Bette revives her twit war with Trump
Former President Donald Trump has one more reason to return to social media — his old rival Bette Midler.
The Divine Miss M was quick to undermine the 45th president’s plans to launch his own social media platform after former Trump adviser Jason Miller said Sunday that his old boss would “completely redefine the game” with such a project in two to three months.
Midler went on Twitter — from which Trump was banned for his involvement in January’s deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — to suggest a couple of names for the venture.
“I hear he’s going to call it ‘Qwitter’” she tweeted. “Or ‘Hicktock.’ ”
Defenseless on social media, the ex-president spoke on Lisa Boothe’s right-wing podcast Monday, claiming his words have more weight now that they’re in shorter supply.
“When I put out a statement, it’s much more elegant than a tweet,” Trump said. “In a certain way, it’s bigger than ever.”
Before being banned from Twitter, Trump boasted nearly 88 million followers. While Midler has only 2 million, she slugged above her weight class in her feud with the counterpunching heavyweight, which got international attention when the pair exchanged virtual body blows in June 2019.
That skirmish started when Midler misfired by falsely attributing a quote about the gullibility of GOP voters to the then-president, who was on a diplomatic trip to Britain. She apologized, but apparently that wasn’t enough for the prez.
“Washed up psycho @BetteMidler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make ‘your great president’ look really bad,” Trump tweeted from abroad. “She got caught, just like the Fake News Media gets caught. A sick scammer!”
After that exchange, Midler thanked stars including actors Mark Hamill and Mia Farrow for coming to her defense in what she called “The Battle of the Bulge.”
The “Wind Beneath My Wings” singer then spent the remainder of Trump’s presidency taking jabs at him on a regular basis. The Los Angeles Times reports that Midler and Trump have been going at each other on Twitter since at least 2012.