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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Alan Yuhas (earlier) and Tom McCarthy (now)

Sanders campaigns in New Hampshire as Clinton flies to Flint – as it happened

Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign stop at the Franklin Pierce University Fieldhous in Rindge, New Hampshire. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

Summary

We’re going to wrap up our live blog campaign trail coverage from New Hampshire for the afternoon. Here’s a summary of what’s happened:

  • New Hampshire votes on Tuesday. At least three Republican candidacies appear to be hanging on a thread here. On Sunday the candidates zipped around the state, racing to make closing arguments before America tunes out of politics – and tunes into Super Bowl 50 tonight.
  • New Jersey governor Chris Christie kept up his attack on Marco Rubio, whom he steamrolled at a GOP debate on Saturday night by pointing out what he said was the empty consistency and consistent emptiness of Rubio’s speech.
  • Christie expanded his attacks to Ohio governor John Kasich, whom Christie said had not had to deal with media scrutiny the way he, Christie, had.
  • Kasich, meanwhile, made the pitch to voters that he was a conservative candidate who could yet win voters like a centrist in a general election.
  • Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, got in on the slapfight, too, calling Donald Trump a “loser” – to the joy of his overflow morning crowd. Big crowd for Jeb. Yuge.
  • Marco Rubio, for his part, waking up to headlines announcing his debate disaster, said he wished that footage of his supposed #fail – repeating verbatim a line about Barack Obama – would be replayed even more, because he really meant it.
  • Donald Trump, for his part, mocked Bush for having his “mommy” campaign for him. Trump also said he would never refer to the Iranian ayatollah as “supreme leader” because he’s not Trump’s supreme leader.
  • Vermont senator Bernie Sanders set a large crowd on fire, figuratively, in a rally at a community college in Portsmouth. New Hampshire is #feelingtheBern.
  • Hillary Clinton traveled to Flint, Michigan, to speak on the water crisis. Bill Clinton campaigned in her stead in Keene, advising voters that the imminent primary election was like 1992 “on steroids”.
  • Polling continued to show Sanders and Trump with double-digit leads in their respective races. Kasich, who is hoping for a dramatic finish here Tuesday, appeared to be bobbing toward the top of a pack fighting for second place.

We’ll be back tomorrow. Don’t go away.

Updated

Bill Clinton: 'this is 1992 on steroids'

Bill Clinton is asking New Hampshire voters to reimagine the 1992 Democratic primary and make his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, a “comeback kid,” writes the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino from inside a Keene, New Hampshire, rally:

“I hope New Hampshire will remember, this is 1992 on steroids,” said Clinton, whose 1992 campaigned sparked to life with a second-place finish in the Granite State. “You need to respond on steroids and you’ll never regret it.”

It’s like steroids. Know what I mean?
It’s like steroids. Know what I mean? Photograph: John Locher/AP

Bill Clinton delivered a low-key speech to a packed crowd at Keene Middle School, where Hillary Clinton previously held a town hall to discuss the regional heroin epidemic.

Clinton said his wife’s attention to issues such as the opioid epidemic and Flint water crisis were examples of how she would tackle big issues – the economy and foreign policy – without forgetting about the smaller ones.

Clinton criticized Sanders’s for labeling the groups that have endorsed his wife “establishment”, especially Planned Parenthood. “We need a debate, not name-calling,” he said. “We need anger and answers,” he said. “We can start with resentment but in the end results are all that matters.”

In a final pitch, Clinton returned to one of his favorite lines.

Everywhere she’s ever gone she’s made something good happen. Everything she’s ever touched and every person she’s ever touched she’s made better,” Clinton said. “You will never have a chance – never – to vote for a better change-maker.”

Updated

Sanders closes: “We have an enormous amount of work to do together. And the path forward starts in New Hampshire this Tuesday. Thank you very much!”

Sanders is out. Bowie is on:

Starman sends Sanders out.

And the crowd chants, “Feel the Bern! Feel the Bern! Feel the Bern!”

Updated

This is true, Ed Henry / Fox News is here. Is Fox feeling the Bern? Henry starts recording his live spot just as the crowd erupts in huge applause at Sanders’ line about the Iraq war: “I was right, and Hillary Clinton was wrong!”

Updated

Action meanwhile at a Rubio event in Hudson, New Hampshire, per the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui –

Voter tells Rubio all illegal immigrants are “criminal aliens.” Rubio says we should prioritize “the violent criminals” in enforcing law.

Rubio has lately mentioned his infraction for drinking in park at age 18 when asked about targeting of minorities by law enforcement.

Clinton in Flint: I will fight 'no matter how long it takes'

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is at a church in Flint, Michigan, to talk about the water crisis, reports Guardian columnist Lucia Graves from the scene:

“I feel blessed to be here but I wish it were for a different reason,” Clinton said, taking a stage flanked by purple-robed members of the church choir and surrounded by a sea of nodding heads.

“But I am here because for nearly two years, mothers and fathers were voicing concerns about the water’s color and its smell, about the rashes that it gave to those that were bathing in it. And for nearly two years Flint was told the water was safe,” she said to applause and shouts of ‘amen.’

