As soon as he was finished, Sen.
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When Rubio challenged Trump on whether he’d answer a policy question substantively.
Trump, in typical fashion, didn’t hesitate to hit back. During Thursday’s debate, Trump remained defiant, saying “if I say do it, they are going to do it”.
Chief rivals to U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump assailed him for shifting positions on the issues at a debate, but said in the end they would reluctantly support him if he were their party’s nominee.
The upshot of the last forty eight hours is that the GOP actually seems to be groping its way toward a strategy of doing anything possible to prevent Trump from getting to the convention with 50+% of the delegates.
On Thursday, dozens of conservative national-security leaders released a letter saying they would never vote for Trump.
Trump was beginning to make noise about skipping tonight’s contest.
For every argument that should make sense, it is easy to proffer an immediate Trumpian counterpoint. Romney eagerly sought and publicized his endorsement by Trump in 2012, even as Trump heckled and harassed Obama with accusations that he was not born in the United States.
Cruz, meanwhile, when asked how to bring manufacturing jobs back to cities like Detroit, said that “Detroit is a great city with a magnificent legacy that has been decimated by failed Democratic policies …”
Still, despite Trump taking a significant heat and his at times fumbling responses, many viewers on Twitter declared Trump victorious Thursday night. If any other presidential candidate in the modern era had turned in a performance like Trump’s tonight-let alone two of them, consecutively-people would be writing obituaries not just for his campaign, but his career.
Romney had discussed simply throwing his support behind a mainstream Trump rival, such as Rubio, the Florida senator, to undermine his candidacy, a traditional route for a party elder.
The debate was the first time Mr Trump had faced Miss Kelly, a Fox News presenter, since last August when she grilled him on his sexist comments in the first Republican debate.
The two will take to the debate stage in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday. “I totally disavow (former KKK official) David Duke”. But the revolutionary act of admitting that you can be wrong does not get you all the way to being right. His disgust suffused the remarks. Trump, who dismissed Kelly as a “lightweight” and a “bimbo”, ended up boycotting a subsequent Fox debate, claiming the network was unfair. “It’s not a theory for me”, Kasich said, offering a familiar selling point, but one that might just now be resonating with voters in MI and across the country.
When moderator Megyn Kelly told Trump his shifts caused some people to question his core, Trump insisted: “I have a very strong core”. If only Cruz had been this focused on Trump from the get go, rather than bolstering him for months, the race might be different.
By the next exchange, when Rubio charged that Trump’s father had left him a giant fortune, any pretense of restraint was abandoned: “This little guy has lied so much about my record”, Trump said of Rubio, who is shorter than he is.
Christie was politely dismissive of Romney on Thursday and reminded him democracy did not always conform to the party’s will.
Pressed by Fox News Channel moderators about the name-calling that has gone on between him and Rubio in recent days, Trump immediately took issue with a characterization that the Florida senator had made about his “small hands”, a euphemism for the male anatomy. “That’s how Mitt Romney became the nominee”.
Trump on whether he would be willing to negotiate on his Mexican border wall promise: “The wall’s 50 feet high”.
Trump also came up with a few nicknames throughout the debate – move over, Cisco Ramon! – including “Little Marco” and “Lying Ted”.
“Breathe, breathe, breathe”, Cruz told Trump.
John Lehman, a former Navy secretary who advised McCain’s 2008 campaign, said the alarm bells about Trump’s preparedness for the presidency may be ringing too late. “He couldn’t get elected dog catcher”.
Historians could not recall another time in the past 100 years when the Republican Party’s previous nominees had so harshly attacked a would-be successor.
“I would not do that”, he said when moderator Megyn Kelly asked whether he would release the recordings from the meeting.
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“There probably hasn’t been this level of personal invective by one Republican nominee against another leading candidate”, Greenberg said.
