Photo

Donald J. Trump spoke at an event with Senator Tim Scott in Columbia, S.C.Credit Travis Dove for The New York Times

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Donald J. Trump was never exactly a happy warrior, but with some of his Republican rivals gaining on him, he is showing clear signs of discontent.

Appearing here on Wednesday afternoon at what was billed as an African-American small business meeting, Mr. Trump used his remarks before a largely white audience to argue that his lead in the polls was not being sufficiently covered, repeatedly complained about the high temperature inside the Ronald Reagan Library at last week’s debate, and lamented that any attacks on Carly Fiorina would be depicted as sexist.

And he did so in a convention center ballroom in which about a third of the seats were unfilled.

Mr. Trump found a far larger crowd on Wednesday night at a candidate forum in Columbia hosted by Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, filling most of an auditorium’s 2,200 seats on the University of South Carolina campus.

But Mr. Trump kept up his grumbling there. He used a news conference before the forum to continue a recently renewed feud with Fox News, mock a conservative group that is airing attack ads against him and complain to an NBC reporter that the network is citing a CNN poll that shows Ms. Fiorina gaining support rather than NBC’s own survey, which shows Mr. Trump holding a larger lead.

Photo

A largely white audience listened to Mr. Trump address what was billed as an African-American small business meeting.Credit Travis Dove for The New York Times

And when he took the stage with Mr. Scott, two well-appointed chairs awaiting them, Mr. Trump decided to first stand and offer his own preamble before the question-and-answer session with the senator.

Holding up a printout of a Florida newspaper, he twice read a headline referring to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeb Bush: “Rubio passes Bush in Florida poll.”

Then, with a flourish, he read the lead of the article, which noted that Mr. Trump was still enjoying a strong lead among Florida Republicans.

“They don’t even put me in the headline, and I’m crushing it,” he said. “The press is very dishonest. Not all of it, but much of it.”

Mr. Trump began his remarks in the first event in almost the exact same way. He noted that he was not in the headline, but concluded by flinging the piece of paper he was reading into the crowd in the fashion of a rock star flicking his guitar pick at a fan.

Perhaps conscious of the empty seats in the back of the room, he repeatedly commented on the size of the audience and said he had added the event to his schedule with little notice.

But, more troubling for a candidate who is heavily reliant on television coverage, there were only a handful of TV cameras in the back of the room, and the national cable stations spent little time on the event. MSNBC carried it for less than four minutes, CNN around six minutes and Fox did not carry the speech at all.

Continue reading the main story

OPEN Interactive Graphic

Interactive Graphic: Who’s Winning the Presidential Campaign?

Mr. Trump’s speech was typically discursive. He recalled being sued by a woman whom he deemed “a horrible human being,” attacked Boeing (a large local employer) for opening a plant in China and criticized his Republican opponents and Hillary Rodham Clinton on a number of fronts.

Claiming that CNN added time to the Republican debate last week to bring in more ad revenue, he asserted that the temperature hit triple figures inside the Reagan Library.

“Let’s let these suckers stand up there for another hour in a room that was 100 degrees,” Mr. Trump said, mimicking unnamed CNN executives. “That room was hot. I mean, poor Chris Christie.”

The audience broke into laughs and cheers, and for good measure, Mr. Trump noted that Mike Huckabee and Mr. Rubio were also very sweaty at the end of the debate (“He was soaking wet,” Mr. Trump recounted of Mr. Huckabee).

What Mr. Trump did not talk much about was African-American business. He did explain he had good black friends in New York and claimed he was attracting significant black support in the Republican primary.

As for policy related to African-American entrepreneurship, Mr. Trump said he wanted to overturn the Dodd-Frank financial law and called one black businessman to the stage, gave him a handshake, leaned in for a semihug and said he wanted the man to be negotiating with the Chinese.

Mr. Trump’s biggest applause line came when he said, “I am so tired of this politically correct crap.” It drew most of the attendees to their feet, but many of the African-Americans in the crowd neither clapped nor stood.

“Not good, not good, not good, honestly not good,” said Wilbert J. Louis Jr., a business consultant from Summerville, S.C., who seemed dumbfounded by what he had seen. Mr. Louis added of Mr. Trump’s performance, “All over the map and not on the map at all.”

In the same city where earlier this year, a black man was fatally shot in the back by a police officer, and just a few miles up the road from where nine black churchgoers were killed by a white gunman, Mr. Trump said nothing in his speech about either crime.

In a brief interview after the North Charleston speech, Mr. Trump, sitting in the front seat of a sport utility vehicle, vowed that he would pay the required $40,000 to the South Carolina Republican Party to be on the ballot here next year. And to prove his claim, he had his campaign manager, sitting in the back seat, pass forward a copy of the check, which Mr. Trump then held up for a reporter.

“I’m leading in every poll,” Mr. Trump declared twice, dismissing questions about whether he would be competitive here during the state’s February primary.

Mr. Trump handed over the check later and, to make clear that was duly recorded, had aides pass photocopies of a notarized statement of candidacy to reporters in the back of the auditorium while his forum with Mr. Scott was underway.

Mr. Trump did not attack his opponents as fiercely in the exchange with Mr. Scott as he had earlier in the day, but the presidential hopeful did seize more opportunities to grouse about news media coverage. “I’m much smarter than any of these talking heads,” he said. “Ninety percent of them are morons.”

Yet Mr. Scott gently steered the conversation toward policy issues and, as the hourlong event neared its end, Mr. Trump made clear that he had had enough.

The senator said he was down to his final two or three questions, to which Mr. Trump responded, “Good!”

Read more http://rss.nytimes.com/c/34625/f/640350/s/4a1df4ac/sc/7/l/0L0Snytimes0N0C20A150C0A90C240Cus0Cpolitics0Ca0Eday0Eof0Eempty0Eseats0Eand0Edonald0Etrump0Ein0Efull0Eattack0Bhtml0Dpartner0Frss0Gemc0Frss/story01.htm