The introduction she received for the speech was light, with the pastor joking the baptismal water was from the Flint river and he’d experienced no rashes, only a little ash.

Clinton seemed at some pains to emphasize to the audience her lasting commitment to the issue, saying “I will fight for you no matter how long it takes,” and “this has to be a national priority not just for today and for tomorrow.”

“This is no time for politics as usual,” she said. “Flint should start making the repairs you need to restore safe water as soon as possible.”

Rings true after a few nights of sitting in front of New Hampshire TVs–

Here’s Sanders talking about gay marriage at the rally:

Sanders says Republicans have a strange definition of “family values.”

“With a couple days left in the primaries here in New Hampshire, you see a lot of Republicans running all over this state,” he says.

“Go away!” a guy yells, to applause.

“That’ll happen in a couple of days,” Sanders says, to laughs.

“Many of these guys talk about – although not so much here, they will more when they go down South – family values. I want everyone here to be very clear on what they mean by that,” he says.

What they mean is no woman... should have the right to control her own body. I disagree... It means they want to defund Planned Parenthood. I want to expand funding for Planned Parenthood. ... What they are saying is that our gay brothers and sisters should not have the right to get married. I disagree.

“You ready for a radical idea?” Sanders asks.

Somebody yells, “Preach!”

“We are going to create an economy together that works for working families, not just the 1%!” Sanders says.

Earlier Sanders said that the Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, controls wealth equivalent to the bottom 40% of US families, and yet Wal-Mart pays employees so little that its workforce represents the largest single bloc of welfare recipients in the country.

“So I say to the Walton family: get off of welfare, pay your workers a living wage.”

And here’s what we mean by big cheering:

WalMart: get off welfare.

Sanders turns to the “grotesque level of wealth and income inequality in America.”

Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts is with the blog in the room:

“Do we have the courage to take on the billionaire class?” Sanders asks.

“The government belongs to all of us and not just a small number of wealthy people!”

Big cheering and applause.

“They have endless supplies of money and power, but at the end of the day, we have something they don’t have. We have the people.”

The “big cheering and applause” comes so regularly – in response to any line Sanders stops long enough on to allow it – that from here on out you can just assume that there is big cheering and applause throughout. If some line is unexpectly greeted with confused silence, we’ll note it.

Sanders acknowledges a critique that the overhaul of tax policy, health care and financial regulations he recommends is just too much for any president to pull off.

“We will get them done, because people will demand that they get done!” Sanders says.

Another big applause line.

Sanders says 20 years ago, if you told them that same-sex marriage would be a right in 2015, “somebody next to them would have said, ‘what are you smoking?’ Which raises another issue,” he deadpans. It’s a joke he’s used before but the crowd enthuses wildly anyway.

“That’s how change happens.”

Twenty years ago, Republicans were running entire campaigns about how gays were going to take over the world and destroy America. They don’t talk about it anymore because they know it’s a losing issue.

Sanders: 'we need a political revolution'

Sanders slides into his stump. “In order to bring about the changes that the American people want, we need a political revolution. And the concept of a political revolution, that’s not just rhetoric, that’s reality.”

Sanders rips his jacket off and the crowd goes nuts.

Here’s his entrance:

Heeere comes Bernie - pure pandemonium in the room.

“This is a loud and boisterous crowd,” Sanders begins. “Thank you!”

The Bernie Sanders rally where your blogger is posted up has yet to properly start. Palpably more energy – and physically more people, maybe twice as many – in the room, we’d note, than at Hillary Clinton’s morning get-out-the-vote event yesterday in Concord. Here in Portsmouth there are full bleachers and a properly packed gym floor and a media pack to dwarf what Clinton had.

On Saturday (yesterday) in Rindge, NH.
On Saturday (yesterday) in Rindge, NH. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

That Trump event in Plymouth continues to seem lively. The candidate is mocking a rival’s mother. Or mocking the rival for having a mother?

Trump continues via Ben:

Trump: “I am not calling him the Supreme Leader, he’s not my Supreme Leader”

Trump now says “there’s something strange going” because Obama refers to Khamenei by his title of Supreme Leader

Trump now says “there’s something strange going on” because Obama refers to Khamenei by his title of Supreme Leader

Back at the Sanders event, a state legislator is warming up the crowd. “Just like 1776, Americans are saying, enough is enough!” Big cheering. Sounds like they just won the state meet.

The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino is at an event with Bill Clinton in Keene, New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton is in Flint, Michigan, today, for an update on the local water crisis.

Bill Clinton has just said that Hillary Clinton’s primary race is like his “on steroids,” Lauren writes:

@hillaryclinton didn’t say who do you want me to blame, she said what do you want me to do.” @billclinton

Guardian columnist Lucia Graves is in Flint tailing Hillary Clinton:

Donald Trump has been speaking to a packed house at Plymouth State University, in Holderness, New Hampshire, reports Alan Yuhas.

He’s talking about a rigged system … just like Bernie Sanders does. He says that insurance companies would “rather have monopolies in each state” than compete, and that they’ve divvied up the country into various regions like a cartel.

“I know these people,” Trump says. “The insurance companies say, ‘I want to take New York, you take, you take some other place. You take Iowa.’

