“Makes Snacks Great Again.”
There was the usual talk of waterboarding, "nasty Little Marco," and "lying Ted Cruz." A man dressed up as Trump's wall with Mexico and a whole bunch of protesters were whisked away. Standard.
Brynn Anderson / AP
In the interview he tore into a CNN report that some advisers are saying he should drop out before Florida — and gave a very wide ranging look at the race.
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Marco Rubio said Tuesday that CNN made up a report that some Rubio advisers think he should drop out of the presidential race before the Florida primary.
In the same interview with Fox News radio Kilmeade and Friends:
"It is just false," Rubio said on the radio program on Tuesday. "They just made it up. There's no other way to describe it other than the fact that they made it up. And in fact they have now gone back and said they have one source, not in the campaign, but someone who knows someone who knows someone. I mean, it is just crazy the things people make up these days. It's not new that you you see some other campaigns pushing that kind of stuff but it is just patently false."
"Look, I think it has been proven as false, not a single person has come out and said, 'No, this is true, this is me who they were talking about,'" said Rubio noting he was in the race to win it. "I mean it is just false. Fortunately, we have press sources that allow us to get our word out."
The senator said the states coming up would be much better for him and blasted the Cruz campaign for spreading the CNN story about alleged drop out conversations in his campaign.
"It ain't true, it is a lie, and unfortunately looks like Ted Cruz's campaign is putting out emails in places like Hawaii, telling people about it, and you saw that with Ben Carson earlier. It's just not true. We have a 151 delegates, my path at end of the day is not essentially any different from his or anybody else's. Right now no one has has a clear path to the 1,237 delegates. It's very unique campaign, we're not gonna run out of money and we're not gonna run out of supporters."
And, added Rubio, Democrats would chew Donald Trump up and spit him out if he was the Republican nominee.
"You are starting to see all the problems in his background. The Democrats are going to shred him. They are going to eat him alive. If you nominate Donald Trump, not only will you divide the Republican Party we are going to lose badly to Hillary Clinton."
In Florida, Rubio said since the state is a winner-take-all contest, a vote not for him was a vote for Trump.
"If you vote for Ted Cruz in Florida or you vote for John Kasich, you're voting for Donald Trump," he said.
"Our campaign is built on the long haul and if you look at the states that are coming up now this is where we start to get stronger and obviously with Florida coming up on the 15. It's all about Florida," he added.
"Here's the bottom line, if the frontrunner were anyone not named Donald Trump right now there would be extraordinary pressure on everybody else to say, 'Hey, let's get out and rally around the frontrunner so we can start the general election.' It's not gonna happen here," he said. "It's not gonna happen for Ted either. This gonna take longer than any of them wanted to but that's the campaign we're in. If we nominate the right person it will make us a stronger party."
No one is on pace to get the delegates before convention, he argued.
"If Donald Trump wins Florida then it starts looking like maybe you can't stop him. That's win it's so important for everyone in Florida to vote for me, because I'm the only one who has a shot to stop him or beat him in Florida."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge.
Charlie Neibergall / AP
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats hoping to make the Supreme Court vacancy a central election issue had a new message Tuesday afternoon: "There's one judge Sen. Chuck Grassley can't avoid."
That judge is Iowa Democrat Patty Judge, a former lieutenant governor and secretary of agriculture who recently announced she would run against Grassley, the staunchly conservative chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats in recent days have tried to portray Grassley — who typically cruises to re-election — as the face of GOP obstructionism, following Republicans' position that they will neither hold hearings nor meet with whomever the president nominates to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court.
Now with Judge in the race, Democrats will have a long-shot chance at picking up a seat in the Senate, but more importantly, have a strong challenger back home constantly attacking the Iowa Republican for not taking steps to fill the Supreme Court vacancy.
Democrats have tried to recruit Judge to run for years, but she turned them down. Seeing the Supreme Court issue as a potential weakness for Grassley, Judge decided to challenge him last week.
And on Tuesday afternoon, she huddled with Senate Democrats during their weekly lunch to talk about the race. Coming out of the meeting, Democrats spoke highly of their latest recruit.
"She seemed down-home, home-spun, real Iowa," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate. "I think she's going to be a very formidable candidate. She would have been a formidable candidate before the issue of hearings for the Supreme Court, but now even more so."
"Patty Judge is a candidate who shows that the people of Iowa are not happy with their senator's stand, as these clips show," Schumer added. Earlier, in a press conference, Schumer read headlines from the editorial pages of different newspapers across the country criticizing Republicans for not considering the president's nominee for the Supreme Court.
"I appreciate the fact she's doing this," said Sen. Jon Tester, chairman of the Senate Democrats' campaign arm. "Iowa is definitely in play, and I think she's a great candidate."
Democrats believe that having Judge in the race will help keep the Supreme Court vacancy at the forefront for voters beyond Iowa as well, giving Democratic challengers in battleground states a boost.
