Al Waleed calls Trump a disgrace
Saudi prince urges Republican hopeful to withdraw from the US presidential race
Saudi billionaire Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal has called Donald Trump a disgrace to the United States following his call for a ban on Muslims entering the country, and demanded the Republican front-runner withdraw from the US presidential race.
Trump triggered an international uproar when he made his comments in response to last week’s deadly shootings in California by two Muslims who authorities said were radicalised.
“You are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America,” Prince Al Waleed, the chairman of Kingdom Holding, said on his Twitter account, addressing Trump and referring to the Republican Party.
“Withdraw from the US presidential race as you will never win,” the prince added.
Within hours, Trump’s response came back, also on Twitter.
“Prince @Alwaleed_Talal wants to control our US politicians...,” he said. “Can’t do it when I get elected.”
Trump’s comments have already cost him business in the Middle East, with a major chain of department stores [Landmark group] halting sales of his glitzy ‘Trump Home’ line of lamps, mirrors and jewellery boxes.
On Thursday, Dubai real estate firm Damac, which is building a $6 billion (Dh22 billion) golf complex with Trump, stripped the property of his name and image.
Prince Al Waleed, a nephew of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz, has holdings in a number of international companies, including Twitter and Citigroup.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has finally unleashed a verbal assault on the one rival he has so far spared. Trump went after Ted Cruz at a town hall event in Iowa Friday evening, accusing the Texas senator of being beholden to big oil companies because he opposes ethanol subsidies, which are deeply popular in this agricultural state.
“He’s a nice guy. I mean, everything I say he agrees with me, no matter what I say,” Trump began. “But with the ethanol, really, he’s got to come a long way... If Ted Cruz is against ethanol, how does he win in Iowa? Because that’s very anti-Iowa.”
Trump also appeared to take a veiled shot at Cruz’s family background, suggesting Cruz might have trouble appealing to the state’s evangelical voters.
“I do like Ted Cruz, but not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba,” he said of the country where Cruz’s father, an evangelical preacher, was born.
The attacks came after The New York Times reported that Cruz had questioned Trump’s judgement at a closed-door fundraiser, straining the rare détente between two of the race’s most outspoken candidates. Trump has gone after his other opponents gleefully and viciously, panning Jeb Bush as low-energy, Ben Carson as “pathological” and Marco Rubio as a lightweight who drinks too much water.
But the billionaire businessman had refrained from attacked Cruz, even as the Texas senator has surged in opinion polls, becoming Trump’s most serious challenger in early-voting Iowa.
Trump previewed his attack lines on Twitter Friday morning. Cruz “should not make statements behind closed doors to his bosses, he should bring them out into the open — more fun that way!” he wrote. Trump predicted Cruz would “fall like all others. Will be easy!”
In the audio leaked to the Times, Cruz said his approach has been to “bear hug” Trump. But he appeared less than eager to engage on Friday.
Several attendees at Trump’s town hall event said in interviews before he spoke that they were torn between supporting Trump and Cruz, underscoring the risks each man faces going after the other too strongly.