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Here’s an update: we have a new blog going to cover tonight’s Republican debate in Miami. Please join us over here. Thanks as always for reading and participating.
Audio recording contradicts Trump denial of incident with reporter
Politico has published an audio recording of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and Washington Post reporter Ben Terris talking about Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski allegedly assaulting Fields.
The Trump campaign released a statement earlier today calling the report of the assault “completely false” and attacking Fields as an attention seeker. Lewandowski himself took to Twitter to call Fields an “attention seeker” and to say she once made a sexual harassment complaint but afterwards fell silent.
He physically aggressed her, to believe the audio, photo of her bruises and witness – and then denied the incident ever happened and sought to assassinate her character:
Michelle Fields is an attention seeker who once claimed Allen West groped her but later went silent. https://t.co/J86Ej42eYx
— Corey Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) March 10, 2016
We're Calling Bullshit On Michelle Fields - GotNews https://t.co/VKpMaSLnmm
— Corey Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) March 10, 2016
That was then:
With Ben Carson wanting to hit his mother on head with a hammer, stab a friend and Pyramids built for grain storage - don't people get it?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2015
The Guardian has confirmed that Ben Carson will endorse Donald Trump for president tomorrow.
Last November Trump said voters would be “stupid” to believe stories Carson told about his life in his memoir Gifted Hands and elsewhere. But that was then.
Donald Trump: Surely the only man to be endorsed by both David Duke and Ben Carson.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) March 11, 2016
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Trump and Carson haven’t always been simpatico. In a November riff on Carson’s description of his childhood temper as “pathological,” Trump drew a child molester comparison:
Ben Carson should lend some coherence to Trump's policy prescriptions.https://t.co/oDumnIDmec
— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) March 11, 2016
Updated
Carson to endorse Trump – Washington Post
Here’s the lede of the latest from Post reporter Robert Costa:
MIAMI — Conservative favorite Ben Carson, who recently suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, plans to endorse Donald Trump on Friday morning, according to two people familiar with his thinking.
Costa reports the endorsement will go down at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach Shangri La. Go.
Read the full piece here.
Carson 'certainly leaning' toward Trump
Ben Carson told Fox News radio today that he is “certainly leaning” toward endorsing Donald Trump over Ted Cruz.
Carson’s central concern appears to be maintaining party unity so that the Republican candidate beats the Democrat in November so that the next Supreme Court justice(s) is/are nominated by a Republican president. And Carson thinks having Trump at the top of the ticket could attract more Republican voters.
Carson sounded that way last week at CPAC too https://t.co/C1ZToH8KsM
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) March 10, 2016
Carson also explained his view of the two Donald Trumps:
You know there are two Donald Trumps. There’s the Donald Trump that you see on television and who gets out in front of big audiences, and there’s the Donald Trump behind the scenes. They’re not the same person. One’s very much an entertainer, and one is actually a thinking individual.”
Listen to the 10-minute interview with host John Gibson here.
On some level this makes sense, on another level Trump compared him to a child molester https://t.co/lJwesGyij2
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) March 10, 2016
Trump did Carson a solid by standing with him at a debate last month when Carson missed a cue:
Updated
The White House is hosting Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau tonight for a state dinner. It’s the first state dinner for a Canadian leader hosted by the White House in 19 years. It’s just so far to come.
Here’s a look at tonight’s menu, “The Anticipation of Spring.” It’s about what you would expect, baked Halibut, salad, and whiskey-drizzled lamb. Which reminds us, it’s debate night! – and time to order pizza. Cheese pizza. We’re calling it “The Anticipation of the 12th Republican debate.”
State dinner menu sounds pretty decent https://t.co/uURez6Xvxu pic.twitter.com/0AiLQBWW6V
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 10, 2016
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Let’s take a break from news of physical violence at Trump rallies for some lighter fare.
Here’s an entertainingly edited video of Bernie Sanders dismissing the notion that he might consider being Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate.
“Would she be interested in being my vice president?”
Can't stop watching this pic.twitter.com/UnETkgiXLk
— • (@Lexiiness) March 9, 2016
Recording documents Trump aide's alleged assault on reporter
Politico has obtained an audio recording of the alleged assault by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields.
The recording, which Politico has transcribed but not posted, captures a conversation between Fields and Washington Post reporter Ben Terris before and after the incident. The conversation includes these lines:
Terris: “You OK?”