“But they have lines around the states,” he says, apparently meaning they’ve drawn borders between their respective regions.

“And New Hampshire has the same thing. And for those of you who have businesses it’s very hard to get competitive bids … I have thousands of employees. So hard for me to make deals on healthcare because I can’t get bids.”

He throws a little red meat to the Republican crowd – “Obamacare is a disaster, and it’s expensive, and it’s no good, and it doesn’t work” – but then he pulls off a Sandersian riff about the corrupting power of money in politics.

Moneyed interests make “tremendous political contributions to the guys that I’m on the stage with,” Trump says. “Whether the insurance companies or the drug companies or the oil companies, it’s all the same thing.”

Later he talks about how we need to protect the environment and our “clean, beautiful air”. He mocks Obama for flying on a large jet, just like his private jet. (He doesn’t mention his own private jet.)

There’s some isolated screaming from the back. Some are “friends” but one is a shirtless guy with “Trump is a racist” draw in marker on his back. He gets tossed out. “Get ‘em out,” Trump laughs. “They’re lost, they’re lost people.”

“We kid and joke,” he says. “If we can’t smile at ourselves, and we can’t smile at how stupidly we’re being run, then we’re just not gonna make ourselves feel so good.”

The crowd loves it. “Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump.”

Updated

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has continued to accuse Bernie Sanders’s of misleading voters, running advertisements and sending mailers that make it appear that he has been endorsed by groups that have not actually endorsed him, writes Lauren Gambino in Keene, NH.

Calling this a “pattern of deceptive campaign tactics”, Clinton’s team blasts Sanders for abandoning his promise to run a positive campaign and has demanded he stops.

“It seems the Sanders campaign has shifted from insulting and dismissing people who don’t support him to falsely claiming their support,” said Clinton communications director Jen Palmieri. “Despite being called on deceptive campaign tactics and misleading ads for weeks now, Sanders has now chosen to mislead voters on a veteran and veterans’ group’s support. Enough is enough—voters deserve better.”

(Read more about the ongoing dispute over endorsements here.)

Also, MSNBC has reported that Sanders attended a fundraiser in 2007 in Martha’s Vineyard that was attended by the very lobbyists he now rails against. The piece shows just how difficult ideologically purity can be in the dirty game of politics.

Updated

Protester tossed from Trump rally

It’s warmer in New Hampshire than it was yesterday but still this demonstrates admirable physical stoicism:

The protester took off his shirt to reveal an arrow pointing at his ass:

Updated

Harry Enten is an analyst with the data-journalism-and-so-much-more site FiveThirtyEight, whose handicapping of the New Hampshire race looks good for Trump:

Hard to disagree with this analysis:

Guardian political reporter Sabrina Siddiqui has followed Florida senator Marco Rubio from Londonderry to Bedford, New Hampshire.

Among other topics, Rubio touches on one close to his heart and on everyone’s mind this weekend: the Super Bowl.

Rubio to Bedford crowd: “Tom Brady’s 38 years old. Why is he still playing? There should be mandatory retirement ages.”

A 9 year old asks Rubio what he’s going to do about the national debt. Rubio blames “people in Washington that don’t care right now.”

Guardian political reporter Sabrina Siddiqui flags a fresh poll of the Republican race in New Hampshire published by Monmouth university.

It shows a fight for second. And Trump in runaway first, gobbling nearly a third of votes of support.

In two days we’ll know.

Real Clear Politics polling averages have Trump in first by 15.7 points and Rubio instead of Kasich in second – though Rubio-Kasich-Cruz are packed into a four-point band in the averages, tight tight tight.

Guardian political reporter Ben Jacobs is at a Donald Trump rally in Plymouth, New Hampshire, with his hands on the tweetboard:

Donald Trump: I have no friends as far as I am concerned

[What about the Mexicans and Muslims and Chinese and members of the media and everyone else he claims as close friends before he shivs them?]

Trump: Even in the Wild West, you’ll get shot. They’ll shoot you but they won’t cut your head off.

With two days to go until New Hampshire votes, the Republicans are turning on one another like underfed house pets (got a better analogy? Self-publish in the comments – that’s what they’re there for!).

Jeb Bush has turned Trump’s preferred imprecation back on the source. LOSER. And the crowd loves it! He should bring up the wall?

Well-observed.

Play this Ted Cruz.

A good night’s sleep has not slackened New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s thirst for the attack.

Here he is at a rally in New Hampshire today speaking at length about how much he admires Ohio governor John Kasich – before throwing him under the bus. He says Kasich’s record has not been combed by local media. “The interrogation by the Akron Sun ain’t doin’ it.”

Ahem. It’s the Akron Beacon Journal, governor.

“I’m just better. I’ve been tested,” Christie says. He points out that New Jersey is one of the toughest media markets in the world. He implies that he’s survived nicely. In fact barrels of ink have been spilled by the regional press describing and decrying Christie’s shortcomings, and he’s deeply unpopular in his home state.

But at least he’s vetted?

Hello from Sanders event in Portsmouth, NH

We’ve relocated the blog for the moment to Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth, New Hampshire – we’re in the gym – where Bernie Sanders is scheduled to appear in about 45 minutes for a get-out-the-vote rally.

