Donald Trump has attacked the Boston Globe for printing a satirical front page envisioning him as US president over the weekend.
The former Celebrity Apprentice host called the newspaper "worthless" and "stupid" during a rally in Rochester, New York.
Headlines screaming "Deportations to begin" and "Markets sink as trade war looms" topped the parody front page, with a scathing editorial denouncing the candidacy of the Republican presidential frontrunner.
The mock-up was set to run as the front page of the newspaper's Ideas section, followed on page two of that section by the anti-Trump editorial.
"How about that stupid Boston Globe? It's worthless, sold for a dollar," Mr Trump told the Rochester rally.
"Did you see that story? The whole front page -- they made up a story, they pretended Trump is the President, and they made up the whole front page, it's a make-believe story, which is really no different from the whole paper -- I mean, the whole thing is made-up. And I think they're having a big backlash on that one."
The Boston Globe's spoof, says its editorial, was designed to take Mr Trump's rhetoric and his policy positions to their "logical conclusion".
"It is an exercise in taking a man at his word," the editorial says. "And his vision of America promises to be as appalling in real life as it is in black and white on the page."
The editorial brands the billionaire businessman as a "demagogue" whose own political vision is "profoundly un-American".
It casts his closest rival for the 2016 Republican nomination, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, as "equally extreme" and urges Republicans, if possible at the party's nominating convention in July, to draft a "plausible, honourable" alternative, suggesting US House Speaker Paul Ryan or former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
The mock Trump page was conceived and executed by the Globe's editorial writers, columnists and commentary editors, who make up the newspaper's editorial board, said Ellen Clegg, the newspaper's editorial page editor, adding the parody "does not involve our newsroom".
The mock front page envisions a host of political, financial and international scenarios ranging from disturbingly surreal to darkly humorous, all playing on Mr Trump's real pronouncements about illegal immigration, Muslims, national security and the First Amendment.
A colour photograph of Mr Trump making a speech is centred near the top of the page under a banner headline reading: "Deportations to begin", with a subhead reporting that Mr Trump was calling for a tripling of immigration enforcement personnel as "riots continue".
Mock entries include a story about unrest in the ranks of the US military as soldiers refuse orders to kill family members of Islamic State militants, and the headline: "New libel law targets 'absolute scum' in press".
In a more tongue-in-cheek vein, a brief item reports Mr Trump on the "short list" for the Nobel Peace Prize. "His feat? Healing a 1385-year-old schism between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, which has fuelled bloody conflicts across the globe for centuries."
Reuters