"The combination of her running, plus the president sending over a highly-qualified nominee — I don't have any idea who or when that might be — will make this a very plain issue and allow us to continue to talk about how important it is for the Senate to do it's job," said Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
But in terms of actually defeating Grassley, Judge faces a tough road ahead. She has to get through a four-way Democratic primary first before taking on Grassley, who reported having $4.4 million in the bank at the end of the year. The incumbent has also served in the Senate since 1981 and is known for going back home often and traveling all over his state to meet with voters.
"I think no senator pays closer attention to the citizens of his state than does Chuck Grassley," said Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the campaign arm for Senate Republicans.
"He's going to work hard and he's going to be just fine. He feels very comfortable running in his state on the issue of the Supreme Court vacancy."
More broadly, Wicker pointed to past comments Democrats have made on filling Supreme Court vacancies in a presidential election years and denied that GOP incumbents facing tough re-elections would be punished by voters in November for not moving forward with the process to fill the vacancy.
"There is nothing revolutionary about our approach," Wicker maintained.
Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
Donald Trump, running for president on his ability to make deals, is getting fleeced by local television stations across Ohio, according to data analyzed by BuzzFeed News.
In several television markets in the Buckeye State, Trump — the only candidate, he says, with the business acumen necessary to make Mexico pay for a wall on the southern border of the United States — has paid a significantly higher rate than the other federal candidates purchasing advertising time on the same station and in the same time slot.
For instance on the ABC-affiliate in Cleveland, Trump is paying a rate around three times higher than Bernie Sanders for orders placed on the same day and for the same three time slots: the 6 p.m. news, ABC’s World News, and Good Morning America. Trump is paying $1,500 to Sanders’s $400 for 6 p.m., $2,000 to Sanders’s $600 for ABC’s World News, and $1,400 to Sanders’s $550 for Good Morning America.
“For a self proclaimed ‘master negotiator,’ that’s quite an inefficient way to spend resources,” said Nick Everhart, a national GOP media consultant and buyer based in Ohio.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond for a request to comment.
To be fair, media buying is a specialized craft — rates fluctuate based on demand and on privately negotiated terms. The market has, says Kantar Media/CMAG’s Elizabeth Wilner, “a wild, wild west component to it.”
But Trump, like other campaigns, is working through a middleman, in his case a Republican firm called Strategic Media Services, which declined to comment for this story.
On that same Cleveland station, in the 6 p.m. news slot and World News, the Trump campaign is paying double the rate of John Kasich’s super PAC, even though by law federal candidates have access to the lowest unit rate available, giving them an upper hand in negotiations over so-called issue advertisers.
On the CBS-affiliate, also in Cleveland, Trump is paying hundreds more for ads than both Sanders and Clinton in three time slots. In Cincinnati, on the ABC station there, Trump is paying a significantly higher rate for ads in the 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. news slots than Clinton and Sanders.
Trump is paying $705 for 5 p.m. and $930 for 6 p.m. Sanders and Clinton are paying $440 and $580 for those same time slots.
The rate discrepancy is not isolated to broadcast. In one local cable buy on CNN in Cleveland, Trump paid hundreds more for ads throughout daytime and primetime than a similar buy from the Sanders campaign.
People celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 26, 2015 after its historic decision on marriage equality.
Mladen Antonov / AFP / Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Puerto Rico's marriage ban remains valid and the law of the territory, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
Because Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory, the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex couples' marriage rights does not automatically apply there, U.S. District Court Judge Juan Pérez-Giménez ruled in a 10-page decision.
The judge had previously upheld the marriage ban in Puerto Rico in October 2014, before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down marriage bans nationwide in Obergefell v. Hodges.
After the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell, both the plaintiffs and territory's defendants agreed that the ban was now unconstitutional. So did the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, to whom the plaintiffs had appealed Pérez-Giménez's ruling.
The 1st Circuit vacated the district court ruling upholding the ban and sent it back to the district court "for further consideration in light of Obergefell v. Hodges" in a July 8, 2015, order. Going further still, the court noted, "We agree with the parties' joint position that the ban is unconstitutional."
Back at the district court, the parties filed a joint motion for an entry of judgment on July 16, 2015, noting, "in light of Obergefell v. Hodges and the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the parties hereby jointly move this Court to enter the enclosed proposed judgment in favor of Plaintiffs."
Without any further briefing on the matter, Pérez-Giménez denied that request on Monday.
Shortly after the opinion was released, however, ACLU attorney Joshua Block noted a 1976 Supreme Court decision stating that, despite ambiguity overall regarding how and when the U.S. Constitution applies to Puerto Rico, "It is clear now, however, that the protections accorded by either the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment or the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment apply to residents of Puerto Rico."
Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, staff attorney for Lambda Legal, which is representing the plaintiffs, called the ruling"aberrant and fundamentally flawed" and "incongruent with the constitutional principles applicable to all persons in the United States, whether they live in a state or territory and whether they are straight or gay."
Echoing Block's comment, he added, "The U.S. Supreme Court has unequivocally stated that the constitutional promises of liberty and equality apply with equal force to residents of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit was clear when it stated that Puerto Rico’s marriage ban was unconstitutional."
An appeal of the judge's decision back to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals is expected.
