The six remaining members of the 2016 Republican presidential field debated tonight in Greenville, South Carolina, just a week before that state’s important GOP primary.
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“It’s called delay, delay, delay”, Trump said at the final Republican debate before the SC primary.
Leading in the polls, Trump came under sustained fire from his rivals seeking to emerge as the main anti-Trump alternative.
Jeb Bush said campaigning with his brother, former President George W. Bush, tomorrow could help save his presidential campaign.
“You are the single biggest liar, you are probably worst than Jeb Bush”, Trump said to Cruz, after the senator called him a liberal.
“This was about as big a mistake as we can think of”, he added later. But that one was a beauty. “And there were none”.
Front-runner Donald Trump repeatedly tangled with Texas Senator Ted Cruz and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush in a series of tense exchanges. He also noted that the 9/11 attacks had occurred on Bush’s watch.
At Saturday’s debate, Bush said he disagreed with his brother, President George W. Bush’s use of eminent domain.
He said he could care less about Trump’s endless insults but declared himself “sick and exhausted of him going after my family”.
“How did he keep us safe when the World Trade Center…excuse me”, Trump said over the shouts from the crowd. And I’m proud of what he did.
“Jeb is so wrong”, Trump said, to loud boos from the audience, people whom Trump dismissed as lobbyists and establishment Republicans. I won the lottery when I was born 63 years ago and looked up and saw my mum, my mum is the strongest woman I know.
Just 12 hours after telling a debate audience that the Bush administration “lied” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a comment that drew boos from the audience, Trump seemed to back off in an interview with NBC. “They lied”, Trump said. “I never went bankrupt”.
On stage, Donald Trump was already out of step and said he was certain President Obama would make the nomination whether Republicans liked it or not. After complimenting Trump as “a great entertainer”, Cruz said that, “for most of his life, he has been very liberal”. Cruz, meanwhile, tells Trump that adults should know not to interrupt each other.
All of the candidates vowed to aggressively attack ISIS to protect the American homeland, but they also attacked one another’s plans to accomplish that.
John Kasich, who scored a surprising second in the New Hampshire primary last week, said that in the wake of Scalia’s death, “I wish we don’t have to run so fast into politics”.
If Jeb Bush’s campaign ends in SC, he’ll end it fighting on principle.
He insisted that Rubio had said in Spanish on Univision that he would not rescind an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in support of the children of illegal immigrants.
Rubio shot back: “I don’t know how he knows what I said on Univision because he doesn’t speak Spanish”. “And he makes things up”.
Trump, the brash billionaire whose insurgent campaign has turned the presidential race on its head, has now made legal threats against his nearest rival Cruz, and all eyes will be on the senator from Texas to see if he goes after the real estate tycoon face to face.
Trump started shouting over him, saying, “Where did I support it?”
The five other candidates on the stage urged the Republican-led Senate to block any attempts by the president to get his third nominee on the court.
Beyond the men onstage, Cruz also scuffled in his first exchange with moderator John Dickerson over the process for seating a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away Saturday.
But Trump dominated the debate conservation on Twitter with 40 percent of the mentions, according to data from the micro-blogging platform.
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Mr Trump’s combative style has set the tone for much of the campaign but in recent days he had pledged to pursue a more measured, positive approach.
