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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Nicky Woolf in Reno, Nevada (now), Amber Jamieson in New York (earlier)

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio trade jabs and Trump speaks in Las Vegas - as it happened

Ted Cruz
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz greets supporters at a campaign rally in Henderson, Nevada. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters

Summary

Ted Cruz has finished speaking in Reno, so here’s where we stand on the eve of the Nevada caucuses:

  • Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio spent the day trading jabs, following the firing by Cruz of a spokesman who tweeted a fake video purporting to show Rubio saying there “weren’t answers” in the bible
  • Donald Trump gave plenty of red meat to an audience of 8,000 in Las Vegas, including saying he wanted to punch a protester “in the face”
  • Ted Cruz tacked sharply to the right on immigration, telling Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that he would deport all 12 million illegal immigrants
  • Rubio picked up endorsements from a wide swath of the Republican establishment following Bush’s dropping out of the race, including former vice presidential candidate Bob Dole
  • Glenn Beck described himself as a “nutjob”

Cruz compares Obama to Jimmy Carter. “Same failed economic policies. Same feckless and naive foreign policies.”

“Now why does that analogy give me so much hope and optimism,” he asks. He’s comparing himself to Reagan.

“It’s easy, by the way, to say you want to make America great again,” Cruz says. “You can even print it on a baseball cap. But the question to ask is: do you understand the principles that made America great in the first place?”

He’s telling his regulator/pesticide joke again. The joke is that the farmer wants to use pesticide on federal employees. To kill them.

“We will not weaken; we will not degrade; we will utterly and completely destroy ISIS.”

Ted Cruz promising “common-sense healthcare reform” that “stops government getting between us.” He promises to stop Common Core. “We will finally, finally, finally secure the borders and end sanctuary cities.”

“Now I’ve been told you folks in Nevada like your guns,” says Cruz. “Let me say as a Texan: I understand.” The crowd whoops and claps.

“We are one liberal justice away from the Supreme Court wiping away the second amendment and removing our right to bear arms,” Cruz says.

Cruz calls late supreme court justice Antonin Scalia a “lion of a man”.

“Last week, Donald Trump says he intends to be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians,” says Cruz. “I have no intention of staying neutral.”

“If you look at the roots of the word politics, there are two parts: poli, meaning many, and tics, meaning parasites,” Cruz says. “And that is a fairly accurate description of Washington DC.

He says there is “a spirit of awakening that is sweeping this country.” Asks everyone to look forward to January 2017. “If I am elected president, let me tell you what I intend to do on my first day in office.” The audience shouts “when!”

“If and when,” Cruz corrects himself. He promises to reverse every single of Obama’s executive actions. “The second thing I intend to do is to instruct the department of justice to open an investigation into Planned Parenthood, and persecute those responsible.

It’s possible he meant prosecute rather than persecute, but then it’s possible he meant what he said.

“How do you define a progressive: there’s an easy test,” says Cruz. “They don’t understand the scariest words in the English language: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’.”

“How about Glenn Beck,” Cruz says. “Isn’t Glenn Beck extraordinary.”

“There’s nothing elected officials like less than being held accountable for their words and actions,” Cruz says. “But that’s the best thing about the people: holding elected officials accountable.”

Boos for the first mention by Cruz of Marco Rubio.

Ted Cruz takes the stage in Reno

“God bless the great state of Nevada,” he says. “What an incredible pleasure this is. Thank you for coming out tonight; what a privilege.”

Trump, from earlier, on wanting to punch protesters in the face:

Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas, Nevada
Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas, Nevada Photograph: Mike Nelson/EPA

Beck still talking. Garner the trainee guide dog puppy has gone to sleep. But he seems to be getting around to the subject of Ted Cruz, so there might be light at the end of the tunnel.

Glenn Beck still talking. He just did a lengthy bit where he explained the internet to an invisible George Washington.

Trump’s finished his speech in Las Vegas. It sounds like it was pretty wild.

Now Beck’s doing an impression of George Washington’s mother. This is, if nothing else, at least entertaining.

“Please heed this warning: there are many people running - Donald Trump is dangerous,” says Glenn Beck in Reno, illustrating the adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Trump, who earlier today told reporters that he and the Pope were OK now, reviving his spat with Rome.

Updated

Glenn Beck is currently on stage at the Ted Cruz rally, claiming to have predicted 9/11 but “nobody listened.”

“I’m a nutjob,” he shouts. “I wear it as a badge of honor!”

Garner the trainee guide dog puppy barks.

Beck now saying he’d put Hillary Clinton “in cell block six”.

#2016

Meanwhile, back in Vegas, Trump is really hitting his stride.

By most measures, Marco Rubio should be running away with the race for the Republican nomination in Nevada, writes the Guardian’s Richard Wolffe.

Of all the Republicans left in the contest, the senator from Florida has a unique connection to Nevada’s culture and voters.

He lived in Las Vegas for three years as a child, until the age of 11, during which time he also embraced the Mormon faith that is popular in a state that borders Utah. Fully one quarter of GOP caucus-goers in the last presidential election were Mormon. (It was only later that the young Rubio convinced his family to leave the Church of Latter-day Saints to convert to Catholicism.)

In a state where Latinos make up 27% of the population, Rubio – as the only bilingual candidate in the field – should be making deep inroads into Nevada.

So how come Rubio is faring so poorly in a state he once called home, Wolffe asks.

Much of the answer lies in Rubio’s pitch to voters. At the heart of his campaign is a perfectly delivered stump speech that sells one idea: the American dream. Beyond his personal story of struggling with student debt, and his parents’ story as working-class immigrants, Rubio’s platform amounts to no more than motherhood and apple pie.

