Lincoln Project doubles down goading Donald Trump after fiery response to his lawsuit threat

Mr Trump had told pugnacious fundraising group he would ‘see you in court’ after it ran an advert on Fox News calling his followers ‘suckers’

The Lincoln Project has doubled down on its fiery response to a lawsuit threat from Donald Trump, mocking the former president as a "cuck".

The pugnacious anti-Trump fundraising group had previously dared Mr Trump to make good on his promise to sue over its latest campaign advert, which accused him of funneling campaign money into his own pockets and referred to his supporters as "suckers".

Mr Trump blasted the Project on his personal social network Truth Social early on Thursday morning, calling them "perverts and lowlifes" and claiming he would sue them for "false advertising".

After no more details were forthcoming, Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson said on Friday: "Donald Trump hasn’t 'truthed' for 20 hours. Cuck."

Since then Mr Trump has posted several more "truths", but none concerning the advert.

The Lincoln Project was founded by current and former Republicans who opposed Mr Trump's re-election campaign, and has become well-known for picking personal fights with the mercurial real estate tycoon.

"Cuck", literally short for "cuckold", is a crude sexual insult with origins in far right online communities, which broke into the mainstream in 2015 during Mr Trump's initial campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

The term – and its variant "cuckservative" – was gleefully embraced by Breitbart News under its then executive chairman Steve Bannon, who later joined Mr Trump's team and reportedly applied the word to his White House colleague Jared Kushner.

In his previous message to Mr Trump on Thursday morning, Mr Wilson said: “Go for it, b****! Come at me. I can’t wait. We’re delighted by the thought...

"You won't do it, because you are, in fact, as I said previously, completely impotent. Just ask [Mr Trump's wife] Melania."

Mr Trump's "perverts" accusation may have been a reference to Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver, who was accused of sending unsolicited sexual messages to numerous young men. Mr Weaver apologised for "inappropriate" behaviour and resigned from the Project.

Analysis by USA Today has found that Mr Trump frequently threatens lawsuits but rarely follows through when the threat concerns defamation against him.