class men who had voted for Mr. Brown in his 2010
special election to the Senate, making her a particularly potent force
on the Democratic side.
“She
is probably the most effective voice to engage Trump and Trump
supporters because she won his voters in her election here, and when it
comes to helping them and creating jobs, she is wildly popular with
them,” Ms. Marsh said. “She has standing with Trump voters.”
For
Mr. Trump, whose preferred attack megaphone is often Twitter, engaging
with Ms. Warren has its perils and could undercut his recent efforts to reassure party officials
that he has the temperament to be president. He also has high negative
ratings among women, and attacking two of the most prominent female
Democrats could backfire.
The 210 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List
Ryan
Williams, a Republican consultant, said Mr. Trump needed to “stop
chasing every shiny object and going down every rabbit hole, and focus
on the White House.”
“I
think Donald Trump needs to recognize that he’s the nominee of the
Republican Party and his target is Hillary Clinton, not Elizabeth Warren
or anyone else,” Mr. Williams said. “One of the main rules of politics
is to never punch downwards, and he’s punching way downward by engaging
with a liberal senator who’s not even on the ballot this year.”
Mr. Trump’s allies view the dust-up as simply Mr. Trump’s being himself, and winning over voters in the process.
“Donald
understands the power of Twitter,” Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime Trump
confidant, wrote in an email. “Nothing will galvanize the Republican
Party like brawling with anti-business Fauxcahontas. Could not be a
better contrast between Trump, who wants to create wealth, and Warren,
who wants to distribute it.”
And for Democrats still struggling to take on Mr. Trump, who helped splinter his own party
before beginning to turn his attention to the Democrats, Ms. Warren has
increasingly become a crucial figure in the fight, helping to write the
blueprint against Mr. Trump one Facebook and Twitter post at a time.
“A
lot of politicians don’t know how to handle Trump,” said Tommy Vietor, a
former Obama administration official who worked on the president’s 2008
campaign. “She’s showing that the best way to respond is to punch back
hard and to call him out.”
Maggie Haberman contributed repor
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