Packed house here. “I don’t think that we’re gonna get a seat,” says one arrival. She’s extremely right.

New Hampshire turns out for Sanders.

Pre-rally music includes the under-heard Steve Earle song The Revolution Starts Now.

And now it’s Neil Young. Click on this video, it will be like being here – but with seats!

Updated

Steinem apologizes

Feminist writer Gloria Steinem has apologized for her remarks made this weekend about young women who support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.

On Sunday Steinem posted to her Facebook page that she “misspoke” and did not mean to imply “young women aren’t serious in their politics”.

In a case of talk-show Interruptus, I misspoke on the Bill Maher show recently, and apologize for what’s been misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics.

What I had just said on the same show was the opposite: young women are active, mad as hell about what’s happening to them, graduating in debt, but averaging a million dollars less over their lifetimes to pay it back. Whether they gravitate to Bernie or Hillary, young women are activist and feminist in greater numbers than ever before.

On the Bill Maher show late on Friday night, Steinem said: “Women are more for [Clinton] than men are. Men tend to get more conservative because they gain power as they age, women get more radical because they lose power as they age.

“They’re going to get more activist as they grow older. And when you’re younger, you think: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’”

More than 3,000 people signed a petition – entitled “Walk it back Ms Steinem – we aren’t here for the boys” – asking Steinem to apologize for the remark.

Updated

An event in North Hampton this morning showed that Chris Christie has essentially pinned his primary hopes on his performance in last night’s debate, in which he pummeled Marco Rubio for repeating the same canned lines over and over.

On Sunday Christie had one message. It boiled down to: “I was good in the debate last night.” He repeated it a lot.

“I decided to engage last night and how do you think it went?” Christie asked the crowd in an event in a school.

They thought it went well.

Of Washington DC, Christie asked: “Does the place need to be burned down?”

They believed that it did.

“Yeah it does, and I’m a good as arsonist as anybody you saw that last night.”

Of Marco Rubio, Christie said he like him. But the Texas senator is just too inexperienced, he said.

“The lights were bright last night and all of America saw whose ready and whose not I’m ready he’s not.”

Christie’s performance in the debate - where he came out firing at Rubio and carried on pulling the trigger for two-and-a-half hours - had resonated with the crowd, as well as with himself.

“You were on fire last night!” a woman shouted out as the New Jersey governor took questions.

“And I don’t intend to cool off until I beat Hillary Clinton.”

The importance of Christie’s debate prowess, he says, is that he is the only Republican who can beat Clinton in a one on one.

He offered an extended metaphor where he compared himself to an old truck.

Sometimes when people buy a new truck but it doesn’t get through mud as well as their old truck, he said. “You nominate this old truck and I tell you what’s going to happen, I’m going to get through that mud. I’m going to run her right over on my way to the White House.”

Updated

After Saturday’s Republican debate the talk of the trail has been Marco Rubio’s difficulties with pre-prepared lines, their tone-deaf repetition, and how to handle Chris Christie when the governor barrels into the middle of those lines like a heavyweight champion scenting blood.

It may be easy, in all that excitement, to forget that before the debate Rubio was emerging as the favourite to take the “establishment” mantle and challenge Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for the nomination.

Here’s one of many, many talking heads – David Frum, once a George W Bush speechwriter, now senior editor at The Atlantic – on CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria, discussing what Rubio has to do, surving debate blunders aside.

The “lane” Frum refers to is the part of the nomination race occupied by such “mainstream”, “establishment” or, whisper it, “moderate” candidates as Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich.

Rubio is certainly … leading in the group it is most lucrative to be leading in. You would certainly like to be his finance chairman in the week after Iowa.

But … a lot of things have to go right for him … There’s a tendency to report as if OK, it’s now all over because … he is now leading in the most lucrative lane.

He has to dominate that lane very quickly. He has to persuade the other people in that lane to exit soon and graciously. He has to persuade George – sorry, Jeb Bush, not to use his $50m remaining of Super Pac money to destroy Rubio in a way that they have been doing until now.

And he has to find some way to get Donald Trump to exit the stage without smashing all the scenery on the way off the set.

Challenging.

Here, meanwhile, is Frum discussing his most famous bit of work for Bush.

More from Chris Christie, who exuded confidence during his tour of the shows, after his debate takedown of the double-downing Marco Rubio. That was, after all, the go-to debate footage for all the shows to show on Sunday.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, the New Jersey governor looked to parlay the debate-stage blows he landed so heavily on Rubio into New Hampshire votes, handy things to have when the state is central to the survival of one’s campaign. He did so in part by suggesting the Florida senator would be the wrong guy to send into a presidential debate against Hillary Clinton.

Christie asked: do Republican voters want someone who can “absolutely answer” every point made by Clinton – or Bernie Sanders, Chris, or Bernie Sanders – or do they want someone who will “crumble” when the former secretary of state – or the senator from Vermont, Chris, or the senator from Vermont – turns up the heat?

Christie then finished his appearance by telling Fox host Chris Wallace: “Thanks for coming on.”

Cue much hilarity and hilarious banter between interviewer and interviewee, in an exchange almost – but not quite – as amusing as ABC’s debate intro fluff or subsequent Fox guest John Kasich’s live-to-the-nation struggle to detach himself from his microphone and let incoming governator Jeb Bush sit down.

