Okay - that’s it for tonight from the two town halls, one forum, one campaign dinner and a rally. Phew! You can read this wrapup of the Republican’s events, and another wrapup coming soon of the Democrats’. Have a good night and see you tomorrow!
From a Democratic campaign dinner in Vegas:
Bill Clinton: “I often think that I am useless to Hillary in this campaign because i’m not mad at anybody.”
Not just that, the GOP frontrunner is more positive about Michael Jackson than either the Pope or George W. Bush. https://t.co/Ovz444QSNi
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 19, 2016
Donald Trump expresses his admiration for McDonald’s because of its cleanliness and mentions he had Kentucky Fried Chicken the other night as well.
From a Democratic campaign dinner in Vegas:
Two school teachers, Jany Ortiz and Chalese Holland, were bidding for several items. Holland said she was leaning toward Clinton but waiting to hear final arguments at the caucus on Saturday before making a final decision.
So what are the issues on which she’ll decide?
“For me it’s definitely equality for women, equal pay and education. And civil rights. Hillary is stronger and has the experience,” she said.
Ortiz has already made up her mind: “I’m for Hillary. I like that she’s a champion of education. I think it’s time for a woman to be president”.
Still, they both thought it was good that Sanders ran and was “forcing us to think about things that weren’t being talked about”.
And who worries them most as an opponent to Clinton in the general election? Rubio. Ortiz said she voted for Nevada’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, in part because he’s a Latino but also because she agreed with him on a lot of issues. “There might be a lot of Latinos who would swap parties to vote for Rubio,” she said.
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I don’t think the Castros can live forever — unless they’ve found Ponce de León’s fountain of youth...
– Hillary Clinton, on Cuba
As the crowd grew at the Laborers International Union Local 872 headquarters - where Hillary Clinton was scheduled to hold an evening rally - Clinton and Bernie Sanders were answering tough questions during the Telemundo/MSNBC televised town hall across town.
The temperature dropped and flat screens projected the town hall meeting in real time, but only Clinton’s half.
When she was asked to respond to Sanders’ criticisms of her husband’s record during his two terms in the White House, first she defended him as “the president who created 23 million jobs,” and argued that “African-American families and Latino families had an even higher increase in income.”
Then she went on the attack: “I know that senator Sanders has also attacked President Obama, called him weak and disappointing ... I just don’t know where all this comes from. Maybe because senator Sanders wasn’t really even a Democrat until he decided to run for president.”
That tart response didn’t go over well with the television audience, which began to boo the former secretary of state. But here at union headquarters, the angry hoots were drowned out – loud and fast – by cheers from Clinton’s supporters.
Many sported orange union T-shirts. Two tractor-trailer trucks were hung with signs that urged, “Caucus for Hillary” and “Caucus conmigo” – outreach to two of the most important groups for any Democrat seeking office in Nevada.
So it was no surprise that the biggest cheers from the growing rally crowd came when Clinton was pressed to explain how soon she will implement comprehensive immigration reform and when she went after the Republican front-runner for his anti-immigrant comments earlier in the presidential cycle
Local billionaire Donald Trump has argued that “the Mexican government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists,” and he has promised to erect a wall along the US-Mexico border.
“I was the first person to call out Donald Trump,” she declared on screen. “I said basta.”
And the live audience erupted.
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From the CNN Republican town hall:
After a commercial break, CNN managed to feed the killer question to Anderson Cooper about Buzzfeed’s report that Trump supported the war in Iraq in 2002.
Trump mumbled something about how he wasn’t a politician, which makes no real sense. “By the time the war started, I was against it,” he said at the end.
Now as a candidate for commander-in-chief, that counts as a unique answer. Perhaps a President Trump would pull back the troops just before war begins, in case of a similar change of mind?
From a Democratic campaign dinner in Vegas:
Carolina Chacon, at 27 is a reluctant Clinton supporter. She likes what she hears from Sanders but thinks that if he’s elected, Congress will stop him in his tracks.
“If Barack Obama, who won by a big margin, couldn’t get things done, how can Bernie? I don’t necessarily trust Hillary but she knows the system a lot better. But on a lot of issues she’s too moderate for me,” she said.
Chacon added that she felt Clinton had been late in fighting for a better immigration policy and that “on financial reform, she hasn’t gone far enough for me”.
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From the MSNBC Democratic town hall:
Millennials need to be banned from asking questions at town halls (and I say this as a millennial). That became abundantly clear when one said to Clinton: “My generation is a little wary of placing another politician in the White House.”
What, exactly, should we place in the White House then? Bankers, teachers, kittens, millennials? Fortunately, it’s not constitutional for the latter to be president.
Clinton says she won't raise retirement age
“I will not do that,” Hillary Clinton says, of raising the retirement age for social security. “That is ruled out for me.”
Clinton says that those who most benefit from social security benefits are people who have worked physical, repetitive jobs for decades. “Their lifespan is much lower than people like you or me,” she says, and that raising the retirement age would make it all the more difficult for those people to scrape by.
From the CNN Republican town hall:
Barbara Bush must have left the CNN town hall, because the room seemed silent as Donald Trump doubled down on his attack on her son, George W Bush, for his decision to invade Iraq. Trump described that choice – not once, but twice – as the single worst decision in US history.
He even suggested it might be the worst decision in world history: in addition to destroying Iraq and Syria, Bush’s decision apparently destroyed Europe as we know it, and is about to turn Germany into a German-free zone.
That would be an ironic turn of events, given how grateful Germans are to Barbara’s husband for supporting German reunification.
A senior at University of Nevada-Las Vegas asks Hillary Clinton about the need for “a rebel” who will help millennials get out of the rut of the economic collapse of 2008.
“I know that you think, with good cause, everything is messed up,” Clinton says. “I have the deepest respect for and feeling for young people who came out of the Great Recession ready to get on with their lives and instead found barriers everywhere.”
“I have a very specific plan to make college affordable, and I also have a really aggressive plan to get student debt down,” Clinton continues. “I think it’s really important for young people to understand, ‘yeah, we’ve got to have big ideas!’... and then say, ‘how are we gonna get it done?’”
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Trump refuses to answer explicitly a question from a voter about whether George W. Bush deliberately lied to order to get support from the American public. The Republican frontrunner dismisses Anderson Cooper reiterating a statement Trump made in the last debate, saying “there are a lot of people that think that. Bottom line is there were no weapons of no mass destruction.” Trump reiterated “I don’t know what he did” and backed away from his statement at the debate, saying “I’d have to look at some documents.”
The Republican frontrunner has long insisted that he was the only candidate opposed to the Iraq War in the beginning. However, in a radio interview with Howard Stern just uncovered by Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski from 2002, Trump said he supported an invasion.
From a Las Vegas campaign dinner for Sanders:
A silent auction at the back of the dinner hall offers the usual array of unalluring items to bid on. Gift baskets, ceramics and vouchers to a car wash. But a coffee with Congresswoman Dina Titus, author of Bombs in the Backyard about nuclear testing in Nevada, attracted a flurry of bids.
Osvaldo Fumo, a lawyer and candidate for the state assembly, made a $50 bid for a clutch of old magazines. He’s wavering on how to vote at Saturday’s caucus. “We have four children and our eldest so was selling us on Sanders,” he said. “I have been leaning toward Bernie when I hear him speak. But what I am happy about is Bernie pulled the campaign to the left.”