Fields: “Holy sh*t.”
Terris: “Yea he just threw you down.”
Fields: “I can’t believe he just did that that was so hard. Was that Corey?”
Terris: “Yeah, like, what threat were you?”
Fields: “That was insane. You should have felt how hard he grabbed me. That’s insane. I’ve never had anyone do that to me from a campaign.”
Terris: “Can I put that in my story?”
Fields: “Yeah, go for it — that was really awful. That’s so unprofessional.”
Terris: “He really just almost threw you down on the ground.”
Read the full piece here.
Trump supporter on protester he punched: next time 'we might have to kill him'
John McGraw, the Donald Trump supporter who sucker-punched an African American protester at a rally in North Carolina last night, told a reporter who interviewed him about the incident that he thought the protester, Rakeem Jones, might have been a member of Isis.
“The next time we see him, we might have to kill him,” McGraw told Inside Edition. “We don’t know who he is. He might be with a terrorist organization.”
Shocking comments from the Trump supporter who punched a protestor in NC on Wednesday... https://t.co/C2E4foGDFA pic.twitter.com/faLMkbfJ05
— Rebecca Berg (@rebeccagberg) March 10, 2016
Lee asks Rubio to 'get behind Ted Cruz'
Ted Cruz earned his first endorsement from a college in the US Senate on Thursday, as influential conservative Mike Lee of Utah backed the Texas senator’s presidential campaign, writes Guardian politics reporter Sabrina Siddiqui:
Addressing reporters in Miami ahead of tonight’s Republican debate, Lee said it was time to rally around Cruz as the only viable alternative to frontrunner Donald Trump.
“Unity in the Republican Party is more important than ever before,” Lee said. “I call on all within the sound of my voice to join in my cause.”
“It’s time my fellow Americans, and my fellow Republicans, to unite behind one candidate: That candidate is Ted Cruz.”
Lee’s endorsement was a blow to Marco Rubio, the Florida senator whose campaign is on life support ahead of the state’s March 15 primary. Lee made separate appearances in South Carolina last month with both Rubio and Cruz and had planned, according to his aides, to stay neutral until one of his two friends dropped out of the race.
But as Rubio faces an uphill battle against Trump in Florida, where a loss will all but spell a certain end to his bid for president, Lee sent a signal that it was time for him to fold.
“If senator Rubio were asking me that, I would encourage him, and I do encourage him to get behind Ted Cruz,” Lee said when asked if it was time for Rubio to exit the race.
“I’m sending the signal that it’s time to unite … We as Republicans need to unite behind one leader.”
Lee is the first member of the US Senate to throw his support behind Cruz, who remains unpopular among his colleagues after building a brand as a rabble-rouser with little, if any, regard for rules and decorum. But with Cruz proving the only candidate to defeat Trump in a number of primary contests, a growing number of Republican lawmakers have indicated they might be coming around to the idea of rallying behind Cruz.
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who so loathes Cruz that he recently joked about his murder, acknowledged last week it was essentially Cruz or bust if the party is to blunt Trump’s momentum. Cruz reached out to Graham by telephone shortly after he made the comments, a sign that he is open to assuming the mantle of party alternative.
Endorsements have nonetheless proved largely inconsequential in the Republican race thus far. Rubio rolled out a series of high-profile backers, from conservative stars within the Senate to sitting governors with high approval ratings, to little effect in the past two months. For Cruz, there is the added paradox that he has built his image as taking on the so-called “Washington cartel,” a message that could be undermined if he embraces its support.
Lee is, however, an exception who remains popular among the tea party and libertarian factions of the Republican Party. His endorsement could help to boost Cruz ahead of Utah’s March 22 primary, where the Texas senator is trailing Rubio by two points according to an average of publicly available polling. Rubio, of course, may no longer be in the race by the time the contest rolls around.
Breitbart News Network CEO and president Larry Solov has released a statement in response to the Donald Trump campaign’s attacks on Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields, again calling on the campaign to apologize after Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, allegedly assaulted Fields at a press conference on Tuesday.
“The Washington Post just published a very detailed, first-hand account from their senior reporter Ben Terris who is familiar with the campaign, the personalities involved, and was an eyewitness to the incident,” Solov writes. “We are disappointed in the campaign’s response, in particular their effort to demean Michelle’s previous reporting. Michelle Fields is an intrepid reporter who has covered tough and dangerous stories. We stand behind her reporting, her techniques, and call again on Corey Lewandowski to apologize.”
