The 2016 Blast The latest POLITICO scoops and coverage of the 2016 elections. Email Sign Up

Tweets from https://twitter.com/politico/lists/team-politico



The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal hit back against Donald Trump on Thursday evening amid the ongoing war of words between the two. | AP Photo Wall Street Journal to Trump: 'Better be careful!'

The Wall Street Journal fired back at Donald Trump on Thursday evening, hours after the Republican candidate demanded the newspaper's editorial board apologize for pointing out that he has thus far received fewer votes compared to Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

"On Thursday the businessman demanded an apology after we—'the dummies at the @WSJ Editorial Board'—accurately noted that Hillary Clinton has received about a million more votes than he has," the board wrote in a piece headlined "A Trump Reality Check."

"The truth hurts, though Mr. Trump would rather walk down Fifth Avenue shooting the messenger," the piece continued, alluding to Trump's joke in January that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and not lose any voters.

In a series of tweets Thursday morning, the Republican front-runner complained about the editorial board's coverage — for not the first and likely not the last time in the 2016 election cycle.

"@WSJ is bad at math. The good news is, nobody cares what they say in their editorials anymore, especially me!" Trump boasted in one, before tweeting another condemnation of the "dummies" at publication owned by Rupert Murdoch, with whom Trump has quarreled over coverage in his media properties, including the Journal (which expressed appreciation that the Manhattan real-estate magnate is "such a loyal reader").

".@WSJ Editorial says "Clinton primary vote total is 8,646,551.Trump's is 7,533,692"-a knock. But she had only 3 opponents-I had 16.Apologize," Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

Later in the evening, the paper responded, "Actually his rise has been cleared by the large and fractured GOP field. Of the 20.35 million GOP primary votes cast so far, he has received 7.54 million, or a mere 37%. Despite the media desire to call him unstoppable, Mr. Trump is the weakest Republican front-runner since Gerald Ford in 1976."

"The opinions he should care about are the 39% of GOP voters who said in Tuesday’s exit polls that they would consider supporting a third-party candidate if Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are the nominees, or the 44% of non-Trump GOP voters who said they won’t cast a ballot for him in November," the editorial board concluded. "As Mr. Trump likes to tweet, better be careful!"