Donald Trump Says He Saved the New York Daily News, Claims He's Tight With 'Blacks'

Our country's current, most fake president candidate, the billionaire Donald Trump, won't shut up. Though the media is mostly playing his games, reporting on all of the dumb shit he says -- with the exception of the New York Observer, but that's complicated -- he also benefits from starting stupid fights with anyone and everyone, especially news organizations that will continue to cover him no matter what, and maybe even more assuming he acts liek a huge asshole. And so Trump claimed, "I saved the Daily News. ...I did them a huge favor." He then accused the newspaper of "disloyalty," which should be a moot point in a conversation between a "political candidate" (or businessman!) and a newspaper. Proceed for more media gossip inside Press Clips.

Donald, Duck: It's almost sweet to think that Trump doesn't enjoy being mocked -- maybe he's human! -- but the reality is that he's never been more obnoxious. "That's the treatment I get," he said. "Nothing but bad articles."

Worse than whining, it's inaccurate. A source close to Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman said it's "not true" and that the paper "never went to him" during a time of financial strife, according to Politico.

Zuckerman went on to tell the Huffington Post, "it's the first I heard of this." And hopefully the last.

And yet! It's not even The Donald's most embarrassing moment of the day. ""I have a great relationship with the blacks," said Trump on the radio. "I've always had a great relationship with the blacks." Yes, the man said "blacks." Twice! We'll just leave that there to sit for awhile.

Arianna is Winning: The lawsuit against the Huffington Post that we reluctantly called bullshit on (because who really likes HuffPo) as overblown and basically ridiculous is starting to wilt in public already. Arianna Huffington took to her website yesterday to pretty much eviscerate the class action suit's leader Jonathan Tasini for his years of sucking up to Huffington and her site, loving every minute of it. She claims to have the emails to prove how happily he went along without pay:

In one, he gushes over HuffPost's ability to create buzz and drive traffic to his website. In another, he enthuses over the fact that theNational Journal picked up and linked to one of his HuffPost blog posts. In a third, he recommends a friend who would like to blog on our site. Then there is an exchange over the treats he has sent to our blog editors to thank them for their help.

So, without a shadow of a doubt (legal or otherwise), Tasini understood and appreciated the value of having a post on HuffPost -- and was only too happy to use our platform's ability to get his work seen by a wider audience and raise his profile when he was running for office.

Tasini responded, urging all bloggers and "creators" to "Organize now," and "Organize. Today." But then on Gawker, he was outed as having run a community-fueled blog where he didn't pay contributors -- and to be fair, didn't really make any money either -- as well as a shady nonprofit. As for the 9,000 bloggers hoping to cash in a little on Tasini's crusade, it seems your wagon's star is fading already.

Mighty Lady: Speaking of paying writers, the New York Times does, as long as you're not a public figure or politician writing an op-ed. "The basic concept is that we think writers should be paid for their work," Andy Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page, told Forbes. Of course, on HuffPo you can actually be really, really bad and not just Maureen Dowd bad.

Liberal Rag: A bunch of elementary school kids from California sent the Times a fancy Letter to the Editor, written by hand, complete with finger paint, defending the honor of picture books. In other words: brainwashed hippie children.

[jcoscarelli@villagevoice.com / @joecoscarelli]