Yes, he delivers the now standard Republican promise to repeal Obamacare, increase military spending, lower taxes and beat Hillary Clinton.

But his ideas are so vacuous he makes Trump’s stump speech sound like a seminar at the Brookings Institution.

You can read the full article here.

Speaker of the house Paul Ryan is on Fox News right now, filled with optimism about the November elections:

Here’s a livestream of Trump in Las Vegas - there are 16,000 people watching this stream alone.

Donald Trump, in Vegas, striking out at Ted Cruz, who is set to come on stage in Reno soon:

Trump still going strong:

Crucial update from your faithful reporter at the back of the crowd at the Ted Cruz rally in Reno, where the support speakers have begun:

A mark of a Donald Trump rally is how often he has protesters ejected. It’s happening again in Vegas right now:

Another regular occurrence is attacks on the media - again, Trump in Vegas is staying true to usual form.

Another update from Ben Carsonland:

On Bill O’Reilly today, Ted Cruz noticeably hardened his stance on illegal immigration.

According to the Dallas Morning News:

Ted Cruz said tonight that he would use federal immigration officers to round up and deport all 12 million people in the country illegally — a markedly tougher stance that he has struck in the past.

“Yes, we should deport them,” Cruz told Fox host Bill O’Reilly. “That’s what ICE exists for. We have law enforcement that looks for people who are violating the laws, that apprehends them and deports them.”

Cruz also appeared on Hugh Hewitt today, and addressed the Rick Tyler incident in more detail:

It was unfortunate that that had to occur. Rick is a good man, and he has worked hard on this campaign, but Rick forwarded on social media a story that was written in the press that falsely attributed some negative sentiments by Marco Rubio about the Bible, and it turned out the story was false, and even more fundamentally, even if the story was true, we shouldn’t be forwarding it on, that from the very beginning of this campaign, I told every member of this campaign, we are going to run this campaign with the highest level of integrity and doesn’t matter if others engage in attacks, if others engage in insults, we are not going to go personal, we are going to stay focused on issues and substance, and we are not going to impugn the faith of any candidate and that unfortunately is what this tweet is impugning Marco’s faith.

That was wrong, and it’s not something that the campaign is going to tolerate. It wasn’t done maliciously, but it was a serious error of judgment and that’s why I asked for his resignation today because that is not conduct that will be tolerated on our campaign.

You can read the transcript of that interview here.

Another view of the Trump crowd:

Trump is speaking.

Jon Huntsman update: his daughter Abby, who is an anchor and reporter on Fox News, has taken to Twitter to say that people are taking her father’s comments to CNN somewhat too far:

Meanwhile, the crowd for Ted Cruz’s rally in Reno is increasing - though nowhere near Trump’s size in Vegas.

Trump has begun speaking in Las Vegas

In front of an enormous crowd.

Big though the crowd may be at the Cruz rally in Reno, it’s likely to be nothing compared to the arena crowd in Las Vegas for Donald Trump.

Warm-up speakers for Trump have begun.

The Guardian’s Dave Schilling is on the scene at the Trump rally.

On the Hugh Hewitt show earlier today, Donald Trump sounded a rare note of caution about tomorrow’s caucuses.

I’m in Nevada now, and I think you know, based on the polls, but of course, you never know what happens here. A lot of strange things happen here, and the caucus system is dangerous, to use a very nice word. It’s sort of a dangerous system. But we’ll see what happens. We should do pretty well tomorrow.

Trump also took the opportunity to pile in on Ted Cruz, saying his campaign “had a lot of problems with him” and describing the Texas senator as “a person that doesn’t like telling the truth.”

Then you see the other things. He’s done things with me that are incredible. You know, he did two robo-calls on election day in South Carolina, on election day, and they were terrible. One was on the confederate flag, and the other one was on, I believe, gay marriage. And they were very, very rough, and very, very unethical to do.

He plays hardball, but, and I like hardball, and I’ve met a lot tougher people than him, believe me, many, many, many times tougher. But he has a real hard time with the truth.

You can read the full transcript of the interview here.

Doors have just opened for Ted Cruz’s rally in Reno. The person on the door at first tried to turn away your faithful Guardian reporter - “you’re on the do-not-let-in list” was what he said - but the banishment appeared to be overturned by a supervisor.

The queue outside is large - a big crowd is expected.

Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs has brought this lovely piece by Ashley Parker in the New York Times to our attention.

Headlined “Voters might not miss Jeb Bush, but campaign reporters will,” the piece says:

By the time I was assigned to cover Jeb Bush, he was already becoming the exclamation mark that couldn’t.

Even his gait — long-limbed and newly gangly courtesy of the Paleo diet — and the way he seemed to curl slightly into his 6-foot-4 frame told the story: A campaign that was supposed to be “joyful” had become a slog.

He had taken to handing out small toy turtles to children he met along the way, in what often felt like a parable intended just for him — maybe slow and steady could, still, win the race.

Ultimately, the end came painfully, as he finished fourth in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, yet another disappointment in a year full of them. The nation, simply, did not want what he was selling.

But his presence will be missed in the 2016 race among those of us who covered him.

Even as he stumbled as a candidate, he was, in many ways, a reporter’s dream.

He held news conferences so frequently — nearly daily — that their absence felt newsworthy. And he seemed constitutionally incapable of not answering questions, even those he should not have. As aides tried to hustle him away, he would often pause and turn back, or roll down his car window, to give a final response, throwing political caution to the wind.

He gave out his email address easily and freely and, early on, even responded to queries sent there.

He could be curt with voters, and rarely coddled them. People who saw him speak in person almost always went away impressed, even if they were not convinced that they should vote for him.

