The epistolary Donald Trump: 'P.S. You are a loser'

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Before Donald Trump had every major news outlet scrambling to report his every word, and long before he ever owned a computer, he still needed a way to blast his opponents and call his allies "the greatest." As it turns out, Mr. Trump was — and still is — quite the scribe.

Perhaps the most famous of these letters is Trump's response to Spy's Graydon Carter, when Trump took offense to being called a "short-fingered vulgarian" and reportedly regularly sent Carter, now the editor of Vanity Fair, letters featuring his outlined hand with boasts like, "See, not so short!"

But much like his tweets now, Trump's letters are often short bursts of hyperbole, like when he penned former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to say, "Rudy, you are the greatest!" Or when Trump blasted movie director Mike Tollin for negatively portraying him, fuming, "P.S. You are a loser."

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Recently Trump slammed basketball superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for a critical essay about Trump's candidacy, writing on top of the essay that Abdul-Jabber didn't "have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again!"

Mr. Abdul-Jabbar said he was flabbergasted. "It was such a petty and childish reaction, like a teenage boy responding to being turned down for a date by whining, 'Well, nobody likes you!'" he said. He likened Mr. Trump's decision to write his reply on the original article to "a dog urinating on a tree to mark its territory."Mr. Abdul-Jabbar had to get rid of the letter. "I crumpled it up real nice and tight and skyhooked it into my wastepaper basket," he recalled, invoking his trademark shot. [The New York Times]

Read more of Trump's letters, including a love note to his first wife, Ivana, and praise for his outspoken conservative critic Erick Erickson, over at The New York Times.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.