Trump: Univision anchor is a ‘lunatic’

Donald Trump is firing back at Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, calling the newsman a “lunatic” at a rally in South Carolina on Thursday.

“You know, I made my best speech the other night in Iowa, and it was live on all of the networks, but nobody talked about it because I had this guy getting up and ranting and raving like a lunatic, and that was all they covered,” Trump said, referring to Ramos.

{mosads}“They kept covering this lunatic,” the GOP presidential front-runner added.

Trump kicked Ramos out of a press conference Tuesday in Iowa after he interrupted another reporter who was asking Trump a question.

“Excuse me, sit down, you weren’t called,” Trump said. “Go back to Univision.”

Ramos refused to comply with Trump’s order and was escorted out of the room by a security guard. He later compared Trump to a dictator.

The anchor for the Spanish-language network has also called his fight with Trump “personal,” and has sharply critical of the candidate’s immigration policies.

The billionaire businessman visited early-voting North Carolina as his lead over the GOP field continues to grow.

A RealClearPolitics average of polls has Trump leading the field in South Carolina with 31 percent support. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson places second, with 12 percent support, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, at 11 percent support.

At the rally, Trump took aim at a number of critics.

He went after The New York Times, brandishing a copy of Thursday’s paper when he walked onstage and reading sections from an article about him.

The article cited a Spanish-language radio show host in Los Angeles who calls Trump “el hombe del peluquín,”  the man of the toupee.

“I don’t wear a toupee. It’s my hair, I swear,” Trump said, calling one member of the audience on stage to touch his hair.

The newspaper also reported that listeners of the radio show have taken to calling Trump “Hitler.”

“ ‘Trump, who has dismissed some Mexican immigrants’ — listen to this — ‘as rapists and criminals, or simply put, as Hitler,’ ” said Trump, reading a portion of the article.

“Now the Hitler one I’ve never heard of until this morning when I woke up,” Trump said. “I’m not a fan of Hitler. So now they’ve just added Hitler into it, which is all false, by the way, and they know it.”

Trump later threw the newspaper into the audience.

He defended his rhetoric on the campaign trail, saying “we need a tough tone.”

“I use this analogy: They said, ‘I don’t like his tone,’ and I said to myself — I just turned on [television], and ISIS was chopping off the heads of three Christians, taking their heads off,” Trump said, referring to executions by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

“They were dunking them — you saw that, with the cages where they dunk them in the ocean and drown them. And they’re talking about my tone,” he continued.

“We need a tough tone. We’re not going to have a country anymore; we’re not going to have a country.”

Trump also attacked the Obama administration for negotiating the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who went missing from his base in 2009 while serving in Afghanistan.

“Six people died looking for him,” Trump said. “He left, he deserted, he went to the other side.”

“Drop him back, let’s retrade that deal,” he continued.

Bergdahl was exchanged for five Taliban commanders. After his return, the Army charged him with desertion.