Trump campaign manager: Reporter is "an attention seeker"
Corey Lewandowski, campaign manager for billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, is waging a Twitter war on Michelle Fields, a reporter for Breitbart News who claims he manhandled her following a press conference on Tuesday, is accusing the reporter of doing it for attention.
Michelle Fields is an attention seeker who once claimed Allen West groped her but later went silent. https://t.co/J86Ej42eYx
— Corey Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) March 10, 2016
The tweet links to a blog post written by controversial Internet personality Chuck Johnson in which he reported unconfirmed rumors that former congressman Allen West assaulted her. Johnson has been banned from Twitter for repeated attempts to incite violence against other users.
Fields was reporting from a press conference at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, on Tuesday night, when she approached the candidate to ask him about his stance on affirmative action, according to a piece she wrote for the conservative outlet titled “Michelle Fields: In Her Own Words.”
“Trump acknowledged the question, but before he could answer I was jolted backwards. Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down,” Fields wrote. “I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken.”
Fields says that she didn’t know who had pulled her down until another reporter “remarked that it was Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who aggressively tried to pull me to the ground.” Lewandowski was seen exiting the space with Trump moments later.
“No apology. No explanation for why he did this,” Fields wrote.
The Trump campaign has denied that anything matching Fields’ description occurred.
Updated
The Senate judiciary committee chairman on Thursday reaffirmed his pledge not to consider an Obama nomination for the open seat on the supreme court, adding calls for a hearing were “a charade” and “absurd”.
“In case there is any confusion over whether this obvious political ploy would work, let me be crystal clear: it won’t,” Chuck Grassley said during a committee business meeting. “We’re not going to drop any nominee into that election-year cauldron.”
“He is trying to protect this person from the hot boiling cauldron of thiscommittee,” responded Senator Dick Durban of Illinois, adding: “Well, who is turning up the heat?”
Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has responded to Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields’ allegation that he manhandled her at a campaign event on Tuesday, accusing Fields of being a serial fabulist.
Daily Caller reporter assaulted by NYPD during ‘Occupy’ protests -- professional reporting or attention seeking? https://t.co/FqOQQMvNcy
— Corey Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) March 10, 2016
Lewandowski’s tweet links to a 2011 story about Fields and another reporter being beaten by New York Police Department officers at an Occupy Wall Street protest. In a statement released by Hope Hicks, Trump’s communications director, the Trump campaign declared that although “we leave to others whether this is part of a larger pattern of exaggerating incidents ... on multiple occasions she has become part of the news story as opposed to reporting it. Recall she also claimed to have been beaten by a New York City Police officer with a baton.”
Fields’ boyfriend, Daily Caller senior editor Jamie Weinstein, tweeted a photograph of Fields being hit with a baton taken at the protest in question in response to Hicks’ statement.
Michelle getting pushed down by police during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Trump campaign serial liars pic.twitter.com/oNptBzNkC9
— Jamie Weinstein (@Jamie_Weinstein) March 10, 2016
Trump campaign: Assault allegation against campaign manager "is entirely false"
Donald Trump’s campaign communications manager, Hope Hicks, has released a statement following an accusation by a writer at Breitbart News she was forcibly “yanked” away from the candidate by Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.
“The accusation, which has only been made in the media and never addressed directly with the campaign, is entirely false,” Hicks said in a statement released to the Guardian. “As one of dozens of individuals present as Mr. Trump exited the press conference I did not witness any encounter. In addition to our staff, which had no knowledge of said situation, not a single camera or reporter of more than 100 in attendance captured the alleged incident. This individual has never met Corey, nor had the only reporter that supposedly identified him.”
“There are often large crowds aggressively seeking access to Mr. Trump and our staff would never do anything to harm another individual, while at the same time understanding that Mr. Trump and his personal space should never be invaded.”
“This person claims she does not want to be part of the news, and only report it, however if that was the case, any concerns, however unfounded they may be, should have been voiced directly first and not via Twitter, especially since no other outlet or reporter witnessed or questioned anything that transpired that evening. We leave to others whether this is part of a larger pattern of exaggerating incidents, but on multiple occasions she has become part of the news story as opposed to reporting it. Recall she also claimed to have been beaten by a New York City Police officer with a baton.
