Donald Trump just can’t let go of Vanity Fair.
He went after editor Graydon Carter in a tweet on Thursday, renewing a decades-old feud.
The president-elect attacked Carter for the magazine’s “really poor numbers.” “Way down, big trouble, dead!” he wrote. “Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!”
When Trump was building his reputation as a titan of real estate, Carter was an editor of the satirical magazine Spy, which made a sport of ribbing the businessman. It was Carter who described Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in 1988, an insult that still vexes him.
This wasn’t even the first time Trump has used Twitter to lay into Carter and the magazine. In 2012, he tweeted, “Can’t wait for Vanity Fair to fold which, under Graydon Carter, will be sooner rather than later.” Neither Vanity Fair nor Carter has folded.
Trump has a habit of going after individuals in Twitter attacks. His recent targets have included reporters, including CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, and the head of an Indiana union local who had accused Trump of “lying his a– off.”
Vanity Fair has lobbed its share of put-downs at the president-elect. Carter used his column in the November issue to decry Trump’s presidential campaign as a “carny act.”
It was not clear what set Trump off this time, though on Wednesday afternoon, the magazine posted a derisive review of Trump Grill, the steakhouse in the Trump Tower lobby. It gleefully described tacky decor, mediocre food and bad presentation, like a steak that “slumped to the side over the potatoes like a dead body in a T-boned minivan.”
“As my companions and I contemplated the most painless way to eat our flaccid, gray Szechuan dumplings with their flaccid, gray innards, as a campy version of ‘Jingle Bells’ jackhammered in the background, a giant gold box tied with red ribbon toppled onto us,” wrote the critic, Tina Nguyen. “Trump, it seemed, was already fighting against the War on Christmas.”
Trump, for his part, has been a vocal critic of Carter’s restaurant ventures in Manhattan. Last year, he said he loved seeing Carter and Vanity Fair “failing so badly” and added, “He’s only focused on his bad food restaurants.”
A representative for Vanity Fair did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
–CNNMoney’s Brian Stelter contributed to this story.
