Rubio guaranteed a victory in Florida’s winner-take-all primary on March 15, shrugging off polls showing him trailing Trump by double digits. “If they are small, something else must be small”, Trump said, repeating Rubio’s insult.
Advertisement
It was a striking strategic departure: Cruz and Rubio didn’t attack each other, as they have in the past. Thursday’s debate was the first time he faced questioning from Kelly since the two clashed in the first primary debate.
Donald Trump was under fire even before taking the debate stage Thursday night. “While the retired surgeon didn’t win many delegates, his campaign did convince more than 700,000 people to give money, and now has a lucrative opportunity to rent the donors’ names and contact information to other candidates, political committees or for-profit data brokers again and again”.
Republican presidential candidates will go head-to-head March 10 during a CNN-sponsored debate at the University of Miami. The raucous debate capped a day that saw the Republican’s most recent presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, lambasting Trump, the current front-runner, calling him unfit for office and a danger for the nation, in an extraordinary show of intra-party chaos.
Rubio repeatedly tried to expose Trump’s lack of specificity on policy and seized on Trump’s unwillingness to refund tuition to many people who paid thousands of dollars to attend Trump University.
Mr Romney, in his 20-minute excoriating critique, reminded people of Mr Trump’s failed business ventures: “Trump Magazine”, “Trump Vodka”, “Trump Steaks” and “Trump Mortgage”.
Romney said: “His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and woman who work for them”. However, at the end of Thursday’s debate, Trump’s rivals said they would endorse any eventual nominee, including Trump. Rubio, a US senator from Florida, pressed Trump on why he does not bring his clothing-making operations to the United States from China and Mexico if he is so interested in bring jobs home, a central tenet of his unconventional campaign.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich said, “I kind of think before it’s all said and done I’ll be the nominee”. He said the billionaire’s policies would “balloon the deficit and the national debt”, and said that under a Trump presidency “the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished”. Rubio said that he had spoken earlier in the day with one of the case’s plaintiffs. Kelly also pointed out that the school’s last public rating from the Better Business Bureau was a D minus, not an A, as Trump had previously claimed.
Rubio and Cruz paid little attention to each other, spending most of the night instead attacking Trump. When the OH governor meets with voters, he said, “you know what they really want to know?”
With Ben Carson’s exit from the race this week, the field of Republican candidates has now been narrowed to four, but any number of predictions that GOP voters would unite behind one anti-Trump candidate have come and gone without a change in the overall dynamic. “Trump Vodka… You’ve ruined these companies”, Rubio told him.
Trump now leads the field with 329 delegates. But Rubio persisted: “The answer is he’s not going to do it…”
Advertisement
Moderator Bret Baier called out Rubio for saying three weeks ago that he’s committed to decorum but has now mocked Trump for bad spelling, ridiculed him with vulgar jokes and called him names.
