Politico Steve Schmidt Trades Insults With Former CNN Host Piers Morgan

Former CNN host Piers Morgan took to Twitter to launch a volley of insults at Steve Schmidt, the longtime Republican Party strategist whose Lincoln Project took aim at Donald Trump. “You’re the imbecile who came up with Sarah Palin as the lamentable ruinous choice for John McCain’s running mate,” Morgan tweeted early Friday in an exchange that quickly got personal.

“You are an effete, soft handed and I know I shouldn’t say it, but it’s a word that reminds me of a tree named Willow,” Schmidt shot back. “You are a punch down performative bully. You prey on people. You lack character.”

The back-and-forth—and heads up, this is complicated—was sparked by a tweet posted days ago by the actor Bradley Whitford, who called Elon Musk an “entitled bat**** billionaire,” which prompted Morgan to fire back at Whitford, calling him a “big baby” while his producer simultaneously invited Whitford to appear on Morgan’s UK talk show to talk about Whitford’s “take on the state of America.”

Whitford, in a private message, said no. “I’m sorry you have to work for an attention-seeking fraud who is the definition of toxic news,” he wrote back.

That exchange—still with me so far?—was re-tweeted by Schmidt, who added his thoughts on Morgan, calling him “a cynical limey hack. I say that as someone who generally loves the Brits.” Morgan responded by calling Schmidt an “imbecile.”

Schmidt seized on Morgan’s failed turn as a prime time host at CNN, and his notorious walking off the set of Good Morning Britain on live TV in the UK, saying “you are a punk. A petulant punk who walked off set. Let’s go on Tv together and debate. You couldn’t HACK it in the USA.”