Fumo’s wife, Ellen, is backing Clinton. “My children keep sending me things to get me against Hillary,” she said. “I like Hillary. Hillary has experience. She can go face to face with anyone.”
Her husband said he was concerned that some of the opposition to Clinton was sexist.
“They see a woman who’s aggressive and strong and because she’s a woman they call her a bitch,” he said.
From the MSNBC Democratic town hall:
A Sanders supporter asked a skeptical question twofer of Clinton, focusing on paid speeches and same-sex marriage. When Clinton said that she’ll release paid speech transcripts “when everybody else does the same”, the Sanders supporter didn’t relent, asking her to please just release those questions so people “know where you stand.” As for a question on why she was so slow to come out for same-sex marriage, she said she’s “evolved”.
Both questions served to sew and underscore a distrust of Clinton, something Sanders supporters have done in other town halls. It was a more cleverly disguised version of something a Sanders supporter “asked” Clinton at a January town hall when he had her explain why millennials supposedly don’t like her and “think [she’s] dishonest.” But women in positions of power are more likely to be seen as untrustworthy – and these questions, while more substantive than some of what’s come before, play into that narrative.
Trump is asked about what he will replace Obamacare with. He mentions health saving accounts as well as allowing health insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. There are not many other details other than Trump reiterating his debunked claim that he is “self funding” and attacking other politicians for taking money from drug companies and health insurance companies.
Trump: I can do whatever I want
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 19, 2016
A voter asks Trump about his temperament and he responds by giving a portion of his stump speech where he brags about his toughness.
He also warns of the threat of ISIS and says the group harkens back to medieval times. Trump also insisted his “tone” would be different once he’s elected.
From the CNN Republican town hall:
Surprise! The first three questions for Donald Trump were all about his epic debate with the Pope. Just when you think you’ve heard everything about the non-story, Trump explains the dispute with an entirely new – and probably entirely cooked up – conspiracy theory. “Somehow the government of Mexico spoke with the Pope,” he says. (Of course, they may just have talked to him as a visiting head of state, and leader of the Catholic church.)
But Trump was not done there. He suggested the otherwise infallible Pope was also a hypocrite. According to Trump, the Pope is in no position to oppose the Trump Wall across the Mexican border. “He’s got an awfully big wall at the Vatican” Trump said. To be fair, the current Pope did not install the wall that circles the Vatican. He also did not force the Italian government to pay for it.
To soften his blows, Trump offered these comforting words about his dispute. “I don’t like fighting with the Pope, actually” he told Anderson Cooper, before praising the Pope in ways that only Trump finds attractive. “He’s doing a very good job. A lot of energy” he said. “I like him as a personality.”
Other people like the Pope as a moral and religious leader. Donald Trump likes him as a personality.
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Hillary Clinton vs. the pope?
Host Jose Diaz-Balart asks Clinton about the pontiff’s remarks on immigrants, and about her opposition to keeping children sent over the border in the United States.
“He has talked about immigrants and migrants everywhere in the world - he came to our border to talk about it again, and I really appreciate him doing that,” Clinton says of the pope. “We need to end family detention, I’ve been saying that for a very long time. We need to close the private family detention centers... we need to make sure that every child has due process and is guaranteed counsel.”
“There is a process, we have to follow the process, but at the same time, we don’t want children being handled by smugglers and traffickers,” Clinton says.
From the MSNBC Democratic town hall:
When a host pitched Clinton a softball question about Sanders’ criticizing her husband’s record in office and – notably – whether she should really have to answer to her husband’s record, she didn’t take the bait. Instead of talking about the gendered treatment she was receiving in being asked to answer for her husband’s politics, she went straight for Sanders’ throat over progressive bonafides.
But first she defended her husband’s record (something that the moderator was suggesting she shouldn’t have to do!) by saying that he was the president who created 23 million jobs, among other things. Then she moved to a familiar attack: Sanders’ criticism of her husband was similar to his of President Obama
Clinton is very effectively driving a wedge between Obama and Sanders in the minds of voters, as she did in the last Democratic debate. And that, not questions of whether it’s sexist for her to be tied to her husband’s record, is what she wanted to emphasize tonight.
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From the CNN Republican town hall:
Donald Trump tried to play down his spat with Pope Francis.
“I don’t like fighting with the Pope,” Trump said and insisted that the Holy Father was “a wonderful guy.”
After the Pope implied that the Republican frontrunner was not a Christian in a press conference today, Trump fired back and called the Pontiff’s remarks “disgraceful.” The real estate mogul insisted that the Pope had been misled about by the Mexican government when he condemned “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges.”
Trump also noted that “they’ve got an awfully big wall at the Vatican.”
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders punted on whether Apple should be required to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.
“I see both sides,” Clinton says. “I think most citizens see both sides. This is why you need people in office who can try to bring folks together to find common ground.”
“Back then, it was a state-by-state determination, and I’m happy that most states have understood and moved in the right direction,” Clinton says of her opposition to giving undocumented immigrants drivers licenses in 2007.
From the CNN Republican town hall:
There was no sign of Jeb dropping out here at this South Carolina town hall: he said he likes country music.
“What do I like to do to relax?” Jeb offered that he likes hanging out with his grand-daughters, speed golf, and reading books about this father.
Hillary Clinton takes the stage in Nevada at MSNBC's town hall
The former secretary of state receives a mixture of polite claps and standing ovations, before taking a few questions from Chuck Todd and Jose Diaz-Balart on the supreme court. First: Does she regret attempting to filibuster Samuel Alito’s nomination?
“I spoke against him I voted against him but we had a process - a nomination was made and we went through the process,” Clinton says. “That’s the way the senate operates - you get to have a vote.”
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From the CNN Republican town hall:
Jeb Bush made an impassioned plea for more brain research (“a moonshot”) to deal with drug addiction and autism, among other things. “We need to discover the brain!” he says, putting his finger on an unusual feature of the Bush male brain: their exceptional capacity for mangling the English language.
From the MSNBC Democratic town hall:
When Sanders faced a question on affordable child care, he tied it back masterfully to his message of economic inequality saying that, while Republicans want to protect the richest Americans from higher taxes, he would use those taxes directly to pay for affordable child for all Americans.
In particular, he objected to paltry compensation that educators and caretakers receive: “We need a well-trained, well-educated and well-paid work force,” he said, “and this means changing our country’s priorities.”
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Chuck Todd asks about rationing of health care in Canada and the United Kingdom as a potential negative model for Sanders’ proposal of a single-payer health care system in the United States.
“The insurance companies and the drug companies and their mouthpieces go around and tell people how terrible health care is all around the world,” Sanders says. “You wanna talk about rationing? You’ve got 29 million people with no health insurance - how’s that for rationing?”
“It is rationing based on money!”
From the MSNBC Democratic town hall:
Sanders, when asked about Islamophobia, took a rare personal tack, reminding listeners that his dad came from Poland at the age of 17.
But then, he cleverly found a way to tie it back to race relations and to build an alliance with Obama fans by talking about the birtherism faced by the president, whose father came from Kenya. “No one asked me whether I’m a citizen,” Sanders observed. “Gee, what’s the difference is? Maybe the color of our skin!”
