Donald Trump showed his political rivals, specifically Lindsey Graham, how it's done this week by taking an attack from Gawker, which released the 2016 frontrunner's private cell phone number, and turning it into a campaign message.
In a Monday article,
Gawker asked readers to bombard the business mogul with phone calls. Trump didn't flinch, however, and quickly turned the attack into a publicity opportunity by recording a voicemail message that directed callers to his campaign website and Twitter account.
Several people recorded their calls to Trump, and published the message to Twitter and YouTube (as seen below).
The real-estate billionaire — currently leading the polls for the Republican nomination — also sent a public thank you note to Gawker via Twitter, and in the same stroke further encouraged fans to call him.
In its attempt to justify the release of Trump's phone number, Gawker noted that Trump himself released the private cell phone number of U.S. Senator and presidential hopeful Graham during a campaign speech last month.
During the July speech, Trump told a packed house in South Carolina — the senator's home state — that Graham gave him the number a few years ago after asking for a campaign donation and "good reference" at Fox News.
"Give it a shot," Trump said after announcing the number. "Your local politician, you know? He won't fix anything but at least he'll talk to you."
Graham took it in stride, and soon released a video of himself destroying the compromised cell phone with help from a blender, a baseball bat, and fire. He later told reporters he ended up getting an iPhone as a replacement.
"When Lindsey Graham's cell number was released to the public, his response was to set the cell phone on fire and destroy it with a bat, an ax and a cinder blocks which is actually not good for the environment," Michael Cohen, one of Trump's advisers, said in a statement.
"Donald Trump turns the number into a campaign announcement that has received within the first few hours tens of thousands of calls. Now do you see the difference between Donald Trump and the rest of the field?"
After Trump parried the Gawker story, he received many cheers across social media. A few examples are gathered below.