(h/t Gabriel Laborde)
The packaging on the steaks at the Republican frontrunner’s media event in Florida appeared to be for a different company.
Lynne Sladky / AP Photo
Lynne Sladky / AP
Donald Trump rang in another evening of “a lot of victories” in typical style Tuesday night that featured a meandering 42-minute news conference in which he hawked his various business ventures before promising to be the Republican party's great unifier.
“There’s only one person who did well tonight: Donald Trump,” he said, with the night’s two biggest states, Mississippi and Michigan, already called in his favor.
Trump also claimed to have had a recent conversation with Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who “could not have been nicer.” Trump also called the conversation “very encouraging.”
Much of the rest of the night was devoted to the various Republicans who have criticized Trump and his business ventures. He brought props to drive the point home: Wine he said was from a vineyard he owned, steaks he said belonged to Trump Steaks — though that claim was quickly disputed on social media — and even bottled water from company he had been involved with.
Lynne Sladky / AP
“I’m gonna be done with this in about two seconds,” he said of the criticism of these and other business ventures, before launching into a long rebuttal that at times seemed like a pitch on the Home Shopping Network. To the claim that the publication Trump Magazine was now defunct, he said, “I thought I read it two days ago,” and tossed a copy into the crowd.
He called out some of his sharpest Republican detractors by name, such as former presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Sen. Lindsey Graham, and cast the night’s wins as triumphs in the face of a blitz of negative advertising.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had so many horrible, horrible things said about me in one week — $38 million worth of horrible lies,” Trump said.
His criticism of the three other candidates still in the race was at times more muted by his standards — he even congratulated them for their hard work because campaigning is “not easy stuff.”
Then again, Trump did return to his line that Ted Cruz was a vicious liar: “I call him lyin’ Ted,” Trump said. “He holds the Bible high and then he goes down, he puts the Bible down, and then he lies.”
Lynne Sladky / AP
He also mocked Cruz for claiming he was the only person who could beat him, noting he had won far more states than Cruz. He also said that Sen. Marco Rubio’s recent pointed attacks were actually hurting the senator more than helping.
“Little Marco helped me a lot,” he said.
Trump made the case that he could bring Republicans together, despite the public discord.
“The bottom line is, we have something going that is so good. We should grab each other, and we should unify the party,” he said. “And nobody is gonna beat us, OK?”
Trump came to the stage with speech notes written in Sharpie in his breast pocket, and twirled his finger as he pointed at reporters, engaging them with jokes and quips.
On next week’s other big race?
“I think we’re gonna do really well in Florida,” he said. “It’s my second home.”
LINK: Updates: Presidential Primary Races On Super Mini Tuesday
LINK: Did Donald Trump’s Famous Steaks Really Make An Appearance Tuesday?
LINK: Trump And Clinton Gave Speeches At The Same Time And Networks Only Covered Trump
Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes, right, and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, left, at a news conference in Salt Lake City.
Rick Bowmer / AP
A Utah House committee narrowly passed a death penalty repeal bill on Tuesday night — on a 6-5 vote — and only after a Republican member of the committee, a former judge, switched his vote to support the legislation.
The vote sends the bill — which was passed by the Senate this past week — to the full House, where it would face one final vote before going to Gov. Gary Herbert.
Herbert has said that he continues to support the death penalty — but has not said whether he would veto the legislation.
Fox 13's Ben Winslow reported that Rep. Kay McIff, a former judge, initially voted against the bill — meaning the bill would have failed in committee, 5-6 — before switching his vote and supporting it, leading to the 6-5 passage. The lopsided Republican-led legislature means that the committee has only two Democratic members. A list of who supported the repeal was not immediately available, but the legislation had support on the final vote from at least four Republican members of the committee — and maybe more.
The full House is made up of 63 Republicans and 12 Democrats.
The bill is sponsored by Republican state Sen. Stephen Urquhart, who said at Senate passage that the bill has support in the House from Speaker Greg Hughes.
Jim Young / Reuters
MIAMI — Bernie Sanders came here instead of giving a speech in Michigan, where public polling showed him down double-digits heading into primary voting Tuesday night.
Maybe he should have stuck around. Sanders won Michigan, a narrow but stunning victory that gives his campaign a new burst of energy in the Midwest — and shows it can beat the Clinton machine in a big state.
The Sanders campaign was prepared to call a narrow loss in Michigan a win, just as it did after the disappointments in Nevada and Massachusetts, two states where aides thought they would do better than they did. In the days leading up to the primary in Michigan, Sanders was lowering expectations as fast as he could, telling reporters he’d do his best but steering clear of the bombastic “momentum” language he used before Nevada where he came up short in the caucuses.
The Clinton campaign, which public polling showed had double-digit leads for weeks, also tried to lower expectations. In the days leading up to voting in Michigan, aides told reporters things were much tighter for Clinton than public polling showed.
After Sanders underperformed on Super Tuesday — a performance that followed his shockingly poor showing in South Carolina — his top advisers gathered reporters at his Burlington, Vermont, headquarters to explain why Bernie would carry on despite losing Massachusetts. That state was one of five the campaign had targeted for the 11-state Super Tuesday. Sanders won four, but the the Massachusetts loss was seen as particularly gutting given Sanders’ proximity to the state geographically as well as his campaign message that hews closely to that of the state’s popular senator, Elizabeth Warren.
