To Trump, there was something more important at work. “[Martinez] continues to attack him publicly and privately,” one person in TrumpWorld told me recently. Trump has made a principle of hitting back harder than he is hit. And he has been so effective that many Republicans, elected and not, have decided the smart thing is to refrain from taking on Trump, even if they oppose him.
Not Martinez. In mid-April, the New Mexico governor issued a “remarkably strong rebuke” to Trump, in the words of a Washington Post report, when Martinez spoke to a GOP fundraiser at the home of David Koch in Palm Beach, Florida. Martinez, according to the Post, “did not mince words. She told the crowd of about 60 wealthy GOP backers that, as a Latina, she was offended by Trump’s language about immigrants. Noting her years working as a prosecutor on the Mexican border and now as a border-state governor, Martinez said Trump’s plan to build a wall and force Mexico to pay for it was unrealistic and irresponsible, according to multiple people in attendance.”
Team Trump believes Martinez has continued to criticize him in private since those remarks. And when Trump traveled to Albuquerque, after having clinched the Republican nomination, Martinez told reporters she was “really busy” and did not have time to attend.
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