Trump Vs. NYT Scribe: It's on!

Last week it was apparent that there's no love lost between Donald Trump and New York Times columnist Gail Collins, but this week it's all-out war. Seems the Donald responded to Collins' column, which tweaked him as a loopy birther, with a letter to the editor tweaking her in turn as a no-good hack for writing "nasty and derogatory articles about me." "Actually," Trump writes, "I have great respect for Ms. Collins in that she has survived so long with so little talent. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level." Snap!

This week, Collins slaps back, noting that the bestselling author himself once sent her an "aggrieved message ... in which he misspelled the word 'too.'” Further, she runs down his birther allegations, dismissing his doubts about President Obama's birth certificate, his grandmother, and his authorship of Dreams From My Father as all but absurd. "Recent polls have shown Trump running second among potential Republican primary voters," Collins concludes. "I believe this is not so much an indication of popularity as a desperate plea to be delivered from Mitt Romney." (More Gail Collins stories.)