Reason number one, said top Sanders adviser Tad Devine: There was a path through Michigan. A win in the state would tee up momentum that put states like California and New York in play down the road, he said.
Sanders’ trouble with black voters was worse than expected in South Carolina and the rest of the Super Tuesday states. Sanders and his aides said his performance among black voters would improve outside of the deep south, where Clinton is well known and Sanders is not. Exit polls showed Sanders won 30% of black voters in Michigan — not a high total, but a dramatic improvement on states like South Carolina.
Sanders still lags far behind Clinton in delegates, and on Tuesday, he likely actually garnered fewer than Clinton — who won big in the smaller state of Mississippi.
But the campaign was quick to call Michigan a gamechanger. The deep south has no more primaries, they note, teeing up a map where they say they can compete. But Clinton still has a large lead in delegates, and a playbook that shows she can do well even in large states that appeared tailormade for a Bernie victory.
WASHINGTON — A new coalition is going up with a seven-figure ad buy in five states and Washington, D.C., targeting senators over proposed cuts to a health care program that covers millions of seniors.
The group — Coalition to Save Medicare Advantage Retiree Coverage — will be airing ads starting Wednesday focusing on senators from both parties: Sen. Chuck Schumer in New York, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, Sen. Ron Wyden in Oregon, Sen. Orrin Hatch in Utah, and Sen. Gary Peters in Michigan.
The ads, which were first shared with BuzzFeed News, urge viewers to ask Congress to stop cuts to Medicare Advantage Retiree Coverage proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last month. None of the targeted senators are facing tough re-elections this election cycle but represent states with a high number of retirees who are covered by the program.
“Retirees, your health care may be on the line,” a narrator says in 30-second spots. "The Medicare agency has proposed new cuts to Medicare Advantage Retiree Coverage that 3.3 million seniors count on. You could be facing up to $264 a year in higher costs and reduced benefits. It’s not too late to stop the cuts.”
Although the narrator doesn't specifically call out the senators, the text on screen ads mentions their names.
The coalition, which was formed recently, has more than 30 members including the National Boilermakers Funds, Verizon, Nokia, Humana, United Health Group, 1199 SEIU and the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System.
Darren Mccollester / Getty Images
MIAMI — Carly Fiorina, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race after New Hampshire, endorsed Ted Cruz on Wednesday morning.
Cruz teased the endorsement onstage at a rally at Miami Dade College, saying he was going to introduce a "major business leader" and "serious thinker" who had been a critic of the "absolute disaster that is Hillary Clinton."
Fiorina then took the stage to endorse Cruz, saying she "checked the box" for Cruz when voting last week in Virginia, which voted on Super Tuesday.
"The only one who can beat Donald Trump is Ted Cruz," Fiorina said.
Fiorina appeared to reject the idea of a contested convention, saying, "The only way to beat Donald Trump is to beat him at the ballot box."
The surprise endorsement from a well-liked figure in the party signals increasing Republican acceptance of Cruz as the alternative to Trump. And rolling out the endorsement in Miami — Marco Rubio's hometown — ahead of a Florida primary that is make-or-break for Rubio appears to be a shot across the bow at the rival campaign.
The endorsement did not leak out beforehand, though aides signaled to reporters at the rally that something was coming. As Fiorina was taking the stage, Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe walked past several reporters and asked, "Did you know?" Cruz senior adviser Jason Johnson told reporters that the process of arranging the endorsement had taken no more than a week.
While still a candidate, Fiorina hadn't always been positive on Cruz; she didn't dismiss the birther attacks on him in January, saying she found it "odd" that he didn't renounce his Canadian citizenship until 2014.
Speaking to reporters after the Miami rally, Cruz said "Carly’s being with us today is just one more manifestation of what we have been seeing playing out over the last several weeks, which is Republicans uniting, coming together behind our campaign as the one campaign that has demonstrated that it can and has repeatedly beaten Donald Trump."
Asked if Rubio should drop out, Cruz said "That’s a decision every candidate is gonna have to make. At this point both Marco Rubio and John Kasich are gonna have to look at the race and assess their prospects."
“I know there’s a lot of people that say, ‘Well, this would be smoke-filled rooms.’ I don’t think it’d be smoke-filled rooms because they don’t allow smoking in the hotels in Cleveland. So I don’t think that’ll be the case.”
Ty Wright / Getty Images
John Kasich joked on Tuesday that those worried about a nominee being chosen by elites in "smoke-filled rooms" at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer should stop worrying because smoking isn't allowed at Cleveland hotels.
"I know there's a lot of people that say, 'Well, this would be smoke-filled rooms.' I don't think it'd be smoke-filled rooms because they don't allow smoking in the hotels in Cleveland. So I don't think that'll be the case," Kasich said. "But in all seriousness, you know, when you go to something like that, the delegates serious, the delegates always get serious about who it is that would be the best president of the United States. And it would be important that we would come out of it with a sense of fairness."
