ATLANTA — New York businessman and embattled Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is hitting back at Red State’s Erick Erickson.
The Trump campaign sent out a statement Saturday morning taking credit for the success of the high ratings the Fox News Channel received for Thursday’s debate as well as implying Erickson is a hypocrite for disinviting Trump from speaking at the Red State Gathering for insulting Fox News Channel host Megyn Kelly on CNN Friday night.
“Mr. Trump made Megyn Kelly look really bad — she was a mess with her anger and totally caught off guard. Mr. Trump said ‘blood was coming out of her eyes and whatever’ meaning nose, but wanted to move on to more important topics. Only a deviant would think anything else. This related to the debate, which because of Mr. Trump had 24 million viewers — the biggest in cable news history. According to TIME, Newsmax, Drudge Report, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Hill and many others, Mr. Trump won the debate,” the Trump campaign statement said.
The statement went further and excoriated Erickson for statements the Red State editor made in the past.
“By the way, the guy (Erick Erickson) who made the decision about RedState called Supreme Court Justice David Souter a ‘goat [expletive] child molester’ and First Lady Michelle Obama a ‘Marxist Harpy.’ He was forced to make a humbling apology.”
“Also, not only is Erick a total loser, he has a history of supporting establishment losers in failed campaigns so it is an honor to be uninvited from his event. Mr. Trump is an outsider and does not fit his agenda.”
“Many of the 900 people that wanted to hear Mr. Trump speak tonight have been calling and emailing—they are very angry at Erickson and the others that are trying to be so politically correct. To them Mr. Trump says, ‘We will catch you at another time soon.'”
Trump was disinvited from speaking at the Red State event late Friday night after he was interviewed by CNN host Don Lemon about Thursday night’s debate. Trump told Lemon he was unfairly treated by the Fox News moderators, particularly by Megyn Kelly.
“And you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes blood coming out of her — wherever. She was in my opinion — she was off-base. And by the way, not in my opinion, in the opinion of hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter because it has been a brutal day. In one way a great day for Fox. in another day in the Twitter sphere it’s been very bad because she’s been very badly criticized. She’s a lightweight. I couldn’t care less about her.”
Erickson told The Daily Caller Friday night he has not heard from Kelly or management from the Fox News Channel since the incident occurred. However, Trump, who was expected to give remarks for Red State Saturday night, is now planning a competing event in Atlanta with details that have yet to be released.