Wallace then said he felt like “a barber”, his chair constantly filled – in this case, by presidential candidates with lovely, thick heads of hair.

“I need a haircut,” said Bush.

And then the red-hot political debate – politichat? politifun? – resumed.

Updated

Trump defends his defense of torture. He says “In terms of getting information, it works.”

NBC host Chuck Todd doesn’t mention the comprehensive Senate report that found torture didn’t work, and even produced false information, but it was released way back in 2014 so maybe he’s forgotten.

But he does ask shouldn’t the US be better than subjecting prisoners to mock drowning and other torture techniques?

“OK they can do it but we can’t?” Trump asks. “Look when they fly planes into the World Trade Center and kill many thousands … you can do waterboarding, and you can do a step beyond waterboarding, it wouldn’t bother me a little bit.”

Donald Trump is also on the NBC program, and Chuck Todd asks him the same thing CNN asked how he feels about his Iowa loss to Texas senator Ted Cruz. Does he need victory in New Hampshire?

“I would say that I would like to win but I don’t know that it’s necessary,” Trump says. “I don’t know that I need it, I hope that I get it.”

He’s quiet about the malfeasance of the Cruz campaign in Iowa, where staffers falsely told voters that Ben Carson had dropped out of the campaign.

I think what happened was very unfortunate. I think it was very unfair to Ben, and in a certain way it was unfair to me … I was a strong second, but I’m not thinking about Iowa, I’m thinking about New Hampshire, I’m not thinking about it any more.

“I worked hard there, I really liked Iowa, I liked the people of Iowa,” he goes on. “I like this system much better in New Hampshire where you go out, you like somebody and you vote.”

He says he’s $50m under budget, and that he’s given his staffers unlimited access to the bank to get out the vote.

Updated

Clinton: we're getting offended by everything

Hillary Clinton’s now on NBC’s Meet the Press. Host Chuck Todd asks about a comment made yesterday by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright in support of Clinton on Saturday, namely: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”

Albright.
Albright. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters

“Madeline has been saying this for many, many years,” Clinton says. “She believes it firmly, in part because she knows what a struggle it has been, and she understands the struggle is not over.”

“I don’t want people to be offended,” Clinton says, but when asked whether she understands why someone might take offense she channels the spirit of anti-political correctness so familiar to Republicans.

“Good grief we’re getting offended by everything these days!” she says. “People can’t say anything without offending somebody.”

Clinton says people can take Albright’s “light hearted but very pointed remark” however they see fit. It doesn’t change her admiration for Albright: “She has a life experience that I respect.”

Jeb: I'd support Trump over Clinton

John Ellis Bush, aka Jeb, is on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, who’s just very awkwardly ushered John Kasich away after repeatedly telling the Ohio governor to leave.

Bush talks about eminent domain and Donald Trump: “He tried to take the property of a 75-year-old woman to tear it down,” Bush says, “to turn it into a parking lot for limousines for high rollers going to his failed casinos.”

Bush.
Bush. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Wallace asks about Rubio, who was Bush’s ally and some say protege back in their days together in Florida. Rubio “came across as kind of robotic”, Bush says. “He’s gifted but he’s never had the chance to actually make a tough decision.”

Bush then tries to top Chris Christie’s boasts about dealing with Hurricane Sandy, saying he’s faced “eight hurricanes and four tropical storms in 16 months”.

He also brags about his conservative bona fides: “I’m going to support the Republican nominee, even if it’s Donald Trump, to show you how commit—”

Wallace cuts in: “How crazy you are!”

Bush finishes: “—mitted I am to the Republican party. … Hillary Clinton would be an unmitigated disaster for this country.”

Updated

Rubio defends debate display

Marco Rubio has defended his performance in Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate, writes Sabrina Siddiqui from Londonderry, New Hampshire, one day after he was widely panned for coming off as scripted in a tense exchange with Chris Christie.

In an interview with ABC’s This Week, the Florida senator was asked to explain why he repeated the same line – about Barack Obama intentionally weakening America – at least four times in the first hour of the debate, when pressed by Christie on his relative inexperience.

Rubio.
Rubio. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Rubio, according to most observers, played directly into the New Jersey governor’s attack that he is rehearsed and incapable of straying from the same set of talking points.

“Actually, I would pay them to keep running that clip, because that’s what I believe passionately,” Rubio said, reiterating once more his point about Obama deliberately harming the country.

Host George Stephanopoulos interjected, telling Rubio he was “getting pounded” for having repeated himself.

Rubio pushed back, noting, as his aides did the night before, that his campaign raised more money online in the first hour of the debate than any previous event.

“As far as that message, I hope they keep running it and I’m going to keep saying it because it’s true,” Rubio said. “It’s one of the reasons I’m running for president.”

Obama was changing the country, he said, “in a way that is robbing us of everything that makes us special”.

“I’m going to keep saying that, because not only is it the truth, it is at the core of our campaign.”

Pressed by Stephanopoulos again on his repetition, as Christie taunted him for that very attribute, Rubio again doubled down: “It’s what I believe and it’s what I’m going to continue to say.”