In the interview on The Michael Medved Show, Kasich also reiterated an argument he made over the weekend, saying that he felt a contested convention would be educational for the country's children.
"The convention, people are like, 'Oh my goodness, what would that mean?'" he said. "Well, I mean, I'll tell you what it would mean. I think our kids would start learning about how we pick a president. They might actually learn a little bit about the history of presidents, you know. It'd kinda be a good thing."
Rep. Blake Farenthold only has nine more months to talk about impeaching Obama.
Win Mcnamee / Getty Images
Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas said Tuesday that there's not enough votes in the Senate to remove President Obama from office for his many "egregious" and impeachable offenses.
Asked on 1440 KEYS radio in Corpus Christi about Obama's policy toward Ukraine, Syria, and Libya, Farenthold said, "The Obama policy in Libya, he went off on his own without war powers authorization to do what he did in Libya."
"Yes, potentially impeachable," he added, when asked if the president could be impeached over it. "I don't think -- well, I know there's not the votes in the Senate to remove him from office for even more egregious offenses that I think are impeachable."
Farenthold has said previously that the House has enough votes to impeach Obama.
In Trump’s view, foreign countries have been laughing at the United States since the late ’80s.
Donald Trump, in a 1988 interview about U.S. politics and policy, offered a blistering critique of politicians and American's standing in the world that is not unlike his current argument, which has propelled him to the top of the Republican primary race.
In the 1988 interview on Eleventh Hour with Robert Lipsyte:
"The United States is systemically being ripped off by many of the wealthiest countries of the world," Trump said.
"I want to tax Saudi Arabia for the job we do keeping them alive," added Trump. "They wouldn't be here for 20 minutes if we ever said 'you're on your own baby.'"
Today, Trump rails against politicians allowing foreign countries like China to undermine American business, calling them "stupid." In the 1988 interview, politicians, Trump said, were allowing Japan to rip off the U.S.:
"The world should be based more on common sense," Trump said . "When I ask a question, for example, why are we defending Japan for nothing? Why aren't they paying for it? Everyone says, 'Is that true? Do we really do that?' Nobody even knows about it. And then they think about it, and that's the end of it."
He continued, "And by the way, including politicians, top politicians. I ask the, 'Washington,' I say, 'Why are we defending Japan for nothing?' They say, 'boy I'll tell you what I'm angry about it.' They're angry for one day and then they go on to something else. It amazes me. There's no stick-to-itiveness, there's no aggressiveness, there's no advocacy. And that's really the word. Everything's a compromise today. We don't want to anger Japan, they're our friends, they're our partners, don't tax them, don't this."
"They're laughing at us," Trump added. "They think that the United States is made up of a bunch of fools. They're laughing at us. Now they don't laugh at our face because then we get insulted and we do something about it."
Trump also laid out his plan to tax foreign goods, saying American consumers would have to pay a premium if they wanted to purchase foreign products.
"It's so simple, you have no idea. You will tax Japan, you will tax West Germany, you will tax their products," he said. "People are still going to buy their products, and frankly, you're going to tell people. You're going to tell the American people, 'hey look, they make a wonderful product, but you're going to have to pay a premium, you're going to absolutely have to pay a premium if you want to buy a Mercedes-Benz.'
Trump, when asked why he doesn't build more affordable housing, argued that the government needed to subsidize such efforts so such projects were profitable for developers.
"The government has to provide the financing for this because no individual can do it," Trump said. "Now people don't like to say it. They like to say, 'oh, as an individual you can build.' The fact is that numbers are so horrendous. The losses are so huge, that no individual can do anything meaningful in that way without government help."
He continued, "Now when the government comes in and finances it, Trump will build thousands and thousands of units. How is the government going to finance it though when Japan is just ripping us dry, when West Germany and all of these other countries are ripping us dry, and we're losing hundred of billions of dollars. We have to strengthen up the federal government and the programs have to filter back into the cities."
Trump, however, said he did not want to be the one to solve the country's problems.
"I would much prefer if somebody else do it, I just don't know if somebody else is there," he said.
"I think I'd do a fantastic job but I really would prefer not doing it."
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Rep. Chris Stewart, a Republican from Utah, on Monday compared Donald Trump to fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
“If some of you are, I’ll just tell you now, Donald Trump supporters, then we see the world differently,” Stewart said during a forum at the University of Utah, "because I can’t imagine what someone is thinking.”
“I’m telling you, Donald Trump does not represent Republican ideals,” Stewart continued. “He’s our Mussolini.”
Stewart was one of the earliest members of congress to endorse Marco Rubio.
“So you’ve got, you know, socialists on one hand,” Stewart said, referring to Bernie Sanders, “and someone that’s whatever he is on the other hand,” referring to Trump. “And those appear to be some of the choices we have. And you know, we’ve gotta do better than that. We just have to do better than that.”
“It was the wrong message from the wrong messenger on the wrong day.”
Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images
Republican strategist Karl Rove panned Mitt Romney's anti-Trump speech in an interview that aired on Michigan local radio's Big Show on Tuesday.