Two good points for Sanders in areas in which he needs to prove himself.
From the CNN Republican town hall:
Jeb Bush faced a tricky question about whether he would pick a US supreme court justice with 11 months left in office. Bush diligently answered a totally different question: would you pick a nominee with an established record?
After filibustering for several minutes, Bush outlined a completely contradictory position. “I’m an Article 2 guy,” he said first, referring to presidential powers (and, in particular, the power of the president to appoint US supreme court nominess). Bush said that he would nominate a justice for confirmation were he president, but then added: “in this current environment it’s unlikely the Senate would provide the necessary consent.”
So he was for a nomination before he was against it – as his brother used to say about his opponent, John Kerry, in 2004.
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A young woman asks Sanders, a former independent, how he would support other third-party candidates and help break apart the monopoly of the two-party system.
“I probably know more about that issue than any human being in the United States of America,” Sanders says. “I chose to run proudly in the Democratic primary and caucus process and I look forward to winning that process, but clearly as a nation I think that we flourish when there are more opinions out there.”
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From the MSNBC Democratic town hall:
Another Sanders faux pas came when he began to interrupt a young woman asking him a question on college affordability, but she interrupted him back, saying “Wait, I”m not finished.”
It’s not a good look for anyone at a town hall and least of all for Sanders, who’s known for his propensity to shout in debates. That’s something that Clinton, it’s been widely noted, doesn’t do, and likely couldn’t get away with doing.
An Iraq veteran asks Bernie Sanders about veterans’ issues: “How will you ensure that support translates into jobs” for veterans?
“Everybody thanks the veterans, but sometimes when they come home, we have a tendency to forget about them and the struggles that they go through,” Sanders says. After reminding viewers that he chaired the senate veterans committee, Sanders declares that “we have got to make sure that the skills that they have acquired in the military are transferable to the civil society, and that is not often the case.”
“There’s a lot to be done, but the bottom line is, when people put their lives on the line to protect us, we have got to do everything to help them.”
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Back at the CNN Republican town hall:
Jeb Bush was second the white chair at the CNN town hall, which meant that it was his turn to answer the Pope question: the first, if not the only question of the night for CNN.
“I don’t question people’s Christianity,” said Bush, who concedes that he is himself Catholic. Bush diligently refused to comment on Trump’s faith, though. “He knows what his faith is and if he has a relationship with the Lord, fantastic. If he doesn’t, its none of my business.”
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From Guardian US columnist Lucia Graves, watching the MSNBC Democratic town hall:
Sanders, when asked if he identifies as a feminist early in the night, responded he considers himself “a strong feminist” – adding that Gorida Steinem made me “an honorary woman”. But then, he quickly and predictably pivoted to economics, nothing that women make 79 cents on the dollar to men, and that minority women make considerably less.
It was a curious choice of pivots for Sanders, who had just dodged a question from a Clinton supporter who criticized him for ignoring the politics of race in favor of economics. That questioner had asked him pointedly how creating jobs for low income Americans could stop, for instance, police brutality. Sanders’ response started weakly with “I suggest you go to my website, which has a very extensive program,” but ended with an acknowledgement that “we need real police reform in this country” and that the “federal government can play a major role”.
Sanders will need to do better than that on questions of race and gender if he wants to upset Clinton’s once-presumed lock on non-white voters, something he’s better positioned to do now than ever.
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From the CNN Republican town hall:
The second-most bizarre moment of the Kasich segment of the Republican town hall came at the end when Anderson Cooper askedJohn Kasich about his musical taste. The stodgy governor said Fall Out Boy, Twenty One Pilots and Pink Floyd. Specifically, The Wall – now that’s a musical range.
Still, it wasn’t the most bizarre moment: that was when Cooper promptly pivoted from the music question to one about Kasich losing both his parents to a drunk driver. It was an even more jarring combination than Kasich’s musical tastes.
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The Conservative Review forum tonight was supposed to feature three presidential candidates: Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. However, scheduling issues have forced Rubio to cancel his appearance. This leaves only Cruz and Carson appearing. A number of other prominent conservative figures are there though, including Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, and Sean Hannity.
Brooke Sammon, a spokeswoman for Rubio’s campaign, said the senator had to back out due to a scheduling delay. South Carolina senator Tim Scott and congressman Trey Gowdy, two of Rubio’s prominent backers in the state, attended on his behalf.
Bernie Sanders says that he considers himself a “strong feminist.”
“In fact,” he says in response to a young woman who asked him about intersectional feminism, “Gloria Steinem made me an honorary woman many, many years ago. I accepted it.”
Sanders points out that women make 79 cents on the dollar compared to men, and minority women make even less. “This has nothing to do with economics. It has everything to do with sexism.” Sander follows up by stating that he would continue to fight for legislation to address pay inequity in Congress.
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At the Conservative Review in Greenville, South Carolina, Ted Cruz gave the dire warning that supreme court justice Antonin Scalia’s death put the entire country at risk. “Our very Bill of Rights hangs in balance, one justice away from five justice radical left wing majority the likes of which our county has never seen.”
He warned about the Supreme Court ending all restrictions of abortion, allowing the government to ban guns, and removing monuments to the Ten Commandments on public property.
“If we increase the minimum wage, how do we ensure that the cost isn’t passed on to the consumer?”
“Here is my radical idea - you ready for a radical idea? If a person works 40 hours a week, that person should not live in poverty,” Sanders says. “That’s the radical idea. We need to raise the minimum wage, and that is $15 over the next few years.”
“The truth is, yes, you may end up paying a few cents more for a hamburger at McDonald’s,” Sanders admits. “When we put money into the hands of working people, they can go out and buy products... and when they do that, they create jobs.”
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Back in the Republican town hall on CNN ...
Kasich was s asked by an undecided voter – who congratulated him on his endorsement from the state paper – which of his rival candidates he would ask to join his cabinet as president. “I’m not going to be measuring the length of drapes,” Kasich said. “I’ve got a long way to go.”
Then he measured said drapes by saying that he likes Chris Christie very much.
Kasich ended with his second offer of a job to a voter at this town hall. With only a dozen or so seats around the Cabinet table, this jobs-for-votes strategy is not going to take him very far in this primary season. No wonder he won the tiny New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch: it may be the only place on the electoral map where this pitch could actually work.
Kasich was then asked by a gun store owner about his support for the second amendment: turns out that it’s rock solid, except for the issue of background checks for mental health, which Kasich thinks is an important factor in the recent wave of mass shootings. (That is not what the rest of the Republican field has said this election year.)
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Bernie Sanders: "We have got to make police forces look like the people they are serving."
A question from a voter who plans to cast his ballot for Hillary Clinton asks about Bernie Sanders’ plan to combat systematic racism.
“I would suggest that you go to my website,” Sanders says, “which has a very, very extensive program regarding the issues that you talked about, so let’s talk about it.”
“We’re going to invest in education and jobs, not more jails and incarceration. Number two, every person in this country - white, black, latino - is disgusted when we turn on the television and we see videos of unarmed people, often African American, being shot,” Sanders says. “We need real police reform in this country. The federal government can play a major role.”
“If a police officer breaks the law, like any other public official, then that police officer wil be held accountable. We have got to demilitarize local police departments, so that they do not look like occupying armies. We have got to make police forces look like the people they are serving.”
