Muscatine, Iowa — Donald Trump is not a fan of National Review’s latest issue, and he made his displeasure known during a speech in the local high-school gymnasium here Sunday afternoon.
He said some of the writers featured in the issue had spoken out against him because he hadn’t given them what they wanted. Brent Bozell, he said, had asked him for money before he considered running for president, and Trump turned him down.
“The next time I hear his name, ‘I’m writing a piece about Donald Trump’ . . . I guarantee, folks, if I gave him more money — you’d end up giving to him for the rest of your life — but if I gave him more money, he would’ve been fine,” Trump said.
As for Glenn Beck — “always crying, every time I see him” — Trump said he was angry that his interview requests had been turned down.
If I did this interview with him, he wouldn’t have done it. That’s the way life is. This isn’t something, you don’t learn this at the Wharton School of Finance, okay? But that’s the way life is. And I don’t blame him! . . . If I called somebody and they wouldn’t do the interview, probably I would be swayed to knock the hell out of them. Why wouldn’t I?
On the whole Trump said, the issue “probably helps me.”
Some of [the writers] are very nice people, I was actually surprised. And a lot of them weren’t even very vicious. Some of them I actually thought they were positive articles about me. But they did this, and they’re trying to sell some magazines, and I don’t know, they might sell this. But basically the National Review is finished, it’s a dead magazine.
Please send your condolences.