Trump Screams At ‘Gutless’ Howard Schultz, Says He Still Wants His Starbucks ‘Rent Money’, Though

It was just a matter of time before Donald Trump lashed out at Howard Schultz who, as you’re no doubt aware, suggested he might make a run at the White House as an independent in 2020.

Amusingly, he’s going to use his upcoming book tour as a kind of reconnaissance mission to gauge whether the independent bid is a good idea. Here’s what he told The New York Times, in an interview:

We have a broken political system with both parties basically in business to preserve their own ideology without a recognition and responsibility to represent the interests of the American people. Republicans and Democrats alike – who no longer see themselves as part of the far extreme of the far right and the far left – are looking for a home. The word ‘independent,’ for me, is simply a designation on the ballot.

Right. But “the word ‘independent'” is also synonymous with “losing” when it comes to running for president and, perhaps more disconcerting from the perspective of Democrats, he may well end up handing Trump a second term by splintering the Democratic vote.

In the 60 Minutes segment that aired on Sunday (from which that clip is taken), Schultz derided Trump, calling him “not qualified to be the president.”

Fast forward 12 hours (give or take) and our unqualified “leader” weighed in as follows:

Howard Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run for President! Watched him on 60 Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the “smartest person.” Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!

A couple of things stand out there. First, there are multiple layers of irony in Trump putting the word “guts” in scare quotes and then proceeding to employ quotation marks around an actual quote about being “smart.” “Guts” doesn’t really belong in quotes there, which means if you’re looking for the “smartest person”, Trump ain’t the guy.

That, despite the fact that President “Very Large Brain” literally proceeds to declare himself the “smartest person” on the planet in the very next pseudo-sentence.

As far as the “paying the rent” bit is concerned, that’s yet another hopelessly transparent attempt to suggest that America’s billionaires somehow need him (he did the same thing when he freaked out on Jamie Dimon last year). As a reminder, Schultz is worth an estimated $3.4 billion. That means Howard could buy Trump Tower and make the whole thing a giant Starbucks if he wanted to.

Trump’s ire is likely piqued by the fact that Howard is almost surely richer, even on generous (i.e., superficial) estimates of Trump’s net worth (Bloomberg puts Trump’s worth at $2.8 billion, but as everyone knows, the actual figure could be far, far lower).

Then again, Trump has a lot of brand recognition for his own caffeinated morning beverage, in “covfefe” which he’s yet to monetize, so maybe if Schultz beats him in 2020, Trump can take on Howard in the coffee business.

Meanwhile, another guy Howard is richer than decided to weigh in too. On Sunday evening, Jeff Gundlach (who decided not to delete his Twitter account after all), had this to say:

To be clear, I have no opinion on Schultz’s prospects; barely know his name. But third party talk is significant. There is never 1 cockroach.

Got that? Jeff “barely knows” Schultz’s name.

That’s ok, though. Because when it comes to “name” recognition, you can be absolutely sure that the number of people globally who know “Starbucks” exceeds the number of people who know “DoubleLine” by a factor of ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞.

Finally, if you’re wondering whether Howard cares about Trump’s tweets, the answer is as follows…