Romney called Trump a "phony" and a "fraud" in a speech last week. Trump hit back, calling Romney a "failed candidate" who should have won in 2012.
"It was the wrong message from the wrong messenger on the wrong day," said Rove. "This was the day of the debate, so it's going to get overwhelmed largely by last night. I thought the speech was good but not great, and it gave Trump a chance to come back and remind his supporters of the thing that motivates them, which is Romney lost."
"With Donald Trump supporters, this sense of aggrievement that we could have won — which a lot of Republicans feel, me included and it would have much better for the country if we had won, it is an important touchpoint for his supporters," he said.
"Here's what I know: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University," he said. "He's playing members of the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat."
Carlo Allegri / Reuters
MIAMI — Ted Cruz rarely emphasizes his Cuban heritage.
But on Wednesday, campaigning in Miami, Cruz brought up his Cuban roots — Cruz's father Rafael fled Cuba in 1957 — almost right away, telling a crowd at Miami Dade college right off the bat at the beginning of his remarks, "Y'all know how to make a Cuban feel welcome."
Cruz grew up in Texas, not a Cuban-American hotbed, and he acknowledges that his Spanish isn't very good. South Florida's influential Cuban-American community is largely behind Cruz's rival Marco Rubio, who is also of Cuban heritage. But Florida presents a rare opportunity for Cruz to make political use of his heritage — which isn't the case in most of the mostly white, conservative areas where Cruz's base resides.
Cruz told reporters after the event that he expects to do well among the Hispanic community in Florida, which encompasses people from a range of backgrounds including Cuban.
“I hope to do very, very well in the Hispanic community," he said.
Cruz, who often talks about his father's trajectory on the trail, noted that his father's first stop in America was in Florida: "Obviously my family story is an integral part of who I am. It is a shared and unifying aspect in the Hispanic community, the immigrant experience, coming to America with nothing. For me, when my dad came in 1957, it was the state of Florida on which my father first set foot when he got off a ferry boat in Key West, Florida.” Rafael Cruz went on to attend the University of Texas.
Cruz even threw in some rare Spanish, saying Rafael had left "his mom and dad, my abuelo and abuela, back in Cuba. He’d left his kid sister back in Cuba, he didn’t know if he’d ever see them again, but at 18 he landed in America, free. The state of Florida initially welcomed him, then he ended up taking a Greyhound bus" to Texas.
Cruz went on to praise Rubio, who is struggling in the polls as the make-or-break Florida primary approaches.
"What an incredible testament to this nation. You asked about Marco. Let me take a minute to sing Marco’s praises," Cruz said. "Marco is a colleague of mine, a very, very talented leader, an incredible communicator. What does it say about our nation, that the sons of two Cuban immigrants who came penniless to this country, one a bartender and a maid, and the other, his dad, a dishwasher, that right now their sons would be among the handful still running for president?"
At the end of the press gaggle, a television reporter asked Cruz if he'd like to say anything in Spanish, but Cruz left without acknowledging the query.
The fact that Cruz rarely talks about his being Cuban-American didn't bother his fans in attendance, many of whom were Cuban-Americans themselves.
"That doesn’t make a difference to me," said Lilia Morraz, 57, who was there with her husband Silvio. Silvio, who is originally from Nicaragua, is supporting Cruz, while Lilia, a Cuban-America, is for Trump. "I’m not gonna vote for someone just because he’s Cuban. I have friends that are voting for Rubio because he’s Cuban, and I said no, you’re making a mistake, you have to vote for the right person."
Eduardo Artze, 65, came to Miami from Cuba with his family at the age of 10.
He said Cruz's lack of emphasis on his background didn't bother him.
"I have two sons," Artze said. "One speaks Spanish like Ted Cruz, the other one speaks better Spanish. I love them both, my sons."
Lydia Usetegui, 61, said "I am from Miami. I am a Cuban-American from Miami. It’s been very interesting we have two candidates that are [Cuban-American]."
"But that’s OK, if we were in a free Cuba, we would be voting for all Cubans," she said.
Usetegui said she liked how, in her view, Cruz's roots influence his approach to politics, though they're not the centerpiece of his pitch to voters. "You know he’s an American," she said. "He has those roots that make him special in terms of how much we value liberty, given what we’ve gone through, but he’s a constitutionalist."
Cruz did one event in Miami on Wednesday ahead of Thursday's debate at the University of Miami. Cruz's campaign has said that they would make a play for Florida, Rubio's must-win state, and announced 10 field offices there earlier this week. Though Cruz is unlikely to win Florida, his contesting the state could weaken Rubio enough to bar him from winning here.
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MIAMI — Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders emptied their opposition research files against each other on immigration at Wednesday night's Democratic debate, and along the way they talked jobs and education in the Latino community, as well as opening up Cuba and Puerto Rico's financial crisis, in the most substantive debate yet between the two candidates on Hispanic issues.
The debate, just ahead of the Florida primary, began with Sanders continuing his more combative tone of late in taking on Clinton as both candidates sought to frame their opponent as a paper champion on immigration.
Clinton was asked about past comments she made that she was adamantly against illegal immigration, as well as her comments that the children who came from Central America during the summer of 2014 should ultimately be sent back.
