Trump was scheduled to speak at CPAC on Saturday morning near Washington, D.C.
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A series of election contests this weekend in the 2016 presidential race will divide up 175 delegates among the Republican candidates and 134 delegates between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
“Whoever the majority chooses is going to be the nominee of the party”, he said. CPAC organizers, who had come under fire for inviting someone who last Sunday refused to denounce the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, were left with egg on their faces.
The GOP front-runner tells his supporters: “After making this huge U-turn to Kansas, if I lose, I’m going to so angry at you”. However, Trump is benefitting here from the endorsement by Gov. Paul LePage, and he has already won victories in the three other New England states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont.
Trump’s absence from CPAC follows Mitt Romney’s Thursday remarks urging Republican voters to vote for one of Trump’s opponents.
“The scream you hear – the howl that comes from Washington, DC – is utter terror at what we the people are doing together”, he said, adding that conservatives are “coming together… and standing as one behind this campaign”.
Four in ten activists at the conference, known as CPAC, picked Cruz as their preferred candidate, while Marco Rubio won 30 percent support, Donald Trump won 15 percent and John Kasich won eight percent.
There are 46 delegates on the line Saturday in both the Louisiana primary and in the Kentucky caucuses, 40 in the caucuses in Kansas, and 23 in the ME caucuses. “As president I have no intention of being neutral”.
Still, some members of Romney’s vast donor network said they were ready should he reconsider.
She says the GOP-run Senate must do its “constitutional duty” and “make a decision” about any nominee President Barack Obama may submit.
But Trump is showing new interest in boning up on foreign policy.
Instead, the Florida senator gave a somewhat muted speech – the 44-year-old candidate, fighting the flu, joked about feeling 45 – delivering a clarion call for a return to the fundamentals of conservative principles and a focus on ideas and ideals, rather than allowing them to be drowned out by the loudest and angriest voices in the party.
In the debate, he said he would order the Pentagon to carry out waterboarding in interrogations – which is now illegal – and “a lot worse”, and that he would target the wives and children of suspected extremists.
This was a switch of sorts from the debate the night before.
“These animals over in the Middle East, that chop off heads, sitting around talking and seeing that we’re having a hard problem with waterboarding?” he offered in the debate. Another candidate who was there was Ben Carson, and he made it official that he is out of the race.
“Very disappointed [Trump] has decided at the last minute to drop out of #CPAC – his choice sends a clear message to conservatives”, the event’s Twitter account posted shortly after Trump’s mid-day announcement.
The CPAC results were announced by Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which sponsors the conference.
Trump showed no mercy for his critics when he spoke at the Detroit-area rally.
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Once the anchor used the hijacking comparison, Garrett underlined that “Donald Trump today sought to take control of the Republican Party just hours after clashing with his rivals at the eleventh GOP debate”. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz criticised him for changing his position on various issues.