In response, Michelle Fields, the reporter in question, tweeted this photo of bruises on her arm:
I guess these just magically appeared on me @CLewandowski_ @realDonaldTrump. So weird. pic.twitter.com/oD8c4D7tw3
— Michelle Fields (@MichelleFields) March 10, 2016
Updated
Video: Trump supporter sucker-punches black protestor
The second poll today shows Republican frontrunner Donald Trump leading Florida senator Marco Rubio by single digits in the beleaguered candidate’s home state.
Trump holds a 9-point lead over Rubio in Florida, according to the latest poll from Suffolk University, with support of 36% of likely Republican voters to Rubio’s 27%. Texas senator Ted Cruz is in third place with 19% of the vote, with Ohio governor John Kasich at a mere 10%. The results were released only hours after a Washington Post/Univision poll of likely Floridian Republican voters found that found Trump leads Rubio by 7 points in the Sunshine State.
Other polls have found the real estate tycoon with a double-digit lead in Florida, boosted by surveys showing that one-fourth of Florida’s early voters - that is, those who have already cast their ballots - are first-time or long-dormant voters, a key Trump demographic.
Rubio has pinned the fate of his campaign on winning his home state, which has a winner-take-all primary scheduled on Tuesday. Although the polling gap may be narrowing, Trump’s lead could conceivably shrink to a single vote and he would still take home all 99 of Florida’s delegates. Along with his lead in Ohio, another winner-take-all state with a primary scheduled for Tuesday, Trump has declared that if he wins the next two major states, he’ll have sewn up the nomination.
Report: Ted Cruz to get his first US senate endorsement
Texas senator Ted Cruz is about to receive his first endorsement from a colleague in the US senate, according to Buzzfeed.
Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, will reportedly endorse Cruz’s candidacy for president on Thursday afternoon. Lee, who like Cruz is a former constitutional lawyer who arose to prominence on the back of the Tea Party movement, was Cruz’sbiggest - and only - ally in his bid to defund the Affordable Care Act in 2013. It was that episode that alienated Cruz from many of his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill, a possible explanation for the tardiness of a single endorsement from the US senate for the candidate.
The public is exasperated by the political system to the point that it is enjoying a kind of catharsis in the form of Donald Trump, writes Marilynn Robinson:
Donald Trump is not really exceptional among current Republican presidential candidates. He is the one with the brightest plumage, of course, and the one who has had long experience at cultivating celebrity. If Trump seems strangely incapable of consistency except in the matter of walling out and deporting immigrants, somber Ted Cruz is lurking nearby to alarm us with his ideological purity. If Trump is his own invention, there is Rubio, the polished creature of hired advisors and their moment-to-moment calculations.
The only satisfaction to be found in a Trump win lies in the fact that the others have lost, and lost badly. On the other hand, Trump’s bluster distracts attention from the others’ stated positions, so if one of his competitors manages finally to make the case, to the public or the party, that he is least objectionable, the claim might well be groundless.
Trump and the others are the product of the souring of the party system. Someone should point out, in these days when the constitution is so constantly and pietistically invoked, that political parties are not mentioned in the constitution, and that the prescient founders warned emphatically against them for reasons that should be clear to us now.
Supreme court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is co-writing a new book to be released in January 2017.
The book, entitled My Own Words, will comprise of a “selection of writings and speeches by Justice Ginsburg on wide-ranging topics, including gender equality, the workways of the supreme court, on being Jewish, on law and lawyers in opera and on the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US constitution”, according to a statement from Simon and Schuster.
My Own Words will be a collaborative effort between Ginsburg and her authorized biographers, Mary Hartnett and Wendy W Williams. Ginsburg will write an introduction to the book and Hartnett and Williams will write introductions to each of the chapters with quotes from the hundreds of interviews they have conducted with Ginsburg for a forthcoming biography of the justice. Hartnett and Williams will also assist Ginsburg in selecting the writings to be included in the book.
Ginsburg is one of the supreme court’s most public figures, a liberal champion, and a feminist pop culture icon. Last year, the book Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, based on a fan site, proved a popular hit.