Was she a flip-flopper or "Hispandering" — pandering to the Hispanic community?
Clinton said that she had sponsored the DREAM Act in the past and pivoted to Sanders opposition to the 2007 immigration bill, which her campaign has made central to their argument that Sanders is late to being a supporter of immigrants.
Sanders again said the bill had guestworker provisions that amounted to slavery, but he was confronted with comments he made to Lou Dobbs at the time that guestworkers lower the wages of American workers.
Clinton argued that "it's very hard to make the case that Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, me, La Raza, United Farmworkers, Dolores Huerta, leaders of the Latino community, would have supported a bill that actually promoted modern slavery" and called it an excuse for not voting for the 2007 bill.
Sanders — a week after releasing a five-minute mini-documentary about a Latina farmworker that ran nationally on Univision — was ready to hit Clinton on the two biggest blemishes on her immigration record: that she sought to stop New York state from implementing driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants in 2008, and that she thought unaccompanied minors who came from Central America should be given due process and care, but ultimately most should be sent back.
One of the "great human tragedies" of recent years, Sanders said, is children fled the violence of Honduras "and they came into this country. And I said welcome those children into this country. Secretary Clinton said send them back. That's a difference."
Clinton, who faced tough questions from Univision and its influential anchor Jorge Ramos, was asked whether she would promise not to deport children — something Ramos pressed her on in January. Clinton made a distinction between the asylum process and enforcement of deportation priorities.
She said she would not deport nonviolent immigrants and children who are outside of enforcement priorities, which is not a new position for her.
"I will not deport children," Clinton said. "I would not deport children. I do not want to deport family members either, Jorge."
The debate also featured robust discussion on other issues like the economy and education, which often outpace immigration as a key issue to Hispanic Americans
Clinton said her plan would create more small businesses, raise the minimum wage, and guarantee equal pay for women. Challenged on if these plans were too general, she pushed back.
"I've spent a lot of time and effort talking to and mostly listening to Latinos," she said. "Jobs are the number one issue, with rising incomes. Close behind is education."
But in Florida — which has the largest number of Cuban-Americans and more than 1 million Puerto Ricans, many of whom have fled an island in crisis — the loosening of the Cuban embargo and financial issues in Puerto Rico also came up.
Framing Cuba as the "welcome to Miami question," Univision said socialism is a negative term in the minds of many Latinos in Florida and asked Sanders about positive comments he made about Fidel Castro years ago.
Sanders said Cuba was an "authoritarian undemocratic country" but that they had made good advances in health care and were sending doctors all over the world.
He sided with the Obama administration saying that restoring full diplomatic relations with Cuba would improve the lives of Cubans and help the U.S. and business community invest.
Clinton hit Sanders for previous comments that he supported the "revolution of values in Cuba."
"If the values are that you oppress people, you disappear people, you imprison people or even kill people for expressing their opinions, for expressing freedom of speech, that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere," Clinton said.
Discussing Puerto Rico, Clinton said she would work to help Puerto Rico restructure its debts in the first 100 days of her presidency, but hoped it wouldn't take that long.
Sanders noted that the issue of Puerto Rico has not come up during debates and said the "little island is $73 billion in debt, and the government now is paying interest rates of up to 11 percent."
He tied Puerto Rico's problems to the core of his campaign message that Wall Street was taking advantage of Americans.
"And many of the bonds that they are paying off were purchased by vulture capitalists for 30 cents on the dollar," Sanders said. "And what I have said in talking to the leaders of Puerto Rico, we've got to bring people together...But maybe some of these vulture capitalists are going to have to lose a little bit of money in this process."
The Florida primary on March 15 will once again test Clinton's strength with Latino voters in a large state, a group that she has done well with but where Sanders has made inroads due to his popularity with young people.
Clinton has repeatedly led in state polls, but the same was the case in Michigan, where Sanders won unexpectedly by improving with black voters.
But a topic both candidates offered a united front on was Donald Trump, whose comments about Mexicans and immigrants have cratered his favorability with Latinos in national polls.
Clinton and Sanders took aim at his two signature proposals: that all undocumented immigrants would be deported and that a wall would be built between the U.S. and Mexico.
"This idea of suddenly, one day or maybe a night, rounding up 11 million people and taking them outside of this country is a vulgar, absurd idea that I would hope very few people in America support," Sanders said.
Clinton — who went to a reception after the debate held by the Latino Victory Project, which works to elect Latino Democrats in downtown Miami — used Trump's blustery language to make fun of him in a moment that played well with the debate audience and likely would with Univision's audience at home, too.
"A beautiful tall wall," she said. "The most beautiful tall wall, better than the Great Wall of China, that would run the entire border. That he would somehow magically get the Mexican government to pay for. And, you know, it's just fantasy."
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
MIAMI — One of the first questions here on Wednesday night was among the most direct and straightforward either candidate has received in all eight Democratic debates — and yet neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders would answer.
