Erick Erickson, who heads the influential RedState website, said on Friday he cancelled Trump’s address because of the candidate’s “demeaning” comments about Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, who was one of three moderators at Thursday night’s candidates debate. Rand Paul’s campaign tweeted out selfies of his supporters and real estate-mogul Donald Trump live-streamed his arrival in Cleveland through a Facebook app.
Advertisement
Donald Trump has defended his relations with women, calling them “tremendous”, but stopped short of apologising for attacking a Fox News journalist. As a party, we are better to risk losing without Donald Trump than trying to win with him. For all of the people who were looking forward to Mr. Trump coming, we will miss you.
Then he also retweeted a tweet that called Kelly a “bimbo“.
Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, emerged clearly benefiting, with rave reviews of her performance in the first debate, a forum featuring seven lower-polling candidates that was held before the larger evening event.
Somehow – and I’m just guessing here – I’d bet that Kelly is less than impressed with Erickson gallantly riding to her defense.
My assistant was feeding me full of medicine and I was sweating with wash cloth on me at 3:00 in the afternoon.
If there was anything close to a consensus among activists at the event, it was that they still wanted to hear what Trump had to say.
When asked how so many of his fellow candidates and conservative pundits had reached the conclusion about his comment, Trump replied: “They want to be politically correct”.
“There are so many contenders on the Republican side that many of them have nothing to lose by being active and creative with their social media use”, said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a Syracuse University associate professor and author of “Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age”. “I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness”, he added. “We’re going to take a very serious look at it”.
What his rivals’ advisers were smiling about afterward was their belief, or at least hope, that they had witnessed Trump planting the seeds of an eventual demise.
Trump scoffed. “She’s having a lot of fun”, while running away from her troubled HP tenure and losing Senate race in California, he said.
Trump performed in typical style in the two-hour debate – the same style that has helped him blow past the other candidates.
But the RedState Gathering will go on without Trump.
As far back as a 1991 interview with Esquire magazine, Trump had boasted: “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and attractive piece of [expletive]”.
Huckabee told ABC’s “This Week” that other candidates are struggling to get out their message “because all the air in the balloon is going to Donald Trump right now”.
With Ailes likely behind the tough line of questioning toward Trump, it shows he might not be as on board with a Trump nomination as many of his anchors, who’ve covered Trump favorably to date-have been. He fielded questions about how Southern conservatives can connect with his boisterous Jersey personality and said that Americans from all regions care about a sound economy, national security and individual liberty. Ted Cruz declined to criticize Trump on Saturday. Earlier this week, he said that he was in favor of Republicans shutting down the federal government over funding Planned Parenthood.
Trump’s campaign was incensed – and unbowed.
Advertisement
Trump´s top political advisor Roger Stone left the campaign on Saturday, saying on Twitter he disagreed with the “diversion to food fight with @megynkelly“.