Karl Rove, Republican political consultant and architect of George W Bush’s political career, dismissed a major speech given last week by Bush’s would-have-been successor, Mitt Romney, that took aim at Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
“I respect governor Romney a lot, but I thought it was the wrong message from the wrong messenger on the wrong day,” Rove told Michigan radio show host Michael Patrick Shiels. “This was the day of the debate, and so it’s going to get overwhelmed largely by last night, and I thought the speech was good but not great, and it gave Trump a chance to come back and remind his supporters of the thing that motivates them, which is: Romney lost.”
“With Donald Trump supporters, this sense of aggrievement that ‘we could have won’ - which a lot of Republicans feel, me included, and it would have much better for the country if we had won, it is an important touchpoint for his supporters,” Rove continued.
LIVE: Marco Rubio speaking in Kissimmee, Florida:
Failure to turn around his dwindling fortunes in his home state would likely end Marco Rubio’s presidential bid, report the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui and Richard Luscombe, and some polls have Donald Trump ahead by double digits.
Beneath his veneer of confidence was the reality that Rubio faces mounting pressure after a series of losses in the Republican primaries that have only appeared to grow more bruising with each passing contest. And while some pollsshow Rubio slowly inching closer to Donald Trump in Florida, several others find the Republican frontrunner leading by double digits.
Even a number of influential conservatives who had previously waxed poetic about his prospects threw in the towel on Wednesday, suggesting that Rubio should suspend his campaign.
Absent a win in Florida, it is all but certain Rubio will have no other option but to quit the race. And so while crisscrossing his home state with the fate of his presidential aspirations in their hands Rubio is imploring voters to understand the urgency of the moment.
Speaking in an airport hangar in Sarasota, Rubio struck a similarly pressing tone: “It has to happen here, and it has to happen now.”
Former secretary of state and Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has been accused of skirting the rules during last night’s Democratic primary debate in Miami.
Sanders aide Jeff Weaver told me photo circulating of @HillaryClinton w/staff during debate break violates DNC rules pic.twitter.com/CYeowyNI7y
— Ed Henry (@edhenry) March 10, 2016
Fox News Channel reporter Ed Henry tweeted a photo from backstage at the debate that appears to show Clinton with her campaign staff during a commercial break. Candidates are barred from meeting with aides during debates.
Clinton spokesperson Jen Palmieri told Henry that she “wasn’t aware of the pic.”
Billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was accused of of breaking similar rules during the latest Fox News debate, leading the network to suspend the rule for all of the Republican candidates so as to level the playing field.
Some good news for Barack Obama:
More Americans say that he’s doing a good job as president than have said so in the past three years, according to the latest Gallup poll of the president’s approval rating.
Obama earned a 50% job approval rating for the week ending March 6, the highest average for the president since May of 2013. That’s four points higher than his average approval rating for all of last year, and three points higher than his administration’s average since January of 2009 when he took office.
The rating is extremely partisan, with 87% of Democrats approving of the job Obama is doing as president compared to a mere 11% of Republicans.
It’s the final primary stretch, and Donald Trump is starting to sound presidential, writes Christopher R Barron:
Trump is not a typical candidate, and he hardly delivers a typical political stump speech, but there is no question that the political neophyte has been a quick study. Trump is a vastly better candidate than he was just a few months ago. He seemed restrained by Trump standards last night. He looked, dare I say, almost... presidential.
He was short on policy specifics, but his voters aren’t coming for wonky policy details. What he lacks in policy chops he more than compensates for in his ability to connect to voters. He knows his voters, he knows what they want to hear, and he gives it to them, delivering a powerful emotional moment in his rally when a Marine vet, left disfigured by an IED explosion, came on stage to ask him what he would do about healthcare for veterans.
Another sign of Trump’s growing confidence about his prospects for securing the nomination: he barely mentioned his primary opponents. Instead of attacking his GOP rivals, Trump made the case that he would be the best candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton. And he didn’t make a terrible case.
As Donald Trump’s campaign manager continues to dodge questions about a physical alternation with a female reporter at a press conference on Tuesday, multiple videos have surfaced showing an anti-Trump protestor being punched in the face by a supporter of the billionaire Republican frontrunner.
The videos, taken from different angles by multiple people, show an African American man being led out of a Trump rally by Cumberland County sheriff officers as the audience boos.
A bystander, a white man with a pony tail and a cowboy hat, then sucker-punches the man in the face seemingly without provocation. The crowd cheers as the protestor stumbles away and is tackled by multiple Cumberland County sheriff officers, then handcuffed.