He was your goofy dad, your awkward uncle. He bungled a policy rollout in Nevada when he called “Supergirl” “hot” (c’mon, Dad!), he was delightfully befuddled when his Apple Watch began ringing during a meeting with an Iowa newspaper, and he wiggled into a hoodie in a shaky YouTube video.

You can read the whole article here - it’s genuinely lovely.

Former ambassador and presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has told CNN’s David Axelrod that he “could get behind” Donald Trump as presidential candidate.

“If he’s the nominee, I’m a Republican and I tend to gravitate towards whomever the nominee is,” the former ambassador to China told Axelrod.

He’s strong on things like campaign finance reform and I think it’s going to take an extraordinarily unique leader to stand up and say that the way that we’re doing this on the campaign finance side is broken and we need to fix it.

I’d love to see someone stand up who’s a total outsider and see if that can be done because I think it would actually be a pretty healthy thing.

You can listen to the full podcast on CNN’s website here.

More from Ben Carson, who just released a statement to remind his supporters that yes, he is still running for president.

He’s on the O’Reilly factor on Fox News right now, where he says that things “could turn around pretty quickly.”

“Bill Clinton didn’t win anything until his sixth contest,” he adds.

Interesting: Roll Call is reporting that rep. Joe Heck, the top Republican candidate for the senate from Nevada, will not be caucusing for any candidates tomorrow.

Ahead of Tuesday’s Nevada Republican presidential caucuses, Rep. Joe Heck, the top Republican Senate candidate, was not in the state on Monday and did not plan to be there on Tuesday, either. His office said he was on the East Coast as Congress begins to trickle back from the Presidents Day recess.

Ryan Erwin, the former executive director of the Nevada Republican Party and the top strategist on Heck’s campaign, said Heck’s approach in the race was a focused one: “Keep your head down and get the job done.”

“We need to work with whoever the nominee is. We have enough to do to win this race than to get neck-deep in other politics,” he said. “It’s a race that has shifted so many times. For us to worry about how that shift might impact the electorate in our race doesn’t make sense.”

Unlike Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, who endorsed Marco Rubio, or Ohio’s Rob Portman, who endorsed his home state governor John Kasich, despite being locked in tough races, Heck has adopted the approach of New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, staying quiet as the presidential circus went through town.

Heck, who could still face a Republican challenger, is walking a fine line in trying to placate the conservative base while keeping an eye on a general election electorate whose support would be harder to earn on a GOP ticket headlined by a candidate such as Donald Trump.

You can read the article in full here.

Genn Beck is currently speaking at Ted Cruz’s rally in Elko, Nevada. Cruz is expected to speak there soon.

Meanwhile, in Ben Carson-land...

Ben Carson in Reno, yesterday
Ben Carson in Reno, yesterday Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

The Cruz vs Rubio spat is getting nastier by the minute.

Possibly in response to those biting comments from Rubio’s spokesman that Rick Tyler was “a really good spokesman who had the unenviable task of working for a candidate willing to do or say anything to get elected,” the Cruz camp is now striking back at Marco Rubio in a memo titled, in all-caps, “TED CRUZ IS THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO CAN BEAT DONALD TRUMP”.

In the memo, Jason Johnson, Cruz’s chief strategist, writes:

Three states into the Republican nominating process, the field has narrowed from seventeen to five candidates. And of the five candidates remaining, only three are viable: Cruz, Trump and Rubio.

Marco Rubio cannot beat Trump.
Trump can’t be beaten from the political Left, with a candidate who emphatically supports amnesty and who allows Trump to be considered the “conservative” in that context.
Rubio has yet to win a primary state. On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Senator Rubio was asked simply, “what state can you win?” Rubio replied, Florida on March 15.
Rubio’s stated strategy is to lose the first four primary states, lose every state on Super Tuesday, then lose every state on March 5, then lose every state on March 8, and then finally win in Florida (where he’s currently polling third, behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz).

Johnson goes on to say that “By March 15, 26 states or territories will have voted, and Rubio does not plan to win any of them. Almost 50% of the delegates will have already been allocated; Rubio will win almost none, and then he’ll hope for resurrection in Florida. That’s an even less plausible path to victory than Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s “wait for Florida” strategy in 2008.”

You can read the memo in full here.

It’s raining endorsements today for Marco Rubio, reports Sabrina Siddiqui. Senator Dan Coats of Indiana is the latest to jump on board.

Earlier, Rubio got the endorsement of senators Jeff Flake Orrin Hatch, and the second-hand, lightly used, still in good working condition endorsement of former vice-presidential candidate Bob Dole, who had previously backed Bush.

Maybe Bob Dole should run

Maria La Ganga has investigated the possible reasons why, despite his lead in the polls, Donald Trump could lose here in Nevada tomorrow: his lack of a ground game.

Donald Trump has one of the smallest and least organized ground campaigns in Nevada, according to Republican officials and operatives in the state, raising questions about the billionaire’s readiness for another caucus-based contest after his disappointing second-place finish in Iowa.

Texas senator Ted Cruz beat the brash real estate mogul in Iowa’s Republican contest with help from evangelical Christians and a superior network of volunteers; such workers are critical in states such as Nevada and Iowa, which choose their presidential nominees through a complicated caucus system.

Donald Trump leaves supporters cold as he accuses Rubio of ‘excess sweating’Read more

Eight days after his bruising loss, Trump won the New Hampshire primary, declaring: “We learned a lot about ground game in a week.”

The big question is whether he has learned enough.

Although the answer won’t become clearer until the Republican caucuses inNevada on 23 February, following the South Carolina primary on Saturday, the reality television star appears to be lagging behind his better organized competitors in reaching out to Nevada’s hard-to-corral caucus-goers.

