GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said Thursday he doesn’t mind being criticized if he does something wrong, but that he believes in correcting people when he’s right or doesn’t deserve criticism.

“I don’t mind being criticized, and I don’t mind it at all,” Mr. Trump said on CNN’s “New Day.” “And I won’t use names, but there are certain people that criticize unfairly. If I do something wrong … I have very thick skin. I don’t mind being criticized. I’ll never, ever complain.”

“I know when I do something wrong. I’m a smart person. I mean, I do something wrong — I do things wrong — and when I do, I don’t mind. They can come at me 15 different ways,” he said. “But when I’m right or when I don’t deserve something, I think it’s very, very unfair to speak incorrectly. So I will correct people. I believe in that.”

“Let’s be honest: Carly cut his balls off with the precision of a surgeon — and he knows it,” Lowry said on “The Kelly File.”…

Trump quickly exploded on Twitter and wrote in a tweet: “Incompetent @RichLowry lost it tonight on @FoxNews. He should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him!” And then: “@FoxNews owes me an apology for allowing clueless pundit @RichLowry to use such foul language on TV. Unheard of!”

Trump won’t have much luck getting Lowry to pay up for his anatomical comment, as the Federal Communications Commission only polices indecent programming on terrestrial radio and broadcast television — not cable television, where viewers have greater control over their programming options…

Lowry finally threw up a white flag and offered this tweeted compromise: “A deal for you, Donald: if you apologize to Carly for your boorish insult, I might stop noting how she cut your b**** off.”

Donald J. Trump was never exactly a happy warrior, but with some of his Republican rivals gaining on him, he is showing clear signs of discontent.

Appearing here on Wednesday afternoon at what was billed as an African-American small business meeting, Mr. Trump used his remarks before a largely white audience to argue that his lead in the polls was not being sufficiently covered, repeatedly complained about the high temperature inside the Ronald Reagan Library at last week’s debate, and lamented that any attacks on Carly Fiorina would be depicted as sexist…

He used a news conference before the forum to continue a recently renewed feud with Fox News, mock a conservative group that is airing attack ads against him and complain to an NBC reporter that the network is citing a CNN poll that shows Ms. Fiorina gaining support rather than NBC’s own survey, which shows Mr. Trump holding a larger lead…

But, more troubling for a candidate who is heavily reliant on television coverage, there were only a handful of TV cameras in the back of the room, and the national cable stations spent little time on the event. MSNBC carried it for less than four minutes, CNN around six minutes and Fox did not carry the speech at all.

Real-estate tycoon Donald Trump is furious that The New York Times did not properly estimate his crowd size at a Wednesday campaign event.

“Liar!” the Republican presidential candidate fumed on Instagram the next day…

“Dishonest @NYTimes reporter Jonathan Martin refused to acknowledge massive crowd surge forward during my speech in South Carolina,” Trump wrote in his Thursday Instagram post.

Trump’s rambunctious presence in the race is responsible for a miracle. The conservative intellectuals have finally thrown in with the left intellectuals. Both disrelish Trump, and, if truth be known, they are not very happy with Carson or Fiorina, who with Trump account for over 50 percent of the Republican vote. A year ago these three would be sitting in the politicians’ audience.

Meanwhile Trump is flying around the country having a great time discomfiting the intellectuals and gathering abundant support from conservative voters, independents, and even from the left. How is this happening? Well, Trump speaks boldly. He has taken the measure of the political class and finds it wanting. And he has identified issues that most of the other candidates are too timid to tackle. He is an optimist. Like Ronald Reagan he sees America as a shining city on a hill, and it does not make him wince. My guess is that Trump likes movies starring John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. He is a regular American…

Aside from identifying and clarifying issues, Trump spots as issues matters that the establishment politicians hardly notice, for instance, political correctness. Somehow he has perceived that political correctness rankles average Americans. It angers them when political correctness intrudes into school curricula, political discourse, and how government treats its citizens. When Trump speaks out against it, the ordinary American discovers that Trump is their kind of guy. He is also their kind of guy when he speaks out against tax loopholes and for fairness in the tax code. Trump has his finger on the pulse of average Americans. His touch for markets that has made him billions he applies to finding constituencies, and it appears he has been brilliant at finding constituencies or, as he says, “The Silent Majority.” He, and for that matter the other late arrivals to politics Carson and Fiorina, have caused anxiety in the establishments of both parties, to say nothing of the intellectuals.

In other words: Donald Trump — the supposed hero in the battle against political correctness — wants my boss [Rich Lowry] to be fined by the federal government for saying something politically incorrect on television…

Being against political correctness means you’re against political correctness — even when it’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean, “I hate political correctness . . . unless someone says something bad about me, then I’ll call on the FCC to fine him!” Yes, it can be harsh sometimes. Hell, I’m sure that I’m going to get a few (million) hateful comments sent my way just for writing this, but I’m not going to let it bother me.

If it bothers you, Mr. Trump, that’s okay. There are plenty of “safe spaces” on college campuses throughout the country that can make you feel right at home.

