Chris Christie defended Sunday his endorsement of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, as a former Christie campaign official condemned the move as “an astonishing display of political opportunism”.
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An NPR fact check found that there is no law barring Trump from releasing his returns while being audited, though an accountant or lawyer may have advised him too. In 2012, Romney released schedules and details with his taxes as well.
Cruz, on the other hand, said in a statement that Trump not wanting to release his tax filings could be because it will show his “significant contributions to Planned Parenthood”, USA Today reported.
“If you want to stop the Trump train”, he said, “the only way to do this is to beat him”.
Rubio promised to release additional tax information in the future, but wanted to get the summaries out for the sake of time. Marco Rubio, is funding the latest round of Trump attacks.
Hillary Clinton – boosted by her huge win in SC on Saturday – is meanwhile hoping to start locking out her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, who is giving her a tougher-than-expected challenge, by showing the strength of the Southern foundation of minority voters on which her campaign is built. An online Bloomberg Politics poll released February 25 showed Trump backed by 37 percent of likely Republican presidential primary voters in the seven states surveyed, while Rubio and Cruz were tied at 20 percent. Marco Rubio of Florida with 16.
On the Democratic side, Clinton has 544 delegates awarded and Sanders has 85.
The endorsement by Christie, who early on was considered to be a competitive Republican candidate, was so far the most influential one for the Republican front-runner, as Rubio continued to rack up endorsements from party establishment after the suspension of Jeb Bush’s candidacy. Texas Senator Ted Cruz is focusing his efforts on his home state and its 155 of the roughly 600 delegates at stake Tuesday.
“It’s like more than disappointing, it’s like I regret moving to NJ” one resident told us.
Trump declined to predict he will lock up the nomination come Tuesday but predicted, “We will do very, very well”.
“And I’m looking and I’m getting ready because, you know, it’s like a lot of people, I’m a pretty strong guy”.
But as he hit the Sunday shows, Cruz unloaded on Trump, hammering him for refusing to release his tax returns.
“I think Trump’s probably going to win probably all of them, but you keep holding your own and we have our campaign plan”, Kasich said.
“There is no doubt that if Donald steam rolls through Super Tuesday, wins everywhere with big margins, that he may well be unstoppable”, Cruz said Sunday on CBS.
“Listen, if Donald becomes president, who the heck knows what he would do?” Cruz said that Trump’s past praise of Clinton, as well as his donation to the Clinton Foundation, would neutralize any GOP attacks against the former secretary of state.
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“And frankly, we’re going to look back on this time and we’re all going to shake our heads and say, ‘Did we really degrade the process of picking the leader of the free world?'” Kasich said.