“Elections are won on organization,” said Adam Khan, chairman of the Washoe County Republican Central Committee. “Trump has a lot of popularity, but if you look at the ground operation here, he just doesn’t have it.”

Exhibit A: Trump’s rally on 10 January at the downtown Reno Ballroom. It could have been a campaign manager’s dream – 3,000 or so cheering supporters, an energized army ready to be harnessed, a data trove for the all-important get-out-the-vote effort.

But Trump’s staff did not record e-mail addresses or phone numbers that day from the captive audience of potential donors, caucus-goers and volunteers. The rally became a squandered opportunity six weeks out from the caucuses.

When asked about that campaign blunder, Trump’s Nevada state director Charles Munoz replied: “I’ll have headquarters get back to you, or I’ll get back to you.” So far, that has not happened.

The Best Ground Game award here, Republican political consultant Erik Jimanez told Maria, goes to Marco Rubio.

He’s got a large number of campaign staff in Las Vegas and Reno. They’re doing a lot of outreach to the rural counties, which are tremendous in terms of who shows up on caucus day, much higher rates than in urban areas.”

You can read the whole story here.

A quick break from Nevada and the Republicans for a second: Atlanta’s Channel 2 Action News has just released a poll showing that Hillary Clinton has a commanding lead in Georgia over Bernie Sanders, with 72 percent to the Vermont senator’s 19.8.

Georgia is one of the 12 states - and one territory - which vote on March first: “Super Tuesday.”

Bernie Sanders in Boston today
Bernie Sanders in Boston today Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

More from Cruz Nevada campaign chair Adam Laxalt:

On the subject of the Rick Tyler controversy, he said: “They made the decision to move on with the communication director. That’s just is a strong statement of how important integrity is to Cruz and to the campaign….”

Asked about Trump and his campaign’s behavior during the nominating process, Laxalt said, “I think there’s absolutely a double standard. There’s a lot of stuff that happens with these huge presidential candidates ... There’s no accountability on all sides.

“Cruz tends to take the lion’s share of attacks from the media whenever anything is happening,” the state’s attorney general said. “It’s challenging. But despite all that, there’s a huge reservoir of consistent support in this state and across the country.”

Ted Cruz speaks at a campaign rally in Las Vegas
Ted Cruz speaks at a campaign rally in Las Vegas Photograph: David Becker/Reuters

My colleagues Sabrina Siddiqui, Maria La Ganga and Ben Jacobs have gone into much more detail on the scandal that led to Rick Tyler’s firing.

Cruz sacked Rick Tyler, his national spokesman, after he circulated a video on Sunday that allegedly showed Rubio walking by a Cruz staffer in a hotel lobby who was holding a Bible.

Although the audio was fuzzy, some assumed Rubio to have remarked: “Got a good book there, not many answers in it.” In fact, Rubio had said “all the answers in it”.

“This morning I asked for Rick Tyler’s resignation,” Cruz told reporters in Las Vegas over his promotion of a news story that falsely claimed his rival said “something negative about the Bible”.

“This was a grave error of judgment,” he said. “It turned out the news story he sent around was false. But I’ll tell you, even if it was true, we are not a campaign that will question the faith of another candidate.”

They also spoke to a spokesman for the Rubio campaign, Alex Conant, who reacted to the news by saying Tyler is “a really good spokesman who had the unenviable task of working for a candidate willing to do or say anything to get elected”. Owch.

They conclude that the Tyler firing “suggests Cruz may believe his campaign is vulnerable to the emerging narrative that he is a candidate willing to play dirty – a troublesome accusation for a candidate seeking to appeal to the religious right.”

You can read the full story here.

Updated

The controversy which led to his firing of campaign spokesman Rick Tyler does not appear to have dampened the enthusiasm of Ted Cruz’s diehard supporters, as this video shot by Maria La Ganga outside his Las Vegas rally this afternoon shows:

Ted Cruz mobbed by supporters at a Las Vegas YMCA as campaign controversy bubbles

Maria also was there for a candid briefing from Adam Laxalt, the Cruz campaign chairman in Nevada and the state’s attorney general, where he sought to manage expectations about the Texan’s performance in the Battle Born state.

Talking to reporters after Cruz’s Las Vegas rally midday Monday, he stressed Rubio’s ties to the state.

“Rubio should win this state,” Laxalt said, as supporters mobbed Cruz for selfies and handshakes in a YMCA gymnasium. “Rubio’s from here, he was raised here, he’s got family here and he’s campaigned here. So there should be an expectation that he should beat Trump here.

“With the caucus, it is so unknown who turns out,” Laxalt continued. In the 2012 Republican caucuses, “we only had 33,000 show up in the state, 16,000 from here, Clark County. Who turns out is up to anyone’s guess. I think if conservatives turn out, the Cruz is in a very, very good position.”

Laxalt said he has toured the state on Cruz’s behalf and “there were a lot of folks that didn’t even know we had a caucus. … I think that’s one disadvantage we face. A lot of voters just aren’t in tune with the caucus.”

Laxalt said Cruz planned to travel 750 miles on Monday, the day before the Republican caucuses, from Las Vegas to Reno to Elko, along with other small, rural towns in Nevada’s vast outback. “We’ve had to change venues,” he said. “Everything’s sold out, people are excited.”

Nate Cohn, over at the New York Times, makes an interesting spot regarding the new voter registrations following the Iowa caucuses.

Outside the Rubio rally I catch up with a few supporters. Brooke Sullivan is the manager of a cattle ranch in Reno; she says that before seeing the senator speak she was on the fence - “but now I’m convinced to vote; he rocked my socks.” She’ll be caucusing for him tomorrow.

