South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is taking his frustrations with Donald Trump out on his old cellphone after the billionaire businessman was responsible for an influx of calls.
The latest throw-down between the GOP presidential hopefuls was ratcheted up Tuesday when Trump, speaking in Graham's home state, slammed the senator as a "stiff," a "lightweight" and an "idiot" and gave out Graham's personal cellphone number to attendees.
That jab was in response to Graham, who had called Trump a "jackass" earlier. That slight from the GOP South Carolina senator came after reality TV star Trump went after Arizona Sen. John McCain's war record at an Iowa event Saturday. Trump said the 2008 presidential nominee was "not a war hero," because he was "captured." McCain was a prisoner of war for five years in Vietnam, where he was tortured.
After Trump gave out the phone number on Tuesday, Graham immediately started getting thousands of calls. His voicemail quickly filled up, and by that evening, the children of his friend, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., were answering it on their way to see the Minions movie with him at a Georgetown theater.
The surge prompted Graham — who famously still uses a flip phone — to ask if it was time to abandon the device in favor of a smartphone.
Probably getting a new phone. iPhone or Android?
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 21, 2015
By Wednesday, Graham seemed to find a more humorous — and perhaps cathartic — way to get rid of the phone that wouldn't quit ringing.
In a video shot by the conservative website IJReview, Graham found plenty of different ways to destroy his old phone. The dramatically filmed video titled, "How to Destroy Your Cell Phone With Sen. Lindsey Graham," shows him taking a meat cleaver to a blue Verizon Samsung flip phone, dropping it in a blender, putting it in a toaster oven — with Bagel Bites, hitting it with a golf club and dropping it off a building.
"Or if all else fails, you can always give your number to 'The Donald,'" Graham says at the end.
"This is for all the veterans," the retired Air Force colonel adds, another jab at Trump, as he throws the phone out of frame.
Graham has struggled to gain traction in the crowded GOP primary field, and given current polling, likely won't make the first debate, which takes place in Ohio in a little more than two weeks.
Trump, on the other hand, currently leads in polls and is almost assured a spot on the stage. The video enables Graham to get in another hit against his new nemesis while hoping the viral act will also give him a needed surge of momentum.
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