The tweets started around 3:20 a.m. Friday. Inside Trump Tower, a restless figure stirred in the predawn darkness, nursing his grievances and grabbing a device that often lands him in hot water.
On his Android phone, Donald Trump began to tap out bursts of digital fury: He mocked Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe and a popular Latin American actress, as a “con,” the “worst” and “disgusting.”
In a final flourish, before the sun came up, the Republican presidential nominee claimed — without offering any evidence — that she had appeared in a “sex tape.”
The tirade fit a pattern. It is when Trump is alone with his thoughts, and untethered from his campaign staff, that he has seemed to commit his most self-destructive acts.
“There has always been this dangerous part of him that will go too far and do something that backfires,” said Michael D’Antonio, the author of a new biography of the real estate mogul.
“His worst impulses,” he added, “are self-defeating.”
Over the past few days, those instincts have been on vivid display. In quick succession, Trump has repeated his critique that Machado gained a “massive amount of weight” after she won the Miss Universe crown in 1996; suggested that former President Bill Clinton’s infidelities are fair game for campaign attacks; and urged his followers to “check out” a sex tape that may not exist. (Machado appeared in a risqué scene on a reality television show, but fact-checkers have discovered no sex tape.)
The eruptions could further damage Trump’s reputation with women and Latino voters at a time when he can scarcely afford to alienate either group, 5 1/2 weeks before Election Day.
Yet for close students of Trump’s career and campaign, it all has a familiar ring. Over the years, he has issued a stream of needlessly cruel and seemingly off-the-cuff insults — both on and off social media — that have inflamed the public. He declared on Twitter that Kim Novak, a reclusive 81-year-old actress at the time, “should sue her plastic surgeon,” sending her into hiding. He derided the appearance of a rival, Carly Fiorina, angering female voters by asking: “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” And he criticized the mother of a slain American soldier, musing that, as a Muslim woman, she was not “allowed” to speak.
Such fulminations have almost always arisen from Trump’s wounded pride, after he has been attacked or has suffered a setback. And they have frequently played out on Twitter, at hours of the day when much of America is asleep.
The early-morning tweets about Machado were a reminder, said Republican strategist Charles Black, that Trump “cannot let something drop until he proves he’s right, and it’s beside the point who’s right.”
Around midnight one night during the primary campaign, he posted an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz, the wife of a Republican rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Early one morning, he alleged a sexual affair between two well-known television anchors who had criticized him. Early one Saturday, he distributed an image of Hillary Clinton, surrounded by falling cash and a six-pointed star that many said was a Star of David and was anti-Semitic. And at 11 one evening, he shared a digitally-altered image of Jeb Bush appearing to pick his nose.
“Late night Twitter-drunk Donald is back at it!” an aide to Bush replied at the time.
On Friday, Trump was at it again between 3:20 and 5:30 a.m., issuing a series of indignant messages that mocked Machado and Clinton, who raised the experience of the former beauty queen to hurt Trump during the debate.
Clinton, he wrote “was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an ‘angel’ without checking her past, which is terrible!”
A few minutes later, Trump theorized — again, without offering any evidence — that Clinton had helped Machado become a U.S. citizen so that the Democratic nominee could mention the beauty queen in the debate to hurt Trump.
Trump, in an interview Friday afternoon, said he remained proud of his tweets.