Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal unleashed Thursday a relentless string of attacks on GOP front-runner Donald Trump, calling him a “non-serious carnival act” who should return to reality TV after a summer fling with politics.
“The Donald Trump act is great, and the idea of Donald Trump is great,” Jindal said during a speech at the National Press Club. “But the reality of Donald Trump is absurd.”
The Louisiana governor developed new lines of attack to hit Trump while also recycling old barbs that other candidates have used, like suggesting Trump is not a true conservative.
Jindal said it is “silly to argue policy” with Trump because “he has no idea what he’s talking about, he makes it all up on the fly.”
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He also attacked Trump’s character, calling him a “narcissist,” “egomaniacal,” “shallow,” and said Trump “lacks the intellectual curiosity to even learn.”
During an appearance on CNN also on Thursday, Jindal vowed, “We’re not going to let him win the nomination. He can not be the nominee. He can not be our next president.”
“His diagnosis is right, his prescription is false. He is not the solution,” Jindal told Wolf Blitzer.
Jindal continued to attack Trump on Twitter several times Thursday afternoon, tweeting out a video mocking Trump and telling the candidate to “Stay classy.”
Trump said through a spokeswoman Thursday afternoon that he had never met the Louisiana governor, while also mocking Jindal’s standing in the polls.
“He did not make the debate stage and therefore I have never met him,” Trump said. “I only respond to people that register more than 1% in the polls. I never thought he had a chance and I’ve been proven right.”
Jindal, however, said they had met.
”.@realdonaldtrump is having a hard time lately & doesn’t remember we met. He wrote a check. A fool & his money…” Jindal tweeted.
The attacks are not the first Jindal has leveled at Trump, and the Louisianan has repeatedly tried to jump on Trump and other big stories du jour in a gambit to grab headlines and bolster his standing in the polls.
That strategy so fall has fallen short, with Jindal cracking just 1% of support in the latest CNN/ORC poll released Thursday – a percentage that puts him in the bottom tier of the 17-candidate pack of GOP contenders, alongside Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and just above former Govs. Jim Gilmore, George Pataki and Rick Perry.
That standing will all-but-certainly not give Jindal a chance to stand on the same stage as Trump next week during the second GOP debate on CNN as Jindal will be relegated an earlier debate of lower-tier candidates.
“Just because people like watching Kim Kardashian, we wouldn’t put her in the White House either,” Jindal quipped while at the National Press Club.