“I know that I date myself that in 1963, I was there in Washington for the March on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King.”
“What is your criteria for deportation?” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asks Bernie Sanders.
“We should unite families, not divide families,” Sanders says. “We should not be sending people back to a country where they barely member, with a language they might not even be able to speak.”
A woman whose family is “mixed status” - she’s an American citizen, but her husband is undocumented, and has been living in Mexico for six years after being deported - asks senator Bernie Sanders “what you would do to bring my husband home.”
“What you just described is unacceptable and should not be happening,” Sanders says. “We will use our executive office and power as much as we can,” he continues.
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Now, while the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui and Ben Jacobs file from the Republican town hall...
I’ll be liveblogging MSNBC’s competing Democratic town hall event. First up, senator Bernie Sanders, who isn’t so sure where Hillary Clinton came up with the “single-issue candidate” idea.
“If she happened to come to one of my rallies - which she has not yet - she would hear me speaking for about an hour and half,” Sanders told host Jose Diaz-Balart, “and we would cover 15 to 20 separate issues. I’m not sure where she comes up with the single issue idea.”
A man whose medical insurance couldn’t transfer to South Carolina, and who found prohibitively expensive rates in the state, asks John Kasich about his “specific inputs to what you’re going to substitute for Obamacare if you’re elected?”
“The problem with Obamacare is, it does not control the cost of health care,” Kasich says. “Secondly, health insurance costs in my state have gone up by an average of 80 percent... and finally, it’s trapped small businesses who don’t want to get trapped in the web of Obamacare.”
“A pre-existing condition will never be acceptable” to take away someone’s health insurance coverage under a Kasich administration, he says. “What wwe want to do is total transparency” on hospital costs and expenses, Kasich says. “What we’re saying is, if you can provide quality to a patient, whether you’re a hospital or a health care provider... we have to get into the business of high quality and low prices driven by the marketplace.”
John Kasich was making a serious move onto the Pope’s lawn, talking again about addressing mental health issues, domestic violence, and human trafficking – or what he calls “those who live in the shadows”.
But when pushed on whether he’ll appoint a US supreme court justice based on their moral judgment, rather than legal qualifications, Kasich refuses to play ball. He stresses temperament, fairness, and the need “not to make law, but interpret the law.” At this rate, Kasich is losing this year’s trophy for pandering to primary voters.
A Southern Baptist attorney asks Kasich about a supreme court nominee - “would you nominate someone who would rule and vote based on their moral convictions?”
“I’ve appointed well over a hundred judges,” Kasich says. “What we try to look for is we want you to be a conservative - we don’t want you to make law, we want you to interpret law. That’s what it means to be a conservative.”
“At the end, when you’re in public office, you’re not really there to be a preacher, you’re there to be a public official, and that’s the way it should be on the supreme court.”
A young man whose older brother will soon deploy to the Middle East asks Kasich whether he will commit to international military intervention only “where our national security is at risk?”
“Whenever the national security risk is to the United States - when we think that we are being threatened,” Kasich says. “I was on the defense committee for 18 years in Congress,” he says, “and you learn a lot through that process of what that all means.”
“Nation-building, getting involved in civil wars, is not, I think, the place for the US military,” Kasich says.
We’re going the distance, Anderson,” said Kasich, when asked if he’ll drop out if he loses in South Carolina. “You take it in your stride and keep your feet on the ground.”
(It’s not entirely clear why Kasich would have left the ground, given his lack of victory in the first two voting states.)
But when pushed on the hot topic of the night – the Pope-Trump cage fight – Kasich stakedout a bold position. “First of all, I’m pro-Pope. Really, I mean, come on.” Which just about sums up how we all feel about the Trumped up Pope news.
Undecided voter asks “how would you help hard-working Americans who are barely getting by?”
“The one thing we wanna do is make sure they have health care,” Kasich says, “but it all comes down to training and skills.”
“We need to have tax cuts for businesses and for individuals, and finally, we’ve got $19 trillion in debt - we’ve got to get this budget out of control,” he continues.
First of all, I’m pro-pope. Put me down in the pro-pope column.
– John Kasich, on Donald Trump’s battle with the pope.
John Kasich opened the town hall with a clear pitch to be elected Pope.
He said that his hugging episode today was not an anomaly: he often ministers to the sick and to troubled souls at his town halls. Now that Donald Trump has taken down the real Pope, there’s clearly a vacancy and Kasich is the best person to fill it.
“It’s been happening to me all over,” Kasich says, of the hug heard ‘round the world earlier today.
John Kasich takes the stage at Republican town hall event in South Carolina
A full 42 minutes after CNN said that the town hall was set to begin, Ohio governor John Kasich walks onto the stage to join host Anderson Cooper, who tells him “thanks for being here.” (“Finally,” he presumably mutters under his breath.)
“Did I have a choice?” Kasich deadpans.
First CNN showed a video of John Kasich hugging a voter, then they want in for the kill: effectively blaming Kasich for the late start of this town hall. That is a unique programming tactic in a unique election cycle.
How long could CNN have kept up their ad libbing? And how long before Kasich would’ve deployed his rapid response team? The voting public needs to know.
Then CNN’s gravel-voiced introduction to the long-delayed town hall described Kasich as the son of a mailman, which truly amps up drama. No wonder Kasich smacked down Anderson Cooper’s welcome to the stage with this: “Did I have a choice?”
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While we wait for CNN to get its act together, some news from an event in honor of Wall Street Journal editorial writer Peggy Noonan, where former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg made some more hints about his presidential aspirations:
Here's Michael Bloomberg on "broken two party system" at Peggy Noon book event, per a source's transcript pic.twitter.com/O85YdT48Ji
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) February 19, 2016
Then, CNN segued to discussing the burning issue of a photoshopped image of Marco Rubio shaking hands with President Obama. It’s so refreshing to have left the Pope-Trump wrestling match for something serious.
More troubling wass why the candidates hadn’t yet taken the stage for this much-ballyhooed town hall. CNN has yet to concede that its countdown clock was inaccurate and misleading (much like a photoshopped campaign image).
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz spoke at the Republican Women’s Club in Greenville, South Carolina, earlier today, and warned the audience that the choice of replacement for supreme court justice Antonin Scalia risks degrading their constitutional rights.
He said that the country is “one justice away” from a court “the likes of which the country has never seen.”
CNN has been doing its best to turn the Pope versus Trump comments into a WWE-style fight. Sadly, the politics of South Carolina are not in line with the TV script.
I recall watching George W Bush visit Bob Jones University in South Carolina in 2000, at the start of his campaign to undo John McCain’s insurgent campaign. It worked: Bob Jones made no secret of his anti-Catholic sentiment, and it didn’t seem to do anything but help Bush back then.
From Guardian US columnist Richard Wolffe:
“These town halls can be so meaningful,” said CNN’s Erin Burnett – rather hopefully – in the run-up to the second Republican town hall.
Then CNN showed a moving exchange between a troubled and tearful voter and Ohio governor John Kasich, which ends in a heartfelt hug.
The chances of such a meaningful exchange happening tonight on live TV? Close to zero.
Still, we’ll tell if you if any of the candidates embraces anyone else on stage. Especially if it’s Donald Trump, who used to avoid any shaking of hands out of germaphobic fear.