“This is the greatest country in the history of mankind because of a set of principles. Barack Obama wants us to abandon them.”

Speaking a town hall in Londonderry, before a packed crowd at a high school cafeteria shortly after his ABC appearance, Rubio brought up the debate criticism himself.

“People said, ‘Oh you said the same thing,’” he said. “I’m going to say it again.

“These things [Barack Obama’s] done to America are not accidents.”

Updated

Picture editor Sarah Gilbert has collected together some pictures of Donald Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters. As the example following shows, there isn’t much more to say…

Buddy Long
Buddy Long, left, and Ed Edwards laugh outside the Macon Coliseum before a Trump for President rally. Photograph: Christopher Aluka Berry / Reu/Reuters

The full gallery is here:

“Do you think this is a Marco Rubio coronation? Or do you need someone who’s been tested? Tested by a Democratic legislature? Tested by hurricane Sandy. Tested by a hostile media in New York City?”

That’s Christie, talking about sinister media folk like us. Not by name though.

Finally Tapper asks how the campaign has changed Christie. He says it’s “taught me just how profound the problems are in our country.”

And taught me again just how to be a better listener … Whatever happens in this race, I’ve been content with the way I’ve done it.”

At long last we have our final CNN candidate: New Jersey governor Chris Christie, whose debate performance was “something to behold”, Tapper says.

Christie.
Christie. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Christie’s sitting next to the host, who apparently ensconced candidates all over his New Hampshire studio this morning.

The governor says he hopes the debate shows he’s the best person to take on Hillary Clinton in a general election.

“I think the whole race changed last night, because there was a march especially among the chattering class, to anoint senator Rubio,” Christie says. “The race is so unsettled now. You can’t trust senator Rubio to be the nominee of this party.”

Updated

Kasich bats around some ideas for people to head up the IRS: “Bloomberg, somebody said Mitt Romney, who knows!”

When he gets Tapper’s “how has the campaign changed you” question, Kasich describes a sort of Voters Anonymous experience at town halls.

It’s forced me to slow down even more and listen to people. … They talk about excruciating stories of their kids, their own problems, they cry. They tell me sometimes in front of other people, sometimes privately.

“No one listens to them. No one celebrates when they win and no one [cries] with them when they lose.”

More from today’s Guardian 2016 output…

Lauren Gambino has written a lovely piece about Geno’s Chowder & Sandwich Shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, “an idyllic spot on the banks of the Piscataqua River” which is also the place where any Republican presidential candidate who is anyone – and Ross Perot – has pitched up over the years, the better to make their pitch to voters.

The accompanying video is here and is worth a minute-20 of your time:

Francesca Marconi Fernald’s chowder restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire has become the go-to place for Republicans including Ronald Reagan, the Bush family and Mitt Romney.

Lauren writes, meanwhile:

Barry Goldwater was the the first candidate to visit, Fernald said. Since then, the small-shingled building in liberal Portsmouth has hosted Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and his wife Elizabeth Dole, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Carly Fiorina, to name but a few.

She was also present in October, when Jeb Bush – remember him – spoke at the shop. Memories, memories…

“In this business things go up, things go down, you gotta put your feet on the ground.” Kasich the rhymester.

Tapper asks him about why he accepted a Medicaid expansion under Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare program.

“Obamacare’s a bad program, it doesn’t control the driving cost of medicine,” he says. He adds: “Reagan expanded Medicaid five times.”

But Kasich says he’s got a whole plan for a new healthcare system, and that he’s “rejected Obamacare”.

We’re at candidate number four on CNN. It’s Ohio governor John Kasich. He’s asked about whether Marco Rubio’s poor debate performance is good for his chances as “the establishment” candidate.

Seuss.
A regular Seuss. Photograph: Reuters

“I’m not the establishment,” Kasich says. “I make the establishment very nervous because I’m a change agent.”

“We’ve got to reform welfare for the rich,” he goes on. “I’m reforming the Pentagon when we have a Republican president.

But he says he’s baffled by why some Republicans don’t consider him a conservative. (Might be that New York Times endorsement.)

“I have had so many Democrats come up to me and say hey, we like you, we hope you’re the candidate,” Kasich says, though he says those voters admit they’re not going to vote for him.

Whoever’s gonna like me, I consider that to be a good thing. But it shows my ability, perhaps, to reassemble that old Reagan coalition …It might send out a signal that it’s safe if you’re a Democrat and you’re a conservative, to look at a Republican.

Updated

Tapper asks Clinton about whether some pundits are sexist in how they talk about her. She says that there’s no doubt a double standard still exists for women.

Then he asks the softball: has the campaign changed you? Clinton’s response:

Having gone through this now twice, I think I am a different person than I was back in ‘08. I think the experience I had as secretary of state has given me a perspective and understanding of a lot of the issues and gives me the confidence to know I could do every part of the job.

“Anger’s not a plan, and venting’s not a strategy, and we have work to do,” she continues. “We’ve got to make sure the economy works for everybody and not just those at the top.”

“We are the premier problem solvers of human history, and we have got to get back to that.”