“The great salesman Donald Trump may in fact be failing at the single most important thing in politics — and that is to seal the deal,” said a strategist at a rival campaign. “It’s been a very long summer. It’s been a deluge of 24 hours a day, seven days a week Donald Trump. … When you reach that point of oversaturation, which I believe Trump is at right now, you only start to go down.”

Curt Anderson, Bobby Jindal’s chief strategist, when asked whether Trump had peaked based on recent evidence, had some harsh words. “I think the bloom is off the rose for sure. Every act gets old. Plays run on Broadway only for so long. The first five times he calls people an idiot it’s funny. I think at this point, it’s kind of gotten stale.”…

Trump supporters told POLITICO they’re hopeful he’ll rebound, but they weren’t shy about pointing out his mistakes of late — including his gratuitous comment about Fiorina’s face.

“It was so unnecessary because he doesn’t have to worry about her at all, and why he did that I have no idea,” said Darlene Peavy, 45, a real estate agent, during a Trump rally in South Carolina on Wednesday night. “I think he’s down a little bit because of his comment.”

Lowry — who has been doing pundit spots like this for years and knows exactly where that line is — knew this and came armed and ready to stir up some attention for himself on Twitter, get his name in the paper and draw a reaction from Trump. Well… congrats Rich, you did it! Twitter is aflutter with your balls statement in quotes with hashtags and everything. And Trump is currently in a Twitter war with you. #gimmeattention

If you’re Fox brass, you just wrapped up a day when you stated that the thin-skinned Trump engages in “personal attacks on our anchors and hosts.” That’s correct, he does. Your 6 p.m. panel on Special Report concluded he was “childish.” That’s also accurate. But then just hours later on one of your top-rated programs — a program that has treated Trump fairly despite his obnoxious criticism of it — a paid contributor of the network engages in an utterly childish personal attack on Trump.

The high road gets wiped out the same day it was paved by the network. And worse, if you’re Fox, Trump’s accusations of being treated unfairly suddenly have merit while his demand for an apology will only grow louder.

So what will happen next? Logic says a suspension at the very least. But since Trump is persona non-grata at FNC, maybe this passes as an eye for an eye.

In the last month alone, Trump has threatened to sue a small-time T-shirt maker whose products bear critical slogans (“Donald Is Dumb,” “Stop Trump,” and “America Is Already Great”); he has attempted to begin legal proceedings against the Club for Growth on the grounds that it has had the temerity to oppose him and his policies (this, Trump says, is “defamation” — a stunted and preposterous piece of legal analysis that lends some credibility to the messages on the aforementioned t-shirts); and he has expressed a desire to use the federal government to censor unpliable journalists for the high crime of being amusing on television. That neither lawsuit has a shot in hell — and, indeed, that the FCC doesn’t actually have any jurisdiction over cable news — does not seem to matter much. What matters is that Donald Trump feels hurt, and that he doesn’t like it one bit…

That it might be unwise to give nuclear weapons to a man who routinely seeks revenge against even the most modest of quibblers seems not to have occurred to the 25 percent or so of the Republican primary voters who are at present sitting on Trump’s bandwagon. For the rest of us, though, I shall make the point clear: This is not a person who should be given access to a military — or even, for that matter, to a modest bully pulpit…

As was illustrated once again last night, the man is not really a “fighter” or an “alpha male” or an iron-cored “enemy of political correctness.” He’s a thin-skinned performance artist whose peculiar shtick falls to pieces the moment someone useful elects to return a punch. Look through Trump’s recent Twitter contributions and you will see a wounded man who is always a few harsh phrases and a modicum of bad publicity away from curling up in an oversized sweater and listening to “Everybody Hurts” on repeat.

Last Wednesday, though, Donald Trump lost something more than the substantive argument over policy that occurred in the debate. He lost the feeling of being the fun candidate on stage. He had to stand there and get publicly dressed down by Carly Fiorina over his remarks over his looks, and issue what was the closest thing he will ever give to a crow-eating apology. As the debate wore on, Trump’s energy visibly flagged and the conversation moved inexorably away from him. Trump was left trying to force awkward high fives from Ben Carson and Jeb Bush to make himself the center of attention again…

The thing about parties is that they end. At some point, everyone runs out of gas, and the few conscious people who are left standing look around and realize that the party has worn them out and it’s time to go home and get some rest. So they start corralling their drunken compadres and calling taxis or heading for subway or whatever their plan is for getting home and getting into bed so they can face reality the next day…

For now, Trump is mostly succeeding at keeping people at the party, but his tone has already taken on an uneasy hectoring tone as opposed to a raucuous, party-leading one. This, I think signals the beginning of the end for Trump’s wild ride. If I had to guess, Trump might hold on to his lead through the end of October, but if he still has it by Thanksgiving, I’ll be surprised. The force of his personality, though considerable, just can’t keep the party going that long.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, Donald, the thing is you’re right now at odds with Fox News. We know how powerful they are in the Republican Party. And you’re at war with Rich Lowry, who is the editor of “National Review”, which is really sort of the gold standard of conservative magazines.

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t think anybody reads it, Joe. I think it has no power whatsoever, I’ll be honest. I think it has no power whatsoever. And he’s not a respected guy.

SCARBOROUGH: I read it.

TRUMP: You’re the only one.