To each, his own spittle tastes sweet.

FYI:

The Democratic-Republicans had their partisan newspaper, the Philadelphia Aurora. The Federalists had theirs, the Gazette of the United States. In the election of 1800, the partisan newspapers slugged it out, defaming each other's candidates. It was decades later that candidates stooped to "campaigning."

No the President of the United States of America, John Adams, called the Vice President of the United States of America, Thomas Jefferson, "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." But only after Jefferson called Adams, "a blind, bald, crippled, toothless man who is a hideous hermaphroditic character with neither the force and fitness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

Callneder was something of a character (the specific quote is NOT within this article, however, but it's an interesting read):

https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/james-callender/

Where were these exchanges recorded and reported? In newspapers. In case you didn't know it, they did not have Fox News in Colonial America.

Adam's was a quote, the other was from a Jefferson supporter.