In doing so, he cast a shadow over his rivals, who frequently tossed barbs his way.
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Trump seemed a bit hoarse after flying from Iowa to New Hampshire for the speech.
The seventh Republican debate delivered 12.5 million viewers. And he managed to upstage the debate to a certain extent, dominating Twitter mentions and Google searches during the event. “He was a little teddy bear to me”, joked former Florida governor, Jeb Bush. We saw some frontal attacks by one candidate on another, but they were about voting records; they weren’t personal attacks.
Trump’s use of the term – which describes children born on US soil to parents who are in the country illegally and is widely considered to be derogatory – marks the latest escalation of his attacks against Cruz in which he highlights the Texas senator’s Canadian birthplace.
Cruz has been running first or second in the polls in Iowa for the last couple of months.
Trump also knocked Cruz’s debate performance, saying that the Texan “got really pummeled” by the rest of the field. “But I will say this: Gosh, if you guys ask one more mean question I may have to leave the stage”, he added, poking fun at Trump.
Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate not in attendance to get a boost from the debate. Bush, who has been a frequent target of Trump’s attacks, turned a question about religious tolerance into an attack on Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.
“We can’t give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees”.
“Fox has been extremely nice the last number of hours”, he told the audience at Drake University, just a few miles away from the debate, in a standing-room auditorium. He clung to his insistence that Fox News had treated him badly.
Donald Trump still got the first round of criticism from the other candidates, but the group quickly moved on to Cruz.
“The way you really should have negotiated that deal is, four years ago, when they had the prisoners, four years ago, you go and say you have to let our prisoners go”, Trump said at a rally in Dubuque, Iowa, of the Iran nuclear accord. Trump said that he pulled in the majority of funds from big donors – including a $1 million contribution of his own – and another $500,000 via his website, according to CNN.
Practically speaking, there is no way Trump’s event could have out-rated the debate.
Fox News was poised to rule television on Thursday night with the Republican presidential debate.
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The two senators were confronted with video clips suggesting they had changed their positions on immigration, one of the most contentious issues among Republicans.
