The gloves were off Monday morning, on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, between GOP candidates Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, after Bush ridiculed the real estate mogul as a "loser" and ridiculed his history of bankruptcies and other business issues during a live morning show interview.
"Jeb is mixing things up," Trump told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program in a phone interview just minutes after Bush's talk with the show's hosts.
"Here is the story on Jeb, he is a stiff who you wouldn't hire in private enterprise. This is a stiff. This is a guy that if he came looking for a job you'd say no thank you and that's the way it is."
In his interview, Bush had called Trump's history with
eminent domain into question, bringing back an argument from Saturday night's debate about a case in which an Atlantic City homeowner sued him in the 1980s for trying to take her home for a parking lot for his casinos.
"He doesn't even know what the words mean," said Trump. "His family used eminent domain privately on the stadium in Texas. That just came out this morning. He forgot to tell you, he probably didn't know because he is probably not that involved with his family. He doesn't even use the last name Bush."
He also accused Bush of making up stories about him and saying things he never said.
"I never called John McCain a loser," said Trump, referring to a statement Bush made in Saturday night's GOP debate. "You know that. I like John McCain. He is a nice guy. I never called him a loser. The other man I supposedly called a loser, I don't even know who it is, I don't know who the man is. Jeb is mixing things up."
Meanwhile, Trump said, Bush is spending $100 million on ads, including $25 million on "negative ads to attack me, and every time he does a negative ad my poll numbers go up. It's a weird thing. But the guy is a total stiff."
Bush, Trump said, is "weak on immigration and Common Core, he wants it 100 percent and just those two items he can't do very well. But he's got to go around and stop lying because I never called John McCain a loser. Really sad when you have to say that."
Also on Monday's show, Trump included comments on:
- New Hampshire's heroin issues: "You don't think of New Hampshire as having that problem. It's a massive problem up here and I'm going to stop the borders and no politician can do what I do. I'm going to stop the border, I'm going to build a real wall not a toy wall. We're not going to have drugs pouring through the border because most of the drugs up here come from the southern border . . . the cost of heroin and cost of the drugs are so cheap, it's like buying bubble gum."
- Obamacare: "Replace Obamacare with something that's so much better and so much less expensive . . . costs are going up 35-45 percent. People are getting killed with it and even the supporters of Obamacare are saying it's really gotten out of control."
- Infrastructure: "Who can do better than me with that. Building, nobody can do building like I do building. Even the builders in New York tell you Trump builds the best. I know how to do these things."
- Iowa Polls: Actually the polls in Iowa were right. They said I was up by five, and what happened is, the caucus system and people would go into a room and a lot of people couldn't get away. It's a weird thing. The caucus system is very complex and then, of course, thousands of people were taken away from Ben Carson which was very sad and they were put over."
- New Hampshire vs. Iowa voting: "It's nice when you have a vote. You like somebody, you walk in and you pull the trigger — you vote and you go home — as opposed to sitting around for hours and hours and discussing things."
- South Carolina: "I think we will do well down there. I hope we will do well in New Hampshire. I have a great bonding with the people in New Hampshire, they know what I'm going to do. They have a big vet problem up here, tremendous veteran problem, they know how I am with the vets and nobody knows what I do with the vets."