Clinton: Sanders is grabbing at straws

Clinton is asked about the mailers sent out by Sanders’ campaign. The flyers have an excerpt from a book by senator Elizabeth Warren, and Sanders just said that that’s what Warren thinks, not him.

“That’s their typical artistic smear,” Clinton says. “It’s really getting old. They can’t point to anything. They’re grabbing at straws.”

Clinton.
Clinton. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

She says she wants to set the record straight “once and for all”.

When she got to the Senate in 2001, she says, “I was deluged, not as a senator, not as a first lady lobbying, working against this bill.”

“The version of the bill that was going to be voted on did not protect child support, did not protect women and children from what would happen to them if their partner, their spouse, went into bankruptcy.

That’s why she voted the way she did on the bill in question by Warren, Clinton says. She adds that she put out a statement back in 2001 that anyone can read. She turns to question Sanders’

“Why did he vote to deregulate swaps and derivatives, one of the key reasons for Lehmann Brothers” to collapse, she asks.

“I don’t understand why he doesn’t join me,” she adds. “We have to look at the shadow banking industry.”

Updated

Back in real time, Tapper introduces Hillary Clinton, who the camera suddenly reveals is sitting right next to the CNN host.

They talk about Flint, Michigan, whose residents have been suffering with lead-tainted water for nearly two years. CNN is going to host a debate there, and Clinton is going to visit the city later today.

Tapper gets to the campaign. Can Clinton win in New Hampshire, where Sanders has such a huge lead?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just going to work as hard as I can. I love the New Hampshire primary because the interaction you have with voters in every setting is so rewarding.

Updated

Finally Tapper asks Sanders the same thing he asked Trump: has the campaign changed you?

“It really has,” Sanders says, “in the sense that I perceive more than ever how far removed the Congress is, and you know I’m in the Senate, and the establishment media is, from where everybody else is.”

He recalls a campaign stop in Iowa, “a small town, a woman gets up and she’s trying to make it on $10,000 a year … she talks about the pain, the embarrassment of trying to make it on $10,000 a year.”

Then he remembers two elderly Iowans who came up to him at an event: “They’re saying we want to live long enough to come out and caucus for you. What do you think that does?”

He says he was moved.

Updated

Sanders hits Clinton ally and 'Bernie bros'

“I happen to like Hillary Clinton,” Sanders says, “but I am astounded by some of the people she is hiring, including David Brock.”

The senator’s talking about a man who once worked hard to bring the Clintons down and later converted to their cause, calling himself an “ex-conservative” and a former “rightwing hit man”.

Brock “used to be a rightwing guy” who attacked “people like Anita Hill,” Sanders said, referring to the civil rights professor. “He admitted, he said I lied about it. This is the guy who Hillary Clinton is making the head of her Super Pac?”

Sanders.
Sanders. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

NB: campaigns are forbidden by law from cooperating with Super Pacs. In practice it’s murky.

“I just don’t understand where the Clinton people are coming from hiring somebody like that,” Sanders says. “Every day they’re attacking us.”

What about “Bernie bros”, Tapper asks Sanders.

“We don’t want that crap,” the senator says without hesitation. “Anyone who’s supporting me and doing sexist things, we don’t want them. We don’t want them. That is not what this campaign is about.”

Updated

We’ve got, of course, a lot of 2016 reading for you today. The following is from Suzanne McGee, our personal finance columnist, who writes…

Congratulations, Lloyd Blankfein, on giving the presidential bid by Vermont senator Bernie Sanders a big boost! Oh, that wasn’t what you meant to do? Whoops …

It’s not a bad intro, at the end of a week of back and forth over Hillary Clinton’s ties, or otherwise, to Wall Street.

More from Suzanne:

[The Goldman Sachs CEO], speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box, didn’t endorse Clinton outright – that might have been the kiss of death. It’s just that any additional kind of linkage between Wall Street and Clinton could prove another nail in the coffin in the latter’s attempts to woo millennials at a critical moment in her campaign…

You can read Suzanne’s full analysis here:

Sanders has no opinion at all about whether Clinton should release the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs.

During the last Democratic debate a moderator asked her whether she would release the text of those speeches, many of which earned her hundreds of thousands of dollars after she left the State Department in 2012.

Asked about why his campaign sent out an excerpt of a book by senator Elizabeth Warren, who once accused Clinton of voting according to Wall Street’s influence, Sanders demurs. He says that’s what Warren thinks, and suggests that it’s up for voters to make up their minds about it.

He adds that, “for the record”, there’ve been a lot more attacks on him than his campaign has made. During the last debate Clinton accused Sanders’ campaign of “innuendo” and an “artful smear” regarding her knotty history with Wall Street.

Updated

Moving on to Hillary Clinton’s ties to Wall Street, Sanders is quick to say that he’s only stated a fact about her contributions and is letting people – her campaign included – draw conclusions from there.

“What I said is that she has a Super Pac, and she recently, according to her [campaign filings] received $15m from Wall Street.”

He talks about corruption and campaign finance, linking Republicans’ contributions from fossil fuel interests to their aversion to discussing climate change.

“I do not have a Super Pac, Jake. I do not want one, I do not want their money.”

Why is it that we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs … has 1300 lobbyists and contributes a lot in campaign contributions?