What to expect at tonight's Republican town hall
A trio of Republican presidential hopefuls will take the stage in Greenville, South Carolina, tonight in their final nationally televised event before the state’s critical primary on Saturday winnows the field even further.
Before the town hall begins - CNN says eight o’clock Eastern, while the fact that moderator Anderson Cooper began last night’s telecast with “in about fifteen minutes” would indicate closer to 8:20 p.m. - here’s a rundown on the critical whos, whats, wheres, whys and hows of tonight’s town hall:
Who’s town hall-ing? Tonight’s lineup will be composed of former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Ohio governor John Kasich and billionaire Donald Trump, in that order. Last night’s town hall - the Kill Bill Vol. 1 of CNN’s town halls, if you will - features former pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Florida senator Marco Rubio and Texas senator Ted Cruz.
What channel is it on? CNN is hosting the town hall, with Anderson Cooper moderating - or, rather, hosting, since only one candidate will be on the stage at any given time.
When is this thing again? Eight o’clock, but again, CNN has a history of putting a countdown clock on the screen to build antici...pation for the event, then chucking the countdown clock out the window once it runs out and making you sit there on your couch like a doofus for another twenty minutes before the damn thing starts, already.
Why are we doing this? Because, that’s why.
No, really - it’s because this week, like most pre-South Carolina primary weeks, has been chock full of borderline insane campaign news, and the Palmetto State is where all of those storm fronts are going to collide.
Donald Trump, who got into a fight with the pope earlier today, is way up in the polls, while Jeb Bush is struggling to justify his campaign’s continued existence - he’s locked in a dead heat for fourth place in South Carolina with Kasich, who won’t even be in South Carolina for the actual primary.
Sit back, buy a hat and hold on to it - the town hall starts any minute.
Updated
The tiny community of Islamville, an all-Muslim town of about 300 people located in the northern woodland of South Carolina, is dismayed by the rhetoric of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. “He’s no different from the KKK,” one resident told the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt:
“Well how would you feel?”
Ramadan Saeed Shakir is the mayor of Islamville, an all-Muslim town of about 300 people located in the northern woodland of South Carolina. He is talking about Donald Trump – specifically, what Donald Trump has been saying about Muslims.
Since entering the race in June 2015, Trump has said he would introduce a database tracking all Muslims in the US. He has said he would ban Muslims worldwide – an estimated 1.6bn people – from entering the country.
“Of course we feel uncomfortable and unsafe,” said Shakir. “It’s Islamophobia.”
From a cannabis church to a bustling phone bank, the Guardian’s Dave Schilling has been on the Bernie Sanders campaign trail in the run-up to the Nevada caucuses - and he’s dubbed him the Katniss in Nevada’s Hunger Games:
For a portion of the politically aware public, the Sanders supporter might as well be a dog with nipples where its eyes should be – wholly alien, irrational and difficult to look at. Rightwing pundits mock the tent revival qualities of Sanders rallies. Hillary supporters lash out at the so-called “Bernie Bro” phenomenon – supporters who quibble misogynistically with Clinton and her surrogates. Older voters can’t quite wrap their brains around the idea that an avowed lefty who refuses to take campaign money from business interests would be able to challenge the ascendant Clinton dynasty. To them, the idea that a bunch of kids would gather in an office across the street from a university and next to a glorified head shop in the middle of a deserted shopping center from the 1970s is expected and laughable.
But that’s the story that’s always told when insurgent candidates marshal the forces of youth action. Hillary scoffed at Barack Obama as late as May 2008, her campaign arguing that he didn’t have much of a shot to win the general election against war hero John McCain. Young people are fickle, says the conventional wisdom. Look at George McGovern’s quixotic anti-war efforts against Richard Nixon. The youth vote has been historically powerless against the “silent majority” in this country, but in the modern political landscape, no one is silent for very long.
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has cut rival Hillary Clinton’s national lead in half, if a just-released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll is to be believed.
The survey finds the former secretary of state leading Sanders 53 to 42, a double-digit surplus nationally. But in January, the same poll found Clinton leading Sanders by 25 points, 59 to 34. That poll was conducted before Clinton won the Iowa caucuses by the narrowest margin in Democratic history, and before Sanders’ massive blowout in the New Hampshire primaries the following week.
The latest poll does find that Clinton leads Sanders by double digits among women, racial minorities and among self-identified Democrats. She also leads among voters above the age of 50.
Sanders, on the other hand, leads among white males, independents and younger voters.
Donald Trump's first rally since comments on the pope
Donald Trump is holding a raucous rally in Gaffney, South Carolina, only hours after he lashed out against the Vicar of Christ for criticizing his proposal to build a wall between the united States and Mexico.
Watch it live here:
White Catholic voters have been identified as a swing voting group in American politics. One false move against the Pope and their favor could be lost, writes the Guardian’s Cindy Casares - especially since Ted Cruz also called Trump out this week in a new ad pointing out Trump’s pro-choice stance of old:
A heartrending moment at a rally for John Kasich in South Carolina
Ohio governor John Kasich embraced a supporter at a rally in Clemson, South Carolina, who thanked the Republican presidential candidate for giving him hope after he lost a role model to suicide.
“Over a year ago, a man who was like my second father killed himself, and then a few months later my parents got a divorce and then my dad lost his job,” the young man told Kasich. “I was in a pretty dark place for a long time.”
.@JohnKasich: "We don't have enough people that sit down and cry with that young man." #SCPrimaryhttps://t.co/4YsAkfXUj6
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 18, 2016
“I was pretty depressed but I found hope in the Lord, my friends and now I’ve found it in my presidential candidate that I support,” he continued. “I’d really appreciate one of the hugs you’ve been talking about.”
Kasich beckoned the young man onstage before giving him a tight hug.
“The lord will give you strength,” he told the supporter. “We don’t have enough people that sit down and cry with that young man.”
Updated
I was just driving around Myrtle Beach when I came across a one-story white building with 54 Donald Trump signs in the lawn. I wasn’t sure whether it was the home of someone who really, really likes Donald Trump or his local headquarters. It turned out it was the latter.
I found Donald Trump's Myrtle Beach headquarters. I think pic.twitter.com/7lXPMaRRbx
— Adam Gabbatt (@adamgabbatt) February 18, 2016
His volunteers supply lunch and dinner to people working the phones inside. It’s pretty sunny today, so they were holding a barbecue outside. They were serving hotdogs and burgers and bags of Doritos.
I asked a woman about the sign odyssey. “Oh, this is nothing,” she said. “They just emptied a tractor and trailer and there’s another coming at 4.”
Geri McDaniel is Trump’s grassroots co-ordinator for South Carolina. She is from Myrtle Beach but has occasionally been staying in a really big RV that is parked next to the Trump HQ.
“It’s 47 feet,” she said. The RV is a real beauty. It’s a Gulfstream Tourmaster, in metallic brown, with pop-out panels to maximize room. McDaniel invited me inside. The driver’s seat looks like you are sitting in a space ship. Behind that two cream leather sofas face each other. There’s a large kitchen and eating area, a bathroom, and a king-sized bed.
I sat on one of the sofas. It was covered with a blanket that had pictures of dogs’ faces. The cupboards had fine wood panelling, concealing a surprising amount of space. The RV belongs to McDaniel’s friend, Robin Holley. When the primary is over, they are going to drive it out some place and rest.