Several people here weren’t impressed by what they called “dirty tricks” by the Cruz team. “I don’t like anything he’s done,” Sullivan says. “I don’t want a president who’s constantly apologising - these things are not done by mistake, so either he’s giving a back door wink, or hiring bad people.”

Janelle LaFleur, a housekeeping manager at a Reno hotel, had just caught up on the news about Rick Tyler’s firing when I speak to her. “It’s horrible,” she says. “It’s nice to see that [Cruz] has taken care of it - but it’s his campaign.”

“You don’t see Marco Rubio doing things like that,” she adds.

In Reno, Rubio, who has just finished speaking, was recounting his personal story - he was born in Las Vegas; his mother was a maid, his father a bartender. It’s a story that’s resonating extremely well here.

“We’re going to have a lot of work to do together. But we’re going to do it,” Rubio is saying in Reno. It won’t be easy, he says, but “there has never been a time when America had it easy.”

Each generation before us had problems, and they solved their problems. ... Today, America is governed by the most selfish leaders in the history of the republic.

The crowd again chants “Marco! Marco!”

“There are other people in this race - I’ve gotten to know them really well over 44 debates,” he jokes. “I like them, I do.” But, he says, there can’t be two Republican nominees. “Just one.”

“When you’re president you can’t be a divisive figure,” he says, obliquely striking at Trump and Cruz while couching it in critiques of Obama.

Rubio says he wants to campaign “in a way that does not necessitate pitting us against each other.” Applause in the room.

Updated

Some sad news: Missouri senator Claire McCaskill has just announced, in a blog post, that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer - though, happily, she says that she has been told by doctors that she is going to make a full recovery.

Her statement:

I very recently learned that I have breast cancer. It was detected through a regular mammogram. It’s a little scary, but my prognosis is good and I expect a full recovery. I will be in St Louis for the next 3 weeks receiving treatment. During this time my staff will continue to assist Missourians and I will be posting on my Senate website (McCaskill.senate.gov) how I would have voted on any matters that come before the Senate during my absence—which I’ll also enter into the Congressional record. Additionally, I’ll be submitting questions in writing for any missed Senate hearings.

Thank you for the honor of serving you in the Senate.

In Vegas, Cruz is hitting out more at the President than his Republican rivals - not surprising, considering how much humble pie he’s been forced to eat today by Rubio and Trump over his now ex-spokesman’s tweet.

“If we nominate somebody that 40 to 50 percent of our party can’t stand, we are going to lose to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders,” Rubio says.

Then, he makes his pitch:

We have to nominate someone who will bring us together, and I will bring us together faster than anyone else. We have to nominate someone not just who can bring us together, but someone who can bring new people in.

He points out that his mother was a maid; says when he stays at hotels on the campaign trail, the maids he meets know that. “We have to take that message to them.”

This part is crucial: “We have to tell them that what they hear about Republicans, about us only caring about the rich, is a lie: because, look at where I come from.”

“Rubio victory!” someone in the crowd calls out.

“You’re messing with my train of thought here,” Rubio says, grinning. “You know how much I love to repeat myself now I have to repeat myself again!”

Back in Reno, Rubio is hitting his stump speech talking-points beautifully. Hitting out at Bernie Sanders. “A few weeks ago I started saying Bernie Sanders should be president of Sweden,” he says. “And then Sweden got mad. Then I started saying he should be president of Norway. Then Norway got mad.” The audience laughs heartily.

The tone is ebullient.

Ted Cruz is speaking in Las Vegas

And you can watch a livestream here:

Updated

“I know you’re here today because you’re worried about the future of your county,” Rubio says. “You should be.”

Marco Rubio takes the stage in Reno

“Marco! Marco!” the crowd chants. “Don’t say polo,” the Florida senator jokes. “That game tortured me as a child.”

Donald Trump is piling in on Cruz too over Rick Tyler’s tweet:

Updated

Rubio is due to speak in Reno soon. Earlier, he spoke out obliquely against the actions of Rick Tyler.

Rick Tyler, the former national spokesman for the Ted Cruz campaign, was asked to resign by Cruz on Monday. According to Politico:

Cruz cited a social media posting from Tyler on Sunday about a comment Marco Rubio supposedly made about the Bible.

“Our campaign should not have sent it. That’s why I’ve asked for Rick Tyler’s resignation,” Cruz said.

The Texas senator was speaking to reporters on Monday, and said he’s spent the morning investigating what happened.

Tyler was on TV this morning apologising for his post.

...but it doesn’t appear to have been enough.

Updated

Hello and welcome to this afternoon’s live coverage of the eve of the Nevada Republican caucuses. I’m Nicky Woolf, and I’m in Reno, Nevada, taking over the blog from my colleague Amber Jamieson.

We have an action-packed afternoon for you as we gear up for this crucial first-in-the-west caucus.

Marco Rubio, who is picking up endorsements from previous Bush supporters left, right, and center, is about to speak at a campaign stop in Reno. Later today, Donald Trump will be speaking in Las Vegas, and I’ll be at a Ted Cruz rally tonight here in Reno.

Theoretically, it’s possible Ben Carson might make an appearance too. But don’t hold your breath.

As the great Ira Glass says: stay with us.

Ted Cruz fires spokesman Rick Tyler

BREAKING: Ted Cruz just announced he asked one of his top staffers, spokesman Rick Tyler, to resign after pushing a story that said opponent Marco Rubio criticized the Bible.

