The former reality TV star turned politician hit out at the magazine and its editor, describing him as a “no-talent”.
President-elect Trump made the following claim in his Twitter rant: “Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of Vanity Fair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!”
But Trump’s attack on the magazine never referred to the critical review of his restaurant, Trump Grill, in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, which was only published the day previously.
Trump has had a long running feud with Vanity Fair. The magazine’s editor wrote shortly after Trump’s shock presidential victory that “only in America could a man whose staff reportedly took away his Twitter account because he couldn't control himself be given the nuclear codes!”
In the awful review entitled “Trump Grill could be the worst restaurant in America”, writer Tina Nguyen described the short-rib burger as “molded into a sad little meat thing sitting in the center of a massive, rapidly staling brioche bun, hiding its shame under a slice of melted orange cheese”.
What appears to be a poor excuse of a burger, “came with overcooked woody batons called 'fries'—how can someone mess up fries?—and ketchup masquerading as Heinz”.
In a final insult, the reviewer added: “If the cheeseburger is a quintessential part of America's identity, Trump's pledge to ‘make America great again’ suddenly appeared not very promising.”
She didn’t hold back when describing the restaurant’s interior design either. “The restaurant features a stingy number of French-ish paintings that look as though they were bought from Home Goods. Wall-sized mirrors serve to make the place look much bigger than it actually is. The bathrooms transport diners to the experience of desperately searching for toilet paper at a Venezuelan grocery store."
Ouch!
Back in March, Carter told NPR's David Folkenflik that Donald Trump would sometimes send him bizarre rants in the post about the size of his fingers. The magazine editor said earlier this year that he's sure that Trump wants to kill him "with those little hands!"
“He'll send me pictures, tear sheets from magazines, and he did it as recently as April. With a gold sharpie, he'll circle his fingers and in his handwriting say, see, not so short,” Carter said.
“And this April when he sent me one, I should have held onto the thing. But I sent it right back by messenger with a note stapled at the top saying, actually, quite short. And I know it just gives him absolute fits. And now that it's become sort of part of the whole campaign rhetoric, I'm sure he wants to just kill me with those — with those little hands.”
One thing’s for certain: we haven’t heard the last of this bitter feud.