To get to first place, Rubio would first need to win the winner-take-all contest of Florida on March 15.
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Trump, who had previously said Rubio is a “lightweight”, referred to the senator as “Little Marco”. “You can not trust them”.
“Look at those hands, are they small hands?” the front-runner asked. He dismissed any suggestion he might be small elsewhere, Trump said: “I guarantee you there is no problem”.
“We are not going to turn over the conservative movement, or the party of Lincoln or Reagan, for example, to someone whose positions are not conservative”, Florida Sen.
Marco Rubio cracks me up when he complains about the way Trump veers away from anything substantive.
Lauer tried again. “Under any circumstances … if large numbers of people in the establishment wing of the Republican Party come to you and say, “Mitt, you’re the guy who can save the day”?”
Cruz, too, took the fight to Trump, accusing him of being “someone who has used government power for private gain”.
“I supported Rubio… now I’m going to have to hold my nose and vote for Trump”, Ron Fodor, mayor of the small town of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Warning that Trump would lead the party to a historic defeat in November, Rubio and Cruz delivered their attacks with urgency, as if trying to awaken voters who had fallen under Trump’s spell.
“Here we go”, Rubio said with a half-smile.
“I can foresee”, Lauer repeated after him, sensing a caveat.
“We get along”, Romney said with a smile.
Trump countered with a feint, saying he’d called Rubio a “lightweight” in the past but “he’s really not that much of a lightweight”. “Let’s see who’s right”.
He also talked about “Lyin’ Ted” and said the “real con artist” was Rubio.
“Obviously, he wants to be relevant”, Trump said dismissively.
Nasty personal slights and playing loose with the truth but – in the end – pledges of personal fealty after the four remaining Republican hopefuls spent two hours mostly savaging each other in a Detroit debate Thursday night.
At times, Mr. Trump seemed rattled.
“Great to have you here”.
“You’re looking well. You’re looking well”. His public issues with the Kelly File host, stemming from her pushing him on his past remarks about women, was one of the reasons cited for his skipping the last Fox debate in January. “Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud”, the 68-year-old Romney said during a speech.
“We should not change the rules just because you don’t like the person that emerges in the leadership”, King told AFP.
Then she went to the videotape to show three examples of Trump flip-flopping.
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Despite Trump’s strong showing on Tuesday, he was not yet on track to claim the nomination before the party’s national gathering, according to a count.
