If you know anything about Donald Trump, you know that he isn’t afraid to get into it with his creditors. But largely those battles have fought fought in conference or court rooms, not Twitter.
That all changed Thursday when Trump tweeted a photoshopped picture of Fox News host Megyn Kelly standing next to a woman in an niqab and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Alsaud, one of the richest men in the world.
Though bin Talal is an investor in Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc., which owns Fox News, he owns just 7% of the company, while Chairman Rupert Murdoch controls the vast majority of the company’s voting shares, according to an SEC proxy filing.
The tweet motivated bin Talal to fire back at Donald Trump, pointing out the fact that he helped bail Trump out of financial difficulties back in the 1990s.
Bin Talal is referring to two deals that took place more than 20 years ago. The first was in 1991 when bin Talal bought a yacht once owned by Trump that he put up for sale during a period when his casinos were facing heavy financial pressure, and the second was a 1995 deal when bin Talal bought a stake in Trump’s Plaza Hotel.
Sky-high Manhattan real estate prices means that Trump is nowhere near the financial distress he found himself in in the early 1990s. But bin Talal’s tweets suggest that at least some of the global power elite that Trump rubs elbows with are not happy with the magnates fiery rhetoric. It’s also proof that really, really rich people get into Twitter fights too.