The candidate, whose rallies have begun earning a reputation for violent outbursts, has not condemned the actions of his supporters in the past. During an interruption at one of his rallies in Kentucky last week, Trump told the audience to “get him out. Try not to hurt him. If you do I’ll defend you in court.”
After a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, in which white attendees assaulted a black protester who disrupted his speech, Trump declared “Maybe he should have been roughed up.”
Of a protestor at a rally on Las Vegas, Trump told the crowd from the lectern that “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
Updated
A writer at Breitbart News has released a statement regarding an incident at a Donald Trump rally on Tuesday night in which she was forcibly “yanked” away from the candidate by Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.
Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields was reporting from a press conference at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, on Tuesday night, when she approached the candidate to ask him about his stance on affirmative action, she writes for the conservative outlet in a post titled “Michelle Fields: In Her Own Words.”
“Trump acknowledged the question, but before he could answer I was jolted backwards. Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down,” Fields writes. “I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken.”
Fields says that she didn’t know who had pulled her down until another reporter “remarked that it was Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who aggressively tried to pull me to the ground.” Lewandowski was seen exiting the space with Trump moments later.
“No apology. No explanation for why he did this,” Fields writes.
Jaime Weinstein, a senior editor at Daily Caller and Fields’ boyfriend, tweeted about incident soon thereafter:
Trump always surrounds himself w thugs. Tonight thug Corey Lewandowski tried to pull my gf @MichelleFields to ground when she asked tough q
— Jamie Weinstein (@Jamie_Weinstein) March 9, 2016
It wouldn’t be the first time that members of Trump’s campaign or security team had a physical altercation with members of the press. Last week, longtime Time photographer Chris Morris was put in a chokehold and slammed backwards into a table by a Secret Service agent at a rally in Virginia after attempting to leave the designated press area.
In a statement to Politico about the incident, Breitbart News CEO Larry Solov declared that if what Fields says it true, she deserves an apology from Trump’s campaign manager.
“It’s obviously unacceptable that someone crossed a line and made physical contact with our reporter,” Solov stated. “What Michelle has told us directly is that someone ‘grabbed her arm’ and while she did not see who it was, Ben Terris of the Washington Post told her that it was Corey Lewandowski. If that’s the case, Corey owes Michelle an immediate apology.”
This morning in politics
Good pre-and-post-debate morning ...
We’re in the blissful hours between last night’s Democratic presidential debate in Miami and tonight’s Republican presidential debate in Miami.
Last night’s Latino-centric engagement on Univision saw immigration policy dominate the fourth Hillary v Bernie clash, with former secretary of state Clinton accusing Vermont senator Sanders of supporting “Minuteman vigilantes in their ridiculous efforts to hunt down immigrants.”
Sanders, in turn, criticized Clinton’s past statements about deporting child immigrants from Honduras.
Both Democratic candidates agreed on one point, however: that the American people will never elect billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
Clinton declared at the debate that she found Trump’s rhetoric “deeply offensive” and said his “trafficking in prejudice and paranoia” would not be tolerated, while Sanders went a step further and implied Trump might be a racist, due to his previous involvement in the “birther” movement.
Expect a similar dogpile on the Republican frontrunner in Miami again tonight: Florida senator Marco Rubio may have expressed regret about mocking the size of Trump’s hands in campaign rallies in recent weeks – telling Anderson Cooper that “my kids were embarrassed by it” and “if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t” – but a recent batch of polls show that Florida’s native son is far behind Trump in the waning days before its winner-take-all primary on Tuesday.
Trump has gone on the record stating that if he wins Florida and Ohio – another delegate-rich winner-take-all state – next week, he’ll have sewn up the nomination. Or, as the New York Post put it:
This may explain why former Florida governor and failed Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has scheduled three one-on-one meetings in the hours before tonight’s debate with all three of the non-Trump candidates. Bush met with Rubio yesterday, according to the New York Times, and will meet with Ohio governor John Kasich and Texas senator Ted Cruz today. What could they be meeting about? Well, for starters, Bush hasn’t yet endorsed a candidate for the Republican nomination.
We’ll be covering all this and more in our minute-by-minute coverage of today’s political news in the Sunshine State with our stellar team of mild-mannered reporters: Sabrina Siddiqui is in Florida with Rubio and Dan Roberts is in Tampa with Clinton.
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