WASHINGTON — Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, engaged in a digital debate with Elizabeth Warren on Twitter Friday evening, with Trump bestowing one of his famous nicknames on the Massachusetts Senator: Goofy Elizabeth Warren.
Trump has deployed these mocking monikers effectively over the course of the Republican primary, using one or two words to define and destroy his opponent. There was “low energy” Jeb Bush; “Little” Marco Rubio and “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz.
More recently, he’s turned to Democrats. For Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, he uses “Crooked Hillary.”
Warren said, in a statement to The Globe, that she engaged with Trump because “Republicans waited way too long to stand up and tell the truth about Donald Trump’s record, his temperament, and why he is unfit to be President. We can’t repeat that mistake.”
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A top Warren aide confirmed that the Senator composed the Friday evening tweets herself.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday morning.
The exchange between Trump and Warren began around 7:15 p.m. Friday evening and stretched for more than four hours.
It started when Trump, for no clear reason, posted the following message on his Twitter feed: “I hope corrupt Hillary Clinton chooses goofy Elizabeth Warren as her running mate. I will defeat them both,” Trump wrote.
It was the first of three tweets that he fired off — using the “goofy” nickname in each.
Warren, using her campaign account, hit back 45 minutes later at 8:36 p.m. with this message:
“I called out @realDonaldTrump on Tuesday. 45 million saw it. He’s so confident about his “counter punch” he waited until Friday night. Lame.”
It was a reference to a May 3 message she posted on Facebook criticizing Trump and declaring that she’ll “fight her heart out” to ensure his defeat.
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Then she issued her own series of messages over the ensuing 13 minutes, sometimes deploying his own signature mocking tone back at him:
“ ‘Goofy,’ @realDonaldTrump? For a guy with ‘the best words’ that’s a pretty lame nickname. Weak!” Warren wrote.
Another one said: “@realDonaldTrump spews insults and lies because he can’t have an honest conversation about his dangerous vision for America.”
Trump noticed her tweetstorm and replied. As he has in the past, he took aim at Warren’s undocumented claims of Native American heritage.
“Goofy Elizabeth Warren and her phony Native American heritage are on a Twitter rant. She is too easy! I’m driving her nuts,” he wrote at 10:44 p.m.
Warren had the last word, weighing in a half an hour before midnight.
“No, @realDonaldTrump - your racism, sexism & xenophobia doesn’t drive me nuts. It makes me sick. And I’m not alone,” she wrote.
Annie Linskey can be reached at annie.linskey@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @annielinskey.