'It's a free ad!': Donald Trump thanks Hillary Clinton for attack ad featuring his Scottish golf club

AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

Donald Trump thanked Hillary Clinton during a Wednesday rally in Bangor, Maine, for releasing an attack ad earlier this week that featured his Scottish golf club.

"I'll give you the good news: I get a call from the head of Turnberry," Trump said of his renovated Scottish golf club he went to visit last week. "He said, 'Did you take an ad?' I said, 'No.' He said, 'We're inundated with calls from people who want to come to Turnberry.'"

"So, Hillary, thank you very much," he continued. "I appreciate it. Free ad. It's a free ad!"

Clinton's campaign released the attack ad, which featured Trump's response to the Brexit vote during a Friday news conference from the course, earlier this week. The advertisement, "Tested," had people speaking about the market downturn while including footage of Trump swinging a golf club and talking about how the decline of the British pound is good for his course.

"When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, frankly," he said during a press conference at the course. "For traveling and for other things, I think it very well could turn out to be a positive."

Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser with the Clinton campaign, said on a conference call later on Friday that Trump's response proved that he's "pathological" and is a "reckless and erratic egomaniac."

He said:

"Donald Trump actively rooted for this outcome, and he's rooting for the economic turmoil in its wake. He said that the falling British pound is good for his golf business. He actually said that. He actually put his golf business ahead of the interests of working families in the United States."

Before thanking her for the "free ad," Trump ripped Clinton during his Wednesday rally for publishing the "totally dishonest" piece.

"So ... Crooked Hillary Clinton does a commercial," he said. "And I think she put about the pound. But they don't put questions, they just put answers, so I didn't like that. But they showed me hitting a shot! I said, 'Wait, they have me playing.' And then all the reporters said I played golf. I didn't play, I swear. I swear. And they have me hitting a shot."

"You know what it was?" he continued. "They took the footage from one year ago or a year and a half ago from a different place and put in into the commercial to say 'Donald Trump went to go play golf in the middle of this thing.' ... They have a commercial out now where I'm talking about the pound and I'm hitting golf ball."

But, he added, he was pleased with how his swing looked in the commercial.

"Although the swing didn't look terrible, I must tell you," he said. "If I was going to do that, at least I would have it be a bad swing. But they have me hitting the ball at a different location, the whole thing is so crazy." 

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