Oh yeah - and McDaniel said Trump is “the smartest businessman I’ve ever met in my entire life”. In 2012 she campaigned for Newt Gingrich. “Both are very intelligent,” she said, although I got the impression she preferred Trump. “There’s a kindness about him I’ve never seen in any one person,” she said.
“It’s an aura,” Holley chipped in. “He’s sweetness.”
The conversation broke down a little when McDaniel asked where I worked and I said the Guardian. She asked if I was going to write something horrible about Donald Trump. I told her I wasn’t. But still, it was time to leave. I took one last look around the spacious interior of the Gulfstream Tourmaster, breathed a deep sigh, and stepped out into the sunshine.
Hillary Clinton just pulled ahead in the all-important Kardashian Primary.
Kendall Jenner is sporting a new look: as a Hillary Clinton supporter.
Model, reality star and iPhone game character Kendall Jenner announced to her nearly 50 million Instagram followers that #ShesWithHer.
Jenner has previously been active with nonpartisan Rock the Vote in encouraging voter registration among young people, but this is the first time that she’s announced a preference in the 2016 campaign.
For what it’s worth, Jenner’s half-sister Kim Kardashian is also Team Clinton, while her father, Caitlyn Jenner, told Diane Sawyer last year that she is a Republican.
Video – Obama will make historic visit to Cuba, says White House
Video – Rubio hits the campaign trail with Nikki Haley in South Carolina
The Ted Cruz camp has declined to comment on the Trump-pope spat, reports Guardian political reporter Ben C Jacobs. Cruz is a Southern Baptist.
A lot of Twitter eggs don't seem to be fans of the Pope today
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 18, 2016
Video – Pope Francis questions Trump’s Christianity
Video: Trump responds to pope questioning his Christianity
Updated
Bush declines to weigh in on Trump-Pope
Between “him” and his creator, it should be, no?
Jeb Bush tells @DanaBashCNN Trump's "Christianity is between he and his creator. I don’t think we need to discuss that”
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 18, 2016
Video: Bernie Sanders’ wife is ‘not surprised at the resonance of his ideas’
Pope Francis on Trump: transcript
Here’s an even longer version of the pope’s remarks on Trump, via the Catholic News Agency, which would know:
In case anyone is wondering what the Pope actually said (English translation): https://t.co/UV0ol8KbGG pic.twitter.com/1jx2vcg4ie
— William J. Upton (@wupton) February 18, 2016
Updated
More reaction from Rubio on the Trump-Pope Spat, and on whether contraception should be legal, from the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui, who’s with Rubio in South Carolina. The Florida senator identifies as Roman Catholic but was once Mormon and sometimes attends Southern Baptist services:
And here's what Rubio said when asked about Trump calling Pope Francis "disgraceful." https://t.co/MdAV5DMD2h pic.twitter.com/BReQtkpcKB
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) February 18, 2016
I asked Rubio abt Pope on contraception/Zika virus. He said: Contraception is legal in US "and I'm not in favor of making them illegal."
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) February 18, 2016
Top Air Force officer in Mideast rejects 'no-fly zone' for Syria
The senior US air force officer in the Mideast has rejected patrolling airspace over a proposed humanitarian corridor in Syria, a proposal favored by Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
Lieutenant General CQ Brown Jr, the commander of US Air Forces Central Command who oversees the air campaign against the Islamic State (Isis), warned Thursday that a so-called “No Fly Zone” would both divert aircraft from attacking the jihadi army and risked transforming the bloody Syria conflict into a direct US battle with Russian and Syrian government warplanes.
“You have to be willing to shoot someone down… that would dramatically escalate the situation”, said Brown, who emphasized that he was giving his “personal opinion.”
Support for a no-fly zone cuts across partisan boundaries on the campaign trail. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republicans Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Ben Carson have endorsed versions of the idea. Democrat Bernie Sanders, who opposes it, has warned it would herald “a never-ending US entanglement in the region.”
Brown said enforcing a humanitarian region, typically proposed along the Syrian-Turkish border where displaced persons have massed, would be “difficult to do” and would take warplanes away from bombing Isis in Iraq and Syria.
The general also echoed earlier comments from the commander of the war against Isis, Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, rejecting Republican Ted Cruz’s proposal to “carpet-bomb” the group as ineffective, unnecessary and a violation of the law of armed conflict.
Updated
Historic Tweet
Response to the Pope:https://t.co/iWDjTIQyhE
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2016
Rubio in reply to pope: US 'compassionate on immigration'
Here's Marco Rubio's reaction to Pope Francis saying anyone who wants to build a border wall is not Christian: pic.twitter.com/TgaHklhrst
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) February 18, 2016
Trump supporters shocked... at the pope’s words (in a continuing series; see earlier):
Trump supporter on the Pope's comments: "I thought the Pope was a better person than that"
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 18, 2016
Trump supporter just now to me: "I’m not a fan of the Pope anyways. I was raised Southern Baptist."
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) February 18, 2016
Some people think Trump is creating a great schism in the Republican party.
Is Christianity itself next?
*blink* https://t.co/OLi6nH6Cek pic.twitter.com/XxSZK3LpFY
— Nick Martin (@nickmartin) February 18, 2016
Updated
Pope Francis has 8.68m Twitter followers. Donald Trump has 6.23m. That’s a difference of only 2.45m. And Trump’s Twitter game is arguably stronger? In English at least:
Tears can generate a fracture which is able to open ourselves for conversion.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) February 18, 2016
I agree with Marco Rubio that Ted Cruz is a liar!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2016
Do not forget that the mercy of God is our shield and strength against injustice, destruction and oppression.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) February 18, 2016
Jeb Bush just got contact lenses and got rid of the glasses. He wants to look cool, but it's far too late. 1% in Nevada!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2016
Trump supporters shocked – at the pope’s words.
Just talked to over half a dozen Trump supporters leaving his event. Most said they were "shocked" to hear this FROM THE POPE.
— Ali Vitali (@alivitali) February 18, 2016
Rush Limbaugh caller: "I can't tell you how disturbed I am by this very liberal pope."
— Alan Rappeport (@arappeport) February 18, 2016
Updated
Pope: contraception may be OK in Zika regions
We’d feel remiss if we failed to supply you with the other headline from Pope Francis’ extremely newsy airplane press conference: he’s indicated that pregnant women exposed to the Zika virus may be permitted to use contraception to avoid pregnancy, in a departure from Catholic teaching, writes Harriet Sherwood:
However he reiterated the church’s staunch opposition to abortion, saying it was a crime and “absolute evil”.
His comments came as women in South America frantically try to terminate pregnancies for fear of giving birth to babies with microcephaly, which gives them unusually small heads.
The Pope also said that contraception is justified in regions hit by Zika virus https://t.co/mpOGpKITE0
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) February 18, 2016
Speaking to reporters on the papal plane as he returned to Rome after a visit to Mexico, Francis obliquely suggested that artificial contraception could be used in extreme situations to avoid pregnancy.
Unlike abortion, “avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil” and in certain circumstances it may be “the lesser evil”.
coincidence? pic.twitter.com/PVmB3IA5Gt
— Colin Campbell (@BKcolin) February 18, 2016
Updated
Further reaction in the Trump-Pope stickfight...