As we explained earlier this morning, the story stems from a video with pretty crappy audio, where Rubio walks past a Cruz staffer and compliments him for reading a the bible but then says, according to the subtitles of the YouTube clip:

“Not many answers in it. Especially in that one.”

Rubio’s team declared the story totally bananas, saying their candidate said the holy book had “all the answers in it”.

Tyler apologized in a Facebook statement earlier this morning:

I’ve deleted the post because I would not knowingly post a false story. But the fact remains that I did post it when I should have checked its accuracy first. I regret the mistake.

And now he has been forced to resign.

Updated

A new poll from Vermont shows very, very strong support for hometown hero Bernie Sanders in the Democrat primary -- while Trump is poised to win the state’s Republican vote.

The VPR poll shows Sanders winning 84% of the Democrat vote, compared to just 9% for Hillary Clinton. Sanders’ support jumps to a whopping 95% when counting only voters between 18-39.

While it’s no surprise that Sanders would win his home state, Clinton won 38% of the Democrat primary vote in Vermont back in 2008.

Of the 151 Republicans that responded, 32% said they support Trump. Rubio sits in second place, with 16%.

The poll was conducted between Feb. 3 and Feb. 17 and had 895 responses from across Vermont’s 14 counties. The margin of error rate is 3.3%.

GOP establishment feels the Rubiomentum

One of the most consequential political science works about modern American politics is “The Party Decides” which advances the thesis that party insiders often decide who the nominee is before voters do so. And, if the party still decides, it’s clear they are picking Marco Rubio.

In the aftermath of Jeb Bush’s decision to drop out of the Republican primary on Saturday night, GOP insiders are flocking to back Rubio. Former Kansas senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole announced his support for Rubio on Monday. Dole, the epitome of a party elder, had previously backed Jeb Bush.

Dole’s endorsement is the latest that Rubio has recieved in the past 48 hours. In addition to the nonagenarian former Senate majority leader, he has been endorsed by three senators, Dean Heller of Nevada, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona, Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas as well as a half dozen House members and other party luminaries like former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

Despite not winning a single primary so far, Rubio, whose best finish is razor thin second place over Ted Cruz in South Carolina, is clearly consolidating establishment support as alternative to Cruz and Donald Trump.

However, Rubio still doesn’t have the establishment lane to himself. Ohio governor John Kasich is still in the race and hoping to pick off delegates on March 1 states in advance of the Michigan’s primary on March 8.

Kasich has picked up a handful of additional endorsements in the past two days as well including former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge.

Updated

“When I look at you, I don’t see happiness,” a supporter said to John Kasich during this morning’s campaign event in Fairfax, Virginia.

Kasich quickly said this campaign made him “joyous.”

However, there was also an acceptance of the unlikeliness of him winning the nomination, saying he doesn’t pray to win, but instead prays “to be able to accept whatever is meant to be and carry out whatever the next responsibility I have is.”

The more I read the sentence “When I look at you, I don’t see happiness,” the more utterly bleak it becomes.

John Kasich at a campaign event in Fairfax, Virginia.

Commenters! We asked for you to hazard a guess on which are the “five critical issues” that Bernie Sanders will differentiate himself from Hillary Clinton on at today’s 3:30 press conference in Boston.

So far and FirasA and WarlockScott’s comments seem the most likely:

User avatar for FirasA

"differentiating his views with Hillary Clinton on five critical issues"
Could those be:
- Education (public college free/student debts)
- Toughness on Wall St / Income inequality
- 100% coverage (Healthcare)
- Environmental policy
- one or two social issues? (Death penalty - Marijuana)

User avatar for WarlockScott

1. Foreign Policy ( Dove vs Hawk)
2. Wall Street and Clinton's closeness to it
3. Education
4. Criminal Justice reform (Private Prisons, Death Penalty, Drugs)
5. Health
Bernie gonna hammer Clinton

Although, shout out to kattw for at least making us laugh.

User avatar for kattw

5 critical issues? Let's see...

1) Reduction of economic inequality
2) The war in Iraq
3) The need for reduced income inequality
4) The vote on the war in Iraq
5) How income inequality led to war in Iraq

Does Sanders even HAVE 5 issues that don't boil down to income inequality and a vote against going to war in Iraq?

A special congratulations post will be awarded to whichever commenter manages to nail Sander’s top issues before 3:30pm, so please keep offering up your suggestions.

A Carson supporter asks the candidate if he’d consider taking another position in government if he doesn’t win the Republican nomination – which, considering his poll numbers, is a reasonable question.

Carson didn’t rule out being someone’s vice-president, but kept his answer vague:

I’m not looking for a job. I had a very good, long and arduous career. I would always consult with the Lord. Remember, there’s a lot you can do outside the government, especially if you’ve got a platform.

I don’t know, if there was someone who was really compatible with me. And right now, I’m not really sure who that would be. I never close the door on anything, including being the next president.

Updated

Who won Nevada’s Latino vote on Saturday night?

Hillary Clinton won a modest but decisive victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday. And she won the black vote by a wide margin. Less clear is who won the state’s Latino voters.

The Sanders campaign was quick to spin Saturday night’s loss as a marginal success based on polling that showed he had not only made significant inroads with Latinos but also won the state’s Hispanic vote. Specifically, early entrance polls that gave Sanders an eight-point edge over Clinton among Hispanic voters.

On Sunday, a New York Times report raised questions around the arithmetic. The report quoted a memo from Latino Decisions, a polling firm the Clinton campaign used to tally Hispanic votes, which suggested that the math “didn’t add up”.

