Donald Trump isn’t just trolling fellow Republican presidential candidates anymore, he might now be trolling incumbent Republican senators too.
A website with the name of incumbent New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte now redirects users to the Trump campaign’s official website.
The website, www.kellyayotte.com is registered privately via an LLC called Domains By Proxy which allows internet users to purchase URLs without revealing their names.
This is the second time in the past week that a URL linked to a rival Republican has been found to lead users to the Trump campaign’s website. On Monday, the Daily Caller reported that www.jebbush.com redirects users to Trump’s webpage.
However, while Bush has long been a target of Trump’s barbs on the campaign trail – the Republican frontrunner often refers to the former Florida governor as “low energy” – this potentially marks the first time that the trolling has been directed towards a down ballot Republican.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether they had knowledge of the URL. There is no suggestion that the campaign was involved in the redirections, which also affect a URL ostensibly linking internet users to the New Hampshire Republican party, www.nhgop.com.
Ayotte, a first term senator, is up for re-election in 2016 in New Hampshire, which is a swing state. A relative moderate, Ayotte first won election in 2010 after fending off a conservative opponent in a fiercely contested primary and then beating an incumbent congressman in the general. Her Democratic opponent in 2016 is expected to be the state’s governor Maggie Hassan.
New Hampshire is also considered a Trump stronghold and the real estate billionaire has led in every poll of Republican primary voters there since July.
