Iowa GOP Joins Trump in Hammering Des Moines Register

Looks like the rest of the Republicans are catching up to the Donald, slowly but surely.

A couple weeks ago, billionaire real estate mogul and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump—the clear Republican frontrunner—stood alone in hammering the Des Moines Register. Now the official Iowa Republican Party is joining him in ripping the state’s biggest newspaper.

What prompted the Iowa GOP to swing away at the paper is the Des Moines Register writing a scathing editorial attacking Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). The Register wrote on Monday:

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is apparently taking civility lessons from Donald Trump. In an exchange with Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York over confirming judges, Grassley resorted to a taunt more appropriate for a schoolyard than the floor of the United States Senate. Schumer criticized the slow pace of judicial confirmations since Republicans took control of the Senate, and he pushed for a vote on three federal district judges in New York State. Grassley defended his party’s record, which he insisted is roughly equivalent to when Democrats were in control. ‘So, put that in your pipe and smoke it, the senator from New York,’ Grassley retorted.

The Register continued by alleging that Grassley’s “immature poke at a fellow senator was undignified” and was reminiscent of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) accurately calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “liar”—something the Register complains is part of “a disturbing trend toward incivility in American politics.”

In response, Iowa GOP chairman Jeff Kaufmann issued a brutal statement, saying the Register is openly admitting they are partisans. Kaufmann said:

Take it from this history professor, Sen. Grassley is one of the most dignified and humble men to ever serve in the United States Senate. The Des Moines Register’s editorial board tipped their blindly partisan hand by taking a moment of jovial banter on the Senate floor and turning it into a statement on political discourse. Give. Me. A. Break. Quite frankly, few have done more than Senator Grassley to restore civility and comity to a body sorely in need of it. He has restored regular order as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, restoring rights granted to the minority party while passing meaningful, bipartisan legislation like juvenile justice reform. He’s doing his part to fix D.C.’s dysfunction. It is a shame the Register’s editorial board is attempting to score cheap political points at a time when Iowans are looking to be informed about the serious issues facing our nation. The Register’s editorial board might buy ink by the barrel, but that doesn’t mean they passed History 101 – and they can put that in their pipe and smoke it, as far as I’m concerned.

This is yet another example in which Trump was the first in the GOP field to recognize this. After a Register editorial called on Trump to drop out of the race after his spat with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), even though he’s the GOP frontrunner, Trump kicked reporters from the Des Moines Register out of an event he held in Iowa.

“The ultra liberal and seriously failing Des Moines Register is BEGGING my team for press credentials to my event in Iowa today-but they lie!” Trump said on Twitter on July 25.