The matter at hand was Donald Trump, the business mogul who in his 2016 presidential campaign refused to immediately disavow endorsements from a KKK leader and white supremacist, who accused undocumented Mexican immigrants broadly of rape, who proposed a ban on Muslims entering the country — and who now appears to be on his way to securing the Republican nomination.
So, the Washington Post's Karen Tumulty asked, "is Donald Trump a racist?"
The two Democrats declined to respond with a "yes" or "no." Instead, as both have on previous occasions, Clinton and Sanders repudiated Trump's words and actions — and avoided judgements on his character as a person and candidate.
First, from Clinton:
"If I'm so fortunate enough to be the Democratic nominee, there will be a lot of time to talk about him. I was the first one to call him out. I called him out when he was calling Mexicans rapists. When he was engaging in rhetoric I found deeply offensive, I said 'basta!' Others are also joining in making clear that his rhetoric, his demagoguery, his trafficking in prejudice and paranoia has no place in our political system, especially from somebody running for president who couldn't decide whether or not to disavow the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke. So people can draw their own conclusions about him."
Followed by Sanders:
"This is what I think. I think that the American people are never going to elect a president who insults Mexicans, who insults Muslims, who insults women, who insults African-Americans. And let us not forget that several years ago, Trump was in the middle of the so-called birther movement, trying to delegitimize the president of the United States of America."
When Tumulty pressed Clinton on the question of "character" — on how one would describe "the character of a person who has said the sorts of things he has" — Clinton allowed that it was "un-American" and "not at all in keeping with American values." (Tumulty put the same follow-up to Sanders, but he did not address it.)
The question presents a tenuous semantic line for Democrats to walk, especially if Trump becomes the nominee. Asked about the issue afterwards, advisers from both campaigns, as well as officials from the Democratic Party, said that Clinton and Sanders could effectively call out Trump's policies and ideas as inherently bigoted and racist without calling him "a racist" — which, some aides said, would amount to the same kind of name-calling the GOP frontrunner has made his trademark.
"It's a pretty loaded question. And it's a question that doesn't generate a lot of substance," said Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committeee. "That was sort of an example of inviting them to name-call."
"It's not the label that's important," said Wasserman-Schultz.
Joel Benenson, pollster and top adviser for the Clinton campaign, said the former secretary of state has long made clear her view that Trump's comments and proposals are bigoted. "This is a word game," he told reporters after the debate. "She has been the first person to call him out on his disgraceful bigoted comments. She called them that. She denounced every Republican for not saying anything."
"When you call things bigoted," Benenson said, "voters in America know what that means."
On the Sanders side, aides offered a similar assessment.
"I don't think you can just paint with a broad-stroke brush," said his national press secretary, Symone Sanders. "But I think what the senator has said before — and he reiterated it tonight on the debate stage — is that there is no place for the kind of rhetoric Donald Trump is using. He has said it's riddled with Islamophobia, it's riddled with xenophobia, and it's riddled with bigotry and racist comments."
"It's strong language when you just flat-out call somebody a racist," she said. "Words matter."
Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, argued that in the end, character judgments of course matter — but that they should be left to voters alone.
"What [Sanders] has said quite clearly is that a lot of what Donald Trump has said is racist." But ultimately, said Weaver, "the core character question about whether he is personally a racist is, I think, really a decision for voters to make."
Alex Wong / Getty Images
MIAMI — Utah Sen. Mike Lee endorsed Ted Cruz for president on Thursday afternoon.
"It's time, my fellow Americans, to expect more. It's time to expect freedom," Lee said at the University of Miami. "It's time to elect Ted Cruz as the next president of the United States."
Two sources told BuzzFeed News earlier on Thursday of Lee's plans to endorse Cruz.
The Lee endorsement comes on the heels of Carly Fiorina's unexpected endorsement of Cruz on Wednesday. Both of these endorsements were rolled out in Miami, the home turf of Cruz's rival Marco Rubio, whose campaign is struggling ahead of the Florida primary where he is trailing Donald Trump.
Lee was one of five senators — three of whom are running for president — not to vote on a Senate bill about heroin treatment on Thursday morning in Washington.
Lee, a Tea Party stalwart and former Constitutional lawyer, was Cruz's top Senate ally in the 2013 effort to defund Obamacare, which resulted in a 16-day government shutdown. The episode turned Cruz into a right-wing rock star, but it also earned him many Republican enemies on Capitol Hill, and until now he hadn't received the endorsement of a single Senate colleague. Lee is the first sitting senator to formally back Cruz's candidacy.
Lee opted to stay on the sidelines for most of the 2016 primary race, which has featured three candidates whom he considers to be his closest friends in the Senate: Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio.
Rubio is polling well in Lee's home state of Utah, and his campaign had hoped to score the senator's endorsement.
Speaking to reporters at the University of Miami on Wednesday afternoon, Lee said he was "sending the signal that it’s time to unite" behind Cruz. He nudged Rubio to get out of the race, saying "If Sen. Rubio were asking me that, I would encourage him, and I do encourage him to get behind Ted Cruz." Lee said he had spoken with Rubio before endorsing Cruz, but didn't share details of the conversation, saying it was private.
The Cruz campaign declined to comment.
