President Trump ripped into Democratic donor Tom Steyer as a “lunatic” after his interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, days after Steyer received a pipe bomb in the mail.
“Just watched Wacky Tom Steyer, who I have not seen in action before, be interviewed by @jaketapper,” Trump tweeted.
“He comes off as a crazed & stumbling lunatic who should be running out of money pretty soon,” he wrote. “As bad as their field is, if he is running for President, the Dems will eat him alive!”
Steyer was one of several high-profile Democrats targeted with a mailed pipe bomb last week. After the scare, he renewed his call for Trump’s impeachment and linked the president’s rhetoric to the attempts.{mosads}
When asked on CNN if he was blaming the president for the attempted attack, Steyer said, “There’s obviously no direct link.”
“But I’m absolutely associating and blaming him for creating the atmosphere that exists,” he added.
Steyer responded after Trump’s tweet that “it is unthinkable that in the midst of the horrible political violence our president would resort to name-calling instead of repairing the damage to the fabric of our country.”
Steyer on CNN’s “State of the Union” also linked the recent violence to the GOP.
“But there’s something much bigger than that going on here and that’s the atmosphere that [Trump has] created and that the Republican Party has created in terms of political violence,” he said.
“I think if you look across the political scene, what you see is routine, systematic lawlessness, an attempt to break … democratic norms in pursuit of victory at all costs,” he said, pointing to “voter suppression,” political gerrymandering and “violent rhetoric.”
“But more than that we see it in a president who has been breaking the law systematically as a candidate, as a business person and as a president,” Steyer said.
Trump condemned the attempted bombings as well as Saturday’s shooting, calling for unity and more civility in national discourse.
But critics such as CNN President Jeff Zucker have warned the president and his top aides need to take greater responsibility for their words.
“Their words matter. Thus far, they have shown no comprehension of that,” Zucker said in a statement following the attempting bombings. One of the pipe bombs was addressed to CNN’s headquarters in Manhattan and CNN is a frequent target of the president’s rhetorical attacks.