A real estate magnate and television host, Trump was reportedly motivated to launch a stinging attack on Walker because the governor leads in the polls in the widely-observed Iowa Caucus.
"I can't believe I'm in second place,'' Mr. Trump told several hundred people who filled a high school auditorium and an overflow room to see him. "Folks, will you please put me in first place so I feel better?"
Donald Trump's remark that Arizona Sen. John McCain "was not a hero" in Vietnam forced other GOP candidates to address him at the 2015 Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa a week ago. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker brought up the Planned Parenthood controversy, and promised to take action against the organization unlike other politicians who simply give "great speeches on how they are going to defund Planned Parenthood."
"I said, ‘Finally, I can attack,' '' Mr. Trump exclaimed, after one of Walker's supporters called Trump "DumbDumb" in a fund-raiser on Saturday.
He went on to list the difficulties Walker's state has faced.
"Wisconsin is doing terribly,'' he said." The roads are a disaster because they don't have any money to rebuild them, and they're borrowing money like crazy," adding that he could cite the numbers because he has a good memory.
Since I took office, Wisconsin now has the 2nd highest health care quality ranking in the country. — SW #Walker16
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) July 27, 2015
Since I took office, we restored the raid on the state transportation fund by the previous Governor. — SW #Walker16
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) July 27, 2015
However, Walker disagreed with the accusations, and posted contradictions on Twitter.
Presidential hopeful Scott Walker has also been accused of walking away from the Common Core education standards after previously supporting them. Trump took this to mean that these standardized tests had been re-thought because they revealed poor performance in Wisconsin: "Scott Walker changed when he saw he was getting creamed, so now he's not in favor,'' he said.
It's notable that Walker's $10k 2014 re-election campaign was entirely funded by Trump, who is now reluctant to cover that part of the story.
"I've been nice to Scott Walker," he said. "He's a nice guy. He came up to my office three or four months ago and presented me with a plaque because I helped him with his election. I liked that he was fighting."
.@ScottWalker is a nice guy, but not presidential material. Wisconsin is in turmoil, borrowing to the hilt, and doing poorly in jobs etc.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2015
At a campaign stop in Oskaloosa, Trump, who currently leads the polls for the Republican nomination, boasted during a picnic with locals that he had barred the journalists of a local newspaper, after they had urged him to leave the race for the good of the party.
A charismatic leader seemed to put his hubris aside in a subsequent interview, where he was asked about the Republican debate scheduled for Aug. 6. He confessed to having no debating experience compared with the politicians he would face in Cleveland.
"I'm going to be there much to the chagrin of many people, but I'm no debater,'' he said. "From what I've heard, everyone is going to come after me.''
He unveiled his intentions on debate preparation, saying "I am who I am,'' meaning he has no plans to prepare.
Almost 60 percent of Republicans now favor Trump as their pick for US president, according to a recent poll released by The Washington Post and ABC News.