A precinct-by-precinct analysis by the Times’ data guru, Nate Cohn, suggested that Clinton may have won the Latino vote but not by the considerable margin she won in 2008:

“The actual election returns in Las Vegas’s Clark County hint at a different story. Analyzed neighborhood by neighborhood, they suggest that Mrs. Clinton might have won the Hispanic vote by a comfortable margin. She won about 60 percent of delegates in heavily Hispanic areas, a result that calls the finding of the polling into question.”

Why does it matter? Minority voters just may determine the Democratic party nominee, especially as the contests move to states with a more diverse electorate.

Will we ever get to the bottom of this?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Updated

Carson’s quiet and more laid-back demeanor and slow manner of speaking regularly gets slammed, with Donald Trump labelling him with his favorite insult: “low energy”.

But Carson shrugged off that criticism during a Virginia City town hall meeting:

“The ability to be calm, relaxed and controlled is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.

Carson then outlined what he would do if he was trying to “destroy America”, such as raising taxes, failing to look after veterans, failing to fix electric infrastructure and putting more people on welfare – noting that any similarity to what the current president is doing is purely “coincidental”, to many laughs.

Updated

Carson is now speaking about growing up poor and how education and belief in God helped turn his life around and gave him hope:

It matters what you do with the gifts that God has given you and how much energy you put into it.

The thing that bothered me most was poverty. I hated being poor. But once I understood that [it was OK] ... because I knew it was only temporary. I could change it. If you know you can change the situation, it doesn’t bother you as much as if you think you’re stuck.

Updated

Ben Carson slamming the media at a town hall rally in Virginia City, Nevada moments ago:

We’re living in a country, unfortunately, today where the media has become very irresponsible. They are the only business that is protected by our constitution. There’s a reason for that: they were supposed to be on the side of the people. They were supposed to be honest and not take sides … I always appeal to young journalists to shake off the bosses that they have and start working without an agenda and for the people.

Updated

GOP presidential wannabe and Ohio governor John Kasich frustrated female supporters by declaring this morning that he’d gotten elected to the Ohio senate in 1978 because of “many women who left their kitchens” to support him.

John Kasich: “How did I get elected? Nobody was ... I didn’t have anybody for me. We just got an army of people ... many women who left their kitchens to go out and go door to door and put yard signs out for me.”

Female supporter: “Your comment earlier about the women came out of the kitchen to support you? I’ll come to support you but I won’t be coming out of the kitchen.”

Kasich, who is trying to position himself as a Republican moderate, made the comment in Fairfax, Virginia. Yesterday, he signed a bill to block any Ohio state funding of Planned Parenthood.

Updated

After Jeb! Bush bowed out of the race on Saturday – not even ditching his glasses could save him – his staffers are also left jobless.

His chief analytics officer, Alex Lundy, tweeted out his feelings about Bush’s most bitter political enemy and started a handy job hunt:

Updated

The entire internet is currently being charmed by this delightful video of a 106-year-old woman visiting the White House and dancing with President Obama and Michelle Obama to celebrate Black History Month.

Sprightly Virginia McLaurin says that she never thought she’d live to see a black president and First Lady.

It’s an interesting reminder that in the next election there are a few possible first presidents that could occur: first female president (Clinton), first Jewish president (Sanders) or first Latino president (Cruz and Rubio).

Marco Rubio is displaying an interest in local issues ahead of tomorrow’s Republican caucus in Nevada, revealing his views on prostitution.

“I’m anti-prostitution ... I wish Nevada would make it illegal. But that’s their decision to make. I don’t agree with it,” he said ahead of an event in Elko.

Prostitution is legal in Nevada – and there are 19 licensed brothels – but millions of dollars of illegal prostitution, more than the legal sex work, occurs in the state every year.

But since Rubio believes in small government, he wouldn’t bring in laws to make it a federal offense.

“I think you can be against something and still say: ‘But I don’t want the federal government involved in federalizing something,’” said Rubio.

Updated

New Hampshire’s secretary of state confirmed the delegate count for the Republican convention from the states’s primary on 9 February, with Donald Trump picking up 11 delegates and John Kasich getting four.

The full list of results:

New Hampshire saw a record turnout at its Republican primary, with 542,459 votes cast.

Updated

As much as this election might seem uniquely American – from its Clinton-Bush tussle to the billionaire reality TV star Republican frontrunner – the AP notes that politics are similar to those seen in recent years in Europe:

Donald Trump – his bombast distinctly American – sometimes takes a nationalist stance that sounds a lot like the ‘blame the immigrant’ approach used by a growing cadre of European politicians as the continent deals with unprecedented waves of immigration and Islamic extremism.

On the left, Bernie Sanders espouses Scandinavian-style ‘democratic socialism’ that sounds radical to some American ears. But it has long been part of the political mainstream in Europe, where socialist governments come and go without particular fanfare.

Updated

This just landed in our inboxes from the Sanders camp:

Bernie Sanders will hold a news conference at 3:15 today in Boston differentiating his views with Hillary Clinton on five critical issues. Sanders also will accept an endorsement from a national grassroots organization.

The press conference will be held at the International Association of Ironworkers in Boston. No word yet on the “national grassroots organization” or the five critical issues.

Give us your suggestions on the five issues in the comments!

This just in from reporter Lauren Gambino, clarifying that our earlier update that Clinton had the day off was a miscommunication...

Hillary Clinton has no public events today, but alas, no rest for the weary. Not when there’s cash to be collected and important hands to shake.

The former secretary of state is in southern California today, where she’s scheduled to hold fundraisers in Studio City and Hancock Park. The fundraisers are part of a two-day swing in the state.

Her trip in the state began in northern California on Sunday where she was due to attend three fundraising events.

On the other side of the country, a group of mothers who have lost their children to gun violence and policing incidents as well as a team of civil rights lawyers are holding forums at churches and a library across South Carolina, ahead of the states Democratic primary on Saturday.

