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| Donald Trump is leading the Republican presidential campaign, according to the latest opinion polls |
The Republican frontrunner's withering response was to a column in Wednesday's Washington Post written by Abdul-Jabbar, the National Basketball Association hall of famer who compared Trump unfavorably to liberal Democrat Bernie Sanders and accused the real estate mogul of waging a "vendetta against the press."
Abdul-Jabbar, who retired in 1989 as the NBA's all-time leading scorer and emerged as an author and cultural commentator, offered an unsparing evaluation of Trump's actions on the campaign trail, and notably during the first Republican debate when he snapped at moderator Megyn Kelly of Fox News.
"Bad enough to alienate women in this way, but there's even more insidious political crime here: attacking the First Amendment's protection of a free press by menacing journalists," Abdul-Jabbar wrote.
He added that Trump also allowed a renowned Hispanic anchor to be kicked out of his press conference because he asked questions about immigration out of turn, and refused to give credentials to Des Moines Register reporters when the paper issued an editorial calling for Trump to withdraw from the race.
"The biggest enemy to the principles of the Constitution right now is Trump," Abdul-Jabbar wrote.
With that, Abdul-Jabbar appeared to become Trump's new enemy number one.
"Kareem -- Now I know why the press always treated you so badly -- they couldn't stand you," Trump wrote in block letters over a copy of Abdul-Jabbar's column, according to an image of the letter that Abdul-Jabbar posted on Facebook.
"The fact is that you don't have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again! Best wishes, Donald Trump."
Abdul-Jabbar described the retort as "the best, though inelegant, support for my claims."
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