This looks like a line to get into a Bernie Sanders event:
"Pope Francis, tear down that wall!"#vaticanwalls pic.twitter.com/mDGANFtApb
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) February 18, 2016
The Trump camp is called out for mis-drawing the Vatican walls:
There is no wall in front of the Piazza di San Pietro as shown here. https://t.co/z5osQ7IWo4
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) February 18, 2016
I'm going to build a big, beautiful wall, and I'll get the Vatican to pay for it.
— Carlos Lozada (@CarlosLozadaWP) February 18, 2016
For posterity, Trump statement responding to Pope began thusly: "If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS..."
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) February 18, 2016
And from the archives:
The new Pope is a humble man, very much like me, which probably explains why I like him so much!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 25, 2013
Updated
Trump camp points out Vatican surrounded by walls
Et tu, papa?
A Trump spokesman points out that if building walls is so-unChristian, why is the Vatican, like, surrounded by walls?
Amazing comments from the Pope- considering Vatican City is 100% surrounded by massive walls. pic.twitter.com/g3iVLDVGe5
— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) February 18, 2016
Can't wait to tell my grandkids 2016 was the year a leading POTUS candidate went hard negative on the Pope. https://t.co/hfYmw9ZZI8
— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) February 18, 2016
And when he polls higher than the pope next week, @realDonaldTrump will weep, for he has no more worlds to conquer.
— Anthony Zurcher (@awzurcher) February 18, 2016
Based on leaked internals I've seen, this could hurt Pope Francis in key Super Tuesday states.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) February 18, 2016
Updated
Trump says pope's words 'disgraceful'
Here’s the full text of Donald Trump’s response to Pope Francis as disseminated by his campaign.
“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” Trump says:
[starts]
If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened. ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.
The Mexican government and its leadership has made many disparaging remarks about me to the Pope, because they want to continue to rip off the United States, both on trade and at the border, and they understand I am totally wise to them. The Pope only heard one side of the story - he didn’t see the crime, the drug trafficking and the negative economic impact the current policies have on the United States. He doesn’t see how Mexican leadership is outsmarting President Obama and our leadership in every aspect of negotiation.
For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian and as President I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now, with our current President. No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith. They are using the Pope as a pawn and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so, especially when so many lives are involved and when illegal immigration is so rampant.
[ends]
Updated
Here’s video of Trump saying that Pope Francis would pray for a Trump presidency if Isis attacks the Vatican:
“The big thing, [Isis] want to get to the Vatican. If and when, the Vatican is attacked by Isis, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would’ve been president.”
[applause]
“It’s true. It’s true. Because this would not have happened. Isis would have been eradicated, unlike what is happening now with our all-talk, no-action politicians.”
.@realDonaldTrump: Pope Francis will have "wished and prayed" I was president "if and when" Vatican attacked by ISIS https://t.co/PyKwotCNNy
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) February 18, 2016
Trump not at all tickled by Pope's comments: "Now it's probably going to be all over the world who the hell cares. I don't care."
— MJ Lee (@mj_lee) February 18, 2016
Updated
Trump responds: Pope will pray I'm president if Isis hits Vatican
Donald Trump is at a campaign event at a ritzy country club in South Carolina and is responding in real time to the pope’s questioning his Christianity.
Trump responds to The Pope: "The Pope only saw one side of the story. He didn't see the crime, the drug trafficking."
— David Catanese (@davecatanese) February 18, 2016
LIVE: Trump says pope will wish and pray he was president if Vatican is attacked by Islamic State. https://t.co/J3VJZBUQdf
— Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) February 18, 2016
Trump read from a prepared statement he wrote responding to the Pope. Possibly why he was running late.
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) February 18, 2016
Here’s a longer version of the pope’s remarks, made on his plane upon his departure from Mexico. Via CNN:
.@Pontifex on Trump, during a presser on papal plane: "This man is not Christian if he has said things like that." pic.twitter.com/E2aItkubtX
— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) February 18, 2016
Updated
Pope Francis questions Trump's Christianity
The pope is wrapping up a trip to Mexico. Today he was asked about Donald Trump. The pope suggested Trump was un-Christian for his border wall proposal.
BREAKING: Asked about Trump, Pope Francis says anyone who wants to build a border wall isn't Christian.
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 18, 2016
We’ll have more soon. The BBC has further:
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel,” the Pope said.
He declined to say whether Americans should vote for Mr Trump, who is leading the Republican race for president.
“I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and I will give him the benefit of the doubt,” the Pope said.
Updated
Yesterday she endorsed Florida senator Marco Rubio for president. Today, popular South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is on TV making Marco’s case:
“As the wife of a combat veteran, I know Marco will keep America safe,” Haley says. “And as your governor, I trust Marco to bring a conscience to Republicans in Washington, and reign in our out-of-control federal government.”
(#ff @jamiedupree)
Everybody knows that if you visit jebbush.com you get redirected to Donald Trump’s campaign site.
But the Trump web wizards aren’t done yet! Look at what they have – or someone has – gone and done now:
— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) February 18, 2016
It redirects you to an official immigration page of the Canadian government with advice on “how you can immigrate to Canada.” [If he’s Canadian why would he need to immigrate to Canada. Or is the idea that his followers might themselves like to? Complex joke here.]
(h/t: @bencjacobs)
Updated
After snagging yesterday his first endorsement so far from a member of Congress, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson appears to be on something of a run. Carson has just announced the endorsement of former Congressman Kerry Bentivolio.
“As a veteran of two wars and conservative member of Congress, I know what it means to fight,” Bentivolio said in a statement. “I know Dr. Carson will fight for our veterans, fight for integrity and fight for our country.”
The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs interviewed Bentivolio for another publication after a 2014 Bentivolio reelection effort fell apart in the primaries. The piece is titled Kerry Bentivolio: The Congressman Who Believes in Santa Claus:
“I truly believe there is a Santa Claus” said Rep. Kerry Bentivolio.
The Michigan Republican, likely the first former Santa Claus impersonator and reindeer-farm owner ever to serve on Capitol Hill, was in the process of moving out—his constituents had given the first-term Tea Partier a lump of coal in August when he lost his bid for reelection in the Republican primary—but he took time to riff on Christmas and to recall his adventures as Jolly St. Nick and its impact on his life, in a talk with The Daily Beast amid the cardboard boxes and bubble wrap.
The congressman traces his belief in Santa Claus back 40 years, when he was a student going to college “on the GI Bill.” Bentivolio recounted the story while smoking American Spirit cigarettes and tapping the ashes into a souvenir ashtray that commemorated Operation Desert Shield. He said he wasn’t getting his checks regularly from the Veterans Administration at the time. One night, after a friend took him out for a couple of beers, he went home and opened the refrigerator to find just “two heels of a loaf of bread and one egg.” The future congressman also had some spaghetti but no sauce. So, feeling “a little loopy” from beers, he sat down and wrote a letter to Santa Claus. A couple of weeks later, a local reporter, who had gone down to the post office to see all the letters addressed to St. Nick, called asking “why a guy who just served his country in Vietnam, came home, and went to college was writing Santa a letter.”
Read the full piece here.
Top Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett announces the hiring of the first openly transgender White House liaison. White House liaisons work out of the office of public engagement to build dialogue with communities across the country.