Updated

John Kasich speaking right now at an event in Fairfax, Virginia (attended by 1,000 people, he claims):

I labored in obscurity for literally 100 straight days. I told everybody: look, you just watch what’s going to happen in New Hampshire. I’m going to talk to people about my record and I’m going to talk to people about my heart … If you’ve got the head without the heart, you can’t win, and if you’ve got the heart without the head, you’re probably not qualified to run things.

Updated

To Fairfax, Virginia, where Congressman Tom Davis is hustling for his friend John Kasich. Hustling, in this case, means speaking about when Kasich was head of the House budget committee.

“John was able to bring that Republican caucus together for a vote that brought a balanced budget,” Davis says.

“We got the Republicans to agree to a balanced budget. We got the Senate on board. We got John Kasich leading and negioating with President Clinton … we got it passed, we got it into law.

“Together, Republicans and Democrats made some of the tough choices … that led us to four straight years of balanced budgets, running surpluses, something we haven’t seen since.”

Updated

If you were wondering why no Hillary Clinton events appear on the rundown of campaign stops in our last post … she has no public events scheduled today. [edit: we wrongly believed Clinton was having a rest day, but have updated with her fundraising schedule above]

Updated

A plethora of political campaign events are, of course, being held today. Here’s a rundown:

10am ET: John Kasich holds a town hall at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia: the Ohio governor is concentrating on some unlikely states in his attempt to stay in contention.

11.10am ET: Obama meets state governors. (Not technically election related, but who knows what they’ll bring up?)

9.30am PT/12.30pm ET: Ben Carson town hall in Virginia City, Nevada.
11am PT/2pm ET: Ted Cruz holds a rally in Las Vegas with state attorney general Adam Laxalt.

12pm PT/3pm ET: Donald Trump rally in Elko, Nevada.

12.30pm PT/3.30pm ET: Marco Rubio holds a campaign rally in Reno, Nevada.

4.30pm ET: Bernie Sanders hosts a rally at University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

4.30pm CT/5.30pm ET: Bill Clinton holds rally for wife Hillary in Dallas, Texas.
7pm PT/10pm ET: Donald Trump rally at South Point Arena at Las Vegas, Nevada.
7pm PT/10pm ET: Cruz holds a Reno rally … with Attorney General Laxalt.

Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been busy trying to court civil rights leader Al Sharpton – with Sanders popping up to Harlem for lunch and Clinton joining him for a chat last week.

But Sharpton spoke to Politico about Donald Trump – who he knows from years of power broking in New York City – and compared him to the infamous boxing promoter Don King:

The best way I can describe Donald Trump to friends is to say if Don King had been born white he’d be Donald Trump … Both of them are great self-promoters and great at just continuing to talk even if you’re not talking back at ’em.

Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House, following a weekend that saw Jeb Bush hang up his glasses after losing to Trump in South Carolina, and Hillary Clinton locking down the black vote and claiming Nevada in a decisive 52-47 win over Bernie Sanders.

Now it’s time for the old state switcheroo, with tomorrow’s Nevada Republican caucus and a Democratic primary in South Carolina on Saturday.

In Nevada, polling data from Real Clear Politics shows Donald Trump with 42% support, Ted Cruz at 20% and Marco Rubio at 19%. It echoes the result in South Carolina, where Trump sewed up the lead and Cruz and Rubio basically tied for second.

The battle for second place behind Trump is getting dirty, with Cruz’s spokesman Rick Tyler forced to backtrack overnight after pushing a story that said Rubio criticized the Bible.

In a video with pretty crappy audio, Rubio walks past a Cruz staffer and compliments him for reading a book (surprise, it’s the Bible) but then says, according to the subtitles of the YouTube clip:

“Not many answers in it. Especially in that one.”

Rubio’s team declared the story totally bananas, saying their candidate said the holy book had “all the answers in it”.

Tyler apologized in a Facebook statement:

I’ve deleted the post because I would not knowingly post a false story. But the fact remains that I did post it when I should have checked its accuracy first. I regret the mistake.

Can Sanders get the delegates required?

Not only did Clinton win Nevada, but she’s beating Sanders in the delegate race, with 502 to his 70 so far.

Plus, of those delegates, Clinton’s got 451 superdelegates (party leaders who can vote regardless of their state’s allegiance) compared to Sanders’ 19.

There are 2,383 delegates needed to decide the Democratic nomination. Nearly that many will be allocated in March alone, and many of the upcoming primaries favor Clinton.

“The odds of his overtaking her growing increasingly remote,” says a New York Times report today.

But Jeff Weavers, Sanders’ campaign manager, reckons the Vermont Senator will be OK post 1 March, telling AP:

It’s frontloaded for her, but we have the ability to stay in the long game.

Will Ben Carson drop out after Nevada?

The retired neurosurgeon is busy claiming his campaign isn’t beyond resuscitation, after a Daily Beast reporter tweeted that he will bow out on Wednesday.

“Right now, it is way too early in the game to give up. If you were supposed to select a nominee after just three contests, then why did w go through all of this?” said Carson on Sunday.

Plus, with Bush out of race, where will his supporters – and money – go?

Today we’ve got Lauren Gambino in Charleston, South Carolina, Sabrina Siddiqui hanging in Vegas with Rubio, Nicky Woolf in Reno and Paul Lewis and Sam Levin also hanging in Nevada.

Bill Clinton will be stumping for Hillary in Laredo and Dallas, Texas, ahead of the state’s 1 March primary.

Are you ready for today? Son-of-Donald, Eric Trump, sure is.

Updated

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