“Of course I do,” Tapper says.

Sanders stumps a little. “Big money controls what goes on in Washington, every American understands that,” he says. “They just want to have fun and contribute that money? But that is different than saying this candidate took money and voted this way, that is not what I’m saying.”

We’re on to Bernie Sanders, who met up with Tapper for an interview filmed Saturday. He asks the senator from Vermont about whether he ever thought Larry David and he had anything in common.

Sanders: “I admired him, I loved his television show, but no, I did not make the connection. … He plays me a little bit better than I play me.”

Tapper asks about Sanders’ 20-point lead in New Hampshire, per poll averages.

Sanders: “Don’t make me nervous, and don’t jinx me! … We’re working really hard.”

Updated

Have you learned anything from the trail, Mr Trump?

I’ll tell you what I have learned, the people in this counrty are amazing, they’re great. … The people that are with me are with me. They’re with me through thick and thin. But the people of our country are great people.

He says he’s sad that products like those of Apple are made in China. “We’re gonna bring companies and we’re gonna bring jobs, like Apple, back here, and we’re gonna do it big league.”

Tapper: Are you surprised that your’e competing with Bernie Sanders for independent voters?

Trump says he and Sanders agree on trade deals with Asia and Central and South America, which the billionaire says are terrible for the US.

The difference is I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to renegotiate those deals and make them good. And believe me they will be good. … Bernie won’t be able to do anything, it’s not his thing.”

Trump says he’s got the Midas touch.

“I’ll create absolute gold out of those deals, whereas right now we’re losing billions, even tens of billions,” he says. “I will create gold.”

“Hey, look, the theme is Make America Great Again,” Trump tells CNN. He talks about voters.

“They want to see intelligence, they want to see good deals, not bad deals … We don’t win on trade, we don’t win on war, we don’t win on Isis … We’re going to start winning again.”

Tapper asks about what kind of campaign operations Trump has – the ballyhooed “ground game” of phone calls, mailed papers, targeting the likeliest voters with data, etc.

“I didn’t know the term ground game too much” before Iowa, Trump says. “We had a ground game, maybe not the greatest ground game.”

He repeats: “My second place finish which again I say was first place.”

Trump: 'beyond waterboarding' is fine

Tapper asks about how Trump would bring back waterboarding when it’s been deemed illegal. Trump said he’d bring back the torture method and “worse” during the debate last night.

Trump.
Trump. Photograph: David Goldman/AP

Trump says that he’d get a law passed, no problem. He says what’s more important is that terrorists are “cutting off the heads of Christians”, so “beyond waterboarding is fine with me.”

Tapper: do you need to win New Hampshire after your loss in Iowa?

“That wasn’t a loss, I came in second and I only came in second because Cruz took a lot of votes from Carson,” Trump says, alluding to calls made by Ted Cruz’s campaign that falsely told voters Ben Carson had dropped out of the race. Carson and Cruz are competing largely for the same bloc of very religious, largely evangelical voters.

“I came in second out of the original 17 candidates, I don’t consider that a loss,” Trump says.

Updated

First up this Sunday morning we’ve got Donald Trump on CNN’s State of the Union. Host Jake Tapper is extremely excited because he’s got five candidates on the show and no commercials.

Back to Trump. Tapper asks about Rubio’s performance.

‘Well I don’t want to criticize anybody,” Trump says. “After four times that was a lot [of repetition], so that was a little bit, but, you know, I’m not one to comment on somebody else’s performance.”

Tapper says Trump seems mellow.

“Well I dunno,” Trump says. “ I’m trying to be a nice person, I am a nice person. I’ve had good relationships with people.”

Politics is an interesting thing. I’ve been doing this for seven months and I’m having a lot of fun doing it but much more importantly, you know, my theme is Make America Great Again,”

Updated

Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of the final sprint for New Hampshire on the marathon race that is the 2016 campaign trail.

It’s the morning after the last debate before New Hampshirites vote, in this case yet another contest between Republicans. The evening had an ignominious start: broadcaster ABC muffed up its introductions of the candidates, and an unfortunate end for Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida who has been gathering the scattered voters of his rivals into the semblance of a conservative coalition.

But Rubio recited scripted talking points over and over during the debate, and was ridiculed by Chris Christie and others for his “scripted” lines and lack of experience. Will voters see him as the robotic, “Republican Obama” that his enemies say he is? Or will they care that Donald Trump, the frontrunner in the state, promised to bring back things worse than waterboarding if elected to the White House?

We’ll get the first hints of it today, with a team on the trail and a healthy dose of skepticism for the candidates who try to recover and/or capitalize on the morning talk shows.

There’s Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts, national affairs correspondent Tom McCarthy, political reporters Sabrina Siddiqui and Ben Jacobs and official US 2016 election campaign selfie correspondent Adam Gabbatt. And more.

On the Democratic side of the ledger, Saturday night saw Bernie Sanders, the insurgent eating up the percentage points behind Hillary Clinton nationally – and leading handily in New Hampshire – appear on Saturday Night Live. He did so with the comedian many believe is either actually him, or his doppelgänger: Larry David.

Guardian US live editor Paul Owen’s take on that epochal event is here, and video below.

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