Proud to welcome Jaan Williams to my team. 1st openly transgender @WhiteHouse liaison at any federal agency in US history!
— Valerie Jarrett (@vj44) February 18, 2016
(h/t: @holpuch)
Eva Longoria’s Latino Victory Fund, a Democratic-leaning group that works to elect Hispanics to political office, is poised to endorse Hillary Clinton for president, writes Lauren Gambino:
The group, which was founded by Longoria and Henry Muñoz, is expected to announced the endorsement on a conference call on Thursday.
The group’s president, Cristobal Alex, will be joined on the call by Congressman Luis Gutierrez, Housing and Urban Development secretary Julian Castro, and activist Dolores Huerta, all of whom have endorsed Clinton for president.
The group is expected to question Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’s record on immigration and suggest that he has failed to forge meaningful relationships with the Latino community.
Sanders and Clinton are expected to be grilled about their immigration records and other important issues in a Thursday night forum in Las Vegas hosted by MSNBC and Telemundo.
Sanders meets with civil rights groups
After campaigning with Erica Garner in South Carolina and deploying his surrogate Killer Mike in Atlanta, Bernie Sanders met Thursday with leaders of civil rights organizations in Washington, D.C., to discuss national priorities and his presidential campaign.
.@BernieSanders in DC meeting with leaders of several civil rights organizations this morning. pic.twitter.com/JMAzTVLiTl
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) February 18, 2016
This afternoon, Barack Obama is to meet with a group of civil rights leaders to discuss criminal justice reform, community policing and final-year priorities. Later, the first couple will host a reception celebrating African American history month.
How to explain that NBC/WSJ poll last night that showed Donald Trump slipping nationally behind Ted Cruz? A month from now will the poll look like an outlier – or like the first blip in an unmistakable trend describing Trump’s collapse? (To get dramatic about it.)
Trump campaign adviser Dan Scavino thinks he has the answer: the masthead under which the poll was published is owned by Trump antagonist Rupert Murdoch. It’s all a conspiracy!
10 RECENT NATIONAL POLLS
— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) February 18, 2016
Which one is affiliated with a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch? #TrumpTrain #Trump2016🚀 pic.twitter.com/AhQ5NMFiXH
Like most conspiracy theories, this one collapses with the slightest poke. The Wall Street Journal did not itself conduct the poll, of course; that was done by Hart Research Associates, which gets a solid B in FiveThirtyEight’s tough pollster ratings (and in which 538 detects a slight Democratic bias). Here’s how Hart explains the result, via NBC:
Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart and his firm Hart Research Associates, says Trump’s drop could signal being “right on top of a shift in the campaign.”
“When you see a number this different, it means you might be right on top of a shift in the campaign. What you don’t know yet is if the change is going to take place or if it is a momentary ‘pause’ before the numbers snap back into place,” he said.
That’s not to say that the poll is “right.” But if it’s wrong, it unlikely it’s because Rupert Murdoch dislikes the Donald.
So many anti-Trumpers want NBC/WSJ poll to be true. It could be... (Good pollster etc.) The problem: I'm not sure anything else supports it.
— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) February 17, 2016
(h/t: @bencjacobs)
Updated
With days to go before Nevada Democrats caucus, Hillary Clinton is out with a new ad that could have you reaching for the tissue box – depending on where your sympathies lie, writes Lauren Gambino:
In the ad, a 10-year-old girl tearfully tells Clinton that she is worried her parents will be deported, during a private meeting with DREAMers in Las Vegas last weekend.
“My parents, they have a letter of deportation. I’m scared they are going to be deported,” the girl tells Clinton, who is actively courting Latinos ahead of Saturday’s caucuses.
Clinton beckons for the girl to come sit on her lap. She tells the girl that she can help her parents by being brave.
“Let me do the worrying. I’ll do all the worrying,” Clinton says in a soothing voice.
“I’ll do everything I can to help,” she promises the girl, while others sitting around the circle wipe their eyes.
The advertisement airs online and on television statewide in Nevada. It ends by urging urges people to vote in Saturday’s caucus.
Not everyone is impressed – including a Bernie Sanders spokesperson:
No matter how hard she tries, we won't forget @HillaryClinton using the label 'illegal immigrants' over & over again https://t.co/SFyX61fm1P
— Erika Andiola (@ErikaAndiola) February 18, 2016
Updated
Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Hillary Clinton is making a stand in Nevada, where Bernie Sanders is looking to stage an upset, while the Republicans continue their dogfight to come second behind Donald Trump in South Carolina.
But is Trump’s seemingly healthy lead in the Palmetto State less robust than it appears? South Carolina Republicans will hold their primary in just two days – time is short. But the endorsement of Florida senator Marco Rubio last night by popular South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who’s hitting the campaign trail with the senator today and tomorrow, could shift the race, and Trump’s unusual second-place finish in a national poll published late Wednesday – to Senator Ted Cruz – may foretell trouble ahead for the billionaire businessman.
Or not ... A CBS News national poll published just this morning has Trump holding his lead, at 35 points to 18 for Cruz, 12 for Rubio and 11 for Ohio governor John Kasich.
New CBS National Poll just out - massive lead for Trump. The Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll is a total joke. No wonder WSJ is doing so badly!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2016
The Guardian’s politics team is spread between Nevada and South Carolina today. The highlights, events-wise, include dueling candidate forums tonight.
Democrats Clinton and Sanders will convene in Las Vegas for an event to air on the Spanish-language network Telemundo, while three Republican candidates – Trump, Kasich and Jeb Bush – will meet in a town hall in Columbia, South Carolina. And the other three GOP candidates still running – Cruz, Rubio and Ben Carson – will take part in a forum in Greenville at around the same time.
Those three participated in a candidates’ forum last night, which the Guardian’s Scott Bixby live-blogged. It makes for an entertaining and informative read:
Beck suggests God took Scalia to elect Cruz
Conservative talker Glenn Beck, who endorsed Cruz last month, laid out a theory about the death of supreme court justice Antonin Scalia on his radio show. To explain the loss of the conservative justice, Beck assumed the voice of God as one does. “I just woke the American people up. I took them out of the game show moment and woke enough of them up to say, ‘Look how close your liberty is to being lost,’” Beck said.
The constitution is hanging by a thread. That thread has just been cut. And the only way that we survive now is if we have a true constitutionalist [for president].
Beck later posted on Facebook that he had not said that.
— andrew kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) February 18, 2016
A wobbly Clinton lead?
A new USA Today/ Suffolk poll showed Sanders closing the gap with Clinton nationally, to within 10 points. Real Clear Politics averages depict a slightly wider, 13-point lead for Clinton. The nomination is won state-by-state, of course, and not by national referendum, and Clinton appears to hold strong leads in most upcoming states. But polls can be wrong (!) and numbers can change.
New national poll: @HillaryClinton 50%, @BernieSanders 40% pic.twitter.com/HmLbvU2X0i
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) February 18, 2016
File under: only 263 days to go
This is the only video that should be in the time capsule to explain the 2016 presidential election for the aliens. https://t.co/6xN3OwA8d3
— Chris Moody (@moody) February 17, 2016
Scotchy scotch scotch
.@tedcruz: "I'm a scotch man" https://t.co/QcAalYCoal #GOPTownHall https://t.co/vI2FR9E5yF
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 18, 2016
