Two former aides to Donald Trump waged a war of words against each other this week, using cable news and social media as their battlefields.
Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of Trump’s, took to his personal Instagram page on Thursday to call fellow ex-aide Sam Nunberg, a man who once viewed Stone as a mentor, a “psycho” and a “lying asshole.”
That post came in response to an appearance by Nunberg on MSNBC yesterday in which he said that Stone was trying to curry favor with Trump by suggesting he had met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange prior to the 2016 presidential election.
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“He’s always trying to ingratiate himself to Trump. I don’t care about Trump. It’s irrelevant to me if I have a relationship with him again. Roger does. They have a long relationship,” Nunberg said in the clip.
Nunberg said that he assumed Stone was lying when he first told him about the meeting.
Stone posted another video of himself smoking a cigar late last night in which he went further to criticize his former friend.
“Sam Nunberg is a cocaine addict,” Stone said. “And any news organization that takes anything he said seriously is courting a serious lawsuit. Coke head,” he concluded taking another puff of the cigar.
Earlier this month, Nunberg made a number of headlines during a cable news blitz in which he initially bragged he would not cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. He would later testify before a grand jury.
In a phone conversation with The Daily Beast, Nunberg said he understood Stone would be annoyed.
“I understand why Roger is upset,” Nunberg said. “I shouldn't have used the word lie, he's not a liar. In any case, I do not believe he met with Assange.”
Stone is a subject in the special counsel's investigation and has maintained that his claim about meeting Assange was “a joke.”
