Nasty guy

Trump trashes Cruz as a 'nasty guy' 

By Nick Gass

Donald Trump stepped up his personal attacks on Ted Cruz on Wednesday, boasting that Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad's expressed desire that the Texas senator loses his state amounts to a "very bad hit."

Phoning in to "Fox and Friends" before a campaign stop in Iowa, the Manhattan business mogul remarked upon Branstad's comments the previous day in which he indicated that he did not want to see Cruz prevail in his state's Feb. 1 GOP caucus because of his stance on ethanol.

"You know, Ted is not a person that’s liked. I mean, he’s a nasty guy, and people don’t like him, and I was really surprised to see that," Trump mused. "And the people of Iowa love him, and he cares for them. And he’s not your politician where they talk, what he says is the right thing. So I think that’s going to have a huge impact, if he really does not want Ted Cruz to win. And I was surprised to see…I mean think everybody … because it’s just not him, he doesn’t do that. So I think it was a very bad hit."

After months of expression of mutual admiration, Trump and Cruz have increasingly trashed each other as gap between the two anti-establishment rivals closed ahead of the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. Trump pulled out a new card on Tuesday, announcing the endorsement of Sarah Palin, the tea party firebrand who had enthusiastically backed Cruz during his 2012 Senate bid.

Noting polls in Iowa between himself and Cruz are "pretty tight," Trump hastened to add that Cruz is "not doing very well at all" in other states, like New Hampshire. A poll of New Hampshire Republicans released Monday showed Ohio Gov. John Kasich in second place, while Cruz came in fourth place.

Trump would appear to be on good terms with Kasich, if his latest remarks are any indication. The warming comes after Kasich and the super PACs supporting him mounted an all-out assault on Trump's candidacy late last year. He has since eased off such attacks.

“Well, he’s doing better. And I’ll tell you, interestingly, he was very nice to me when he first ran and then he got very nasty and then he became very nice again. So right now I like him. I think he’s doing pretty well. In terms of the establishment, he seems to be doing a little better than the others right now, based on a poll," Trump said, turning his attention to the next poll from the first primary state set for release later Wednesday. "I think the big poll comes out tonight at 6:00, the WMUR poll with CNN, it comes out at 6, so I’m looking forward to seeing that poll. That’s a very comprehensive poll of New Hampshire. But we’ve been winning New Hampshire by a lot. I think he maybe could be in second place or third place right now.”

Trump later returned to attacking Cruz in touting politicians' inability to make great deals, "like a guy like Ted."

"You know, he borrows money from Goldman Sachs, he borrows money from Citibank, he doesn’t report it on his forms where you have to report it, it’s you know, a violation, and a very significant portion. And he doesn’t report things like that. You can’t just say that. It’s very sad to see it," Trump remarked, alluding to last week's reports by The New York Times in which Cruz acknowledged that he did not report loans from the two institutions on campaign finance disclosure documents. "And, he’s got the other problem, you know what the other problem is. Because now he’s being sued by numerous people saying he was born in Canada, so he’s got to work that out somehow.”

The show's hosts then asked Trump about an entirely different subject: the specter of a looming boycott of next month's Academy Awards by prominent African-American artists Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith because of the lack of racial diversity in this year's acting nominees, the second year in a row that no person of color received a nomination. Al Sharpton has called for a boycott of the ceremony, which is being hosted by comedian Chris Rock.

“Well, I think it’s a tough situation. I think it’s really sad. And Al [Sharpton] is just a guy who wants to get publicity for himself, and I understand him very well. Al would actually probably say that he was a friend of Donald Trump, maybe not on television but outside of television. I think it’s a tough situation," Trump remarked, then alluded to an earlier segment in which Fox News contributor Stacey Dash remarked upon the perceived double standard of having a network like BET. "So … the whites don’t get any nominations, and I thought it was an amazing interview, actually. I’d never even thought of it from that standpoint," he said. "But with all of that being said, it would certainly be nice if everybody could be represented properly. And hopefully that’s the case, but perhaps it’s not the case. It’s a difficult situation.”