Today in Campaign 2016
As the geopolitical ramifications of terrorist attacks in Brussels came into focus, and as presidential candidates celebrated (or cursed) their results in last night’s so-called “Western Primaries” in Arizona, Utah and Idaho before setting their sights on upcoming contests in the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, we documented the highs and lows of the post-primary campaign.
Here are some of the key moments:
- Speaker of the house Paul Ryan told a group of congressional interns that although the state of American campaign politics seems grim, “it does not have to be this way... We don’t have to accept it and we don’t have to enable it.” He also apologized for accusing poor people on welfare of being “takers” when he was on the Republican party’s national ticket. “There was a time when I would talk about a difference between makers and takers in this country... I shouldn’t castigate a whole group of Americans just to make a point. I say this not to be politically correct. I say this because I was wrong.”
- In warning Donald Trump against attacking his wife Heidi, which Trump threatened to do on Twitter, Ted Cruz borrowed a line from the film The American President:
Ted Cruz literally lifted a line from The American President pic.twitter.com/BdG7Qcr4Ye
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) March 23, 2016
- Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has lambasted the long lines faced by would-be Arizona voters at polling places in the state’s most populous county, calling reports of five-hour waits by prospective supporters “a disgrace.”
- Hillary Clinton directly attacked her Republican rivals’ strategies to defeat the Islamic State, calling them “dangerous” in a speech on counterterrorism. “If Mr Trump gets his way it will be like Christmas in the Kremlin,” Clinton said. “Turning our back on our alliances or turning our alliance into a protection racket would reverse decades of bipartisan American leadership and would send a dangerous signal to friend and foe alike.”
- Former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich reportedly boosted Donald Trump’s presidential campaign when he met with more than 100 chiefs of staff for congressional Republicans in a closed-door meeting in Baltimore last week. “[The] guy who knows how to run Miss Universe, The Apprentice, Trump Towers, construction, golf courses, casinos, ties… hotels,” Gingrich reportedly bragged. “A guy who runs that every morning - you think he can’t run a presidential campaign?”
- Mere hours after the bill was first debated in the North Carolina legislature, the state’s Republican governor has pledged to sign sweeping legislation that voids all nondiscrimination ordinances for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people statewide. The bill, in addition to rendering extent nondiscrimination ordinances null and void, also prevents local municipal governments from enacting any laws that regulate discrimination in employment or public accommodations. The legislation also bar city governments from opening bathrooms for people to use based on the gender with which they identify.
We’ll be back tomorrow, the next day, and every day until the election with on-the-ground reporting of up-to-the-minute campaign news.
North Carolina governor to sign sweeping anti-LGBT protection bill
Mere hours after the bill was first debated in the North Carolina legislature, the state’s Republican governor has pledged to sign sweeping legislation that voids all nondiscrimination ordinances for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people statewide.
House Bill 2 was passed through the state legislature less than three hours after it was first introduced to the North Carolina House on Wednesday afternoon, in apparent response to a local ordinance passed in Charlotte that expanded nondiscrimination protections to the city’s LGBT citizens.
Governor Pat McCrory had warned Charlotte’s city council that “changing basic restroom and locker room norms... [and] allowing a person with male anatomy, for example, to use a female restroom or locker room will most likely cause immediate State legislative intervention which I would support as governor.”
Despite a walkout by Democrats in the state senate who protested that the bill was being forced through the legislature without proper review or debate - legislators were given five minutes to review the legislation before debate began - the bill was passed unanimously in the legislature’s upper chamber.
The bill, in addition to rendering extent nondiscrimination ordinances null and void, also prevents local municipal governments from enacting any laws that regulate discrimination in employment or public accommodations. The legislation also bar city governments from opening bathrooms for people to use based on the gender with which they identify.
Updated
Donald Trump has yet to respond to Texas senator Ted Cruz’s challenge to debate him face-to-face on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News Channel - but the offer, according to the Cruz campaign, still stands.
Former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich has been coy about whether or not he plans to endorse one of the three remaining Republican presidential candidates, but on the heels of an interview with Slate that made his positive disposition towards billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump more than apparent, a report from The Daily Beast details how far the former presidential candidate is willing to go as a surrogate for the real estate tycoon.
According to the Daily Beast, Gingrich sang Trump’s praises far and wide when he met with more than 100 chiefs of staff for congressional Republicans in a closed-door meeting in Baltimore last week.
“[The] guy who knows how to run Miss Universe, The Apprentice, Trump Towers, construction, golf courses, casinos, ties… hotels,” Gingrich reportedly bragged. “A guy who runs that every morning - you think he can’t run a presidential campaign?”
The next quotation has become fodder for the internet already, for obvious reasons:
“You should study Trump and apply it to your member,” Gingrich said. “There’s a lot to learn here which you can take back to your member’s office.”
Technically, this is cross-border political news, but...
Rob Ford, the late mayor of Toronto who admitted to smoking crack while in office and was caught on camera threatening to kill a rival, will lie in repose for two days at City Hall before he is buried next week.
Hillary Clinton has called out Donald Trump and Ted Cruz by name, accusing the two leading Republican presidential candidates of pushing national security agendas that would embolden American adversaries at home and abroad.
Speaking at Stanford University, Clinton tried to walk a fine line of promising to be more engaged in foreign affairs than some of her rivals while pledging that US ground troops should not be dragged into more wars.
Her speech came just a day after Trump and Cruz called for a crackdown on Muslims in the wake of a terrorist attacks in Belgium.
At one point Clinton took Trump to task for his insistence that the US should be less involved, or at least invest less money, in Nato.
“If Mr Trump gets his way it will be like Christmas in the Kremlin,” Clinton said. “Turning our back on our alliances or turning our alliance into a protection racket would reverse decades of bipartisan American leadership and would send a dangerous signal to friend and foe alike.”
Clinton also took direct aim at Cruz, who has called for more police to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods.
The US president hoped to display a ‘new era’ for relations at an exhibition game, but terror attacks in Brussels earlier in the day left him facing a difficult challenge, writes the Guardian’s Amber Jamieson.
On Tuesday, during the first trip to Cuba by a US president since 1928, Barack Obama and the Cuban president, Raúl Castro, attended a friendly exhibition baseball game. Terror attacks in Brussels earlier that day, however, left the president facing a difficult challenge: how can the White House present a historic and long-planned celebration at a moment of dire international crisis?
The baseball game, between the Tampa Bay Rays and Cuba’s national team, was months in the planning and its symbolism plain to citizens of both countries – the last time an MLB team played in Cuba was 1999, when Fidel Castro was still president. This was the chance for Obama and Castro’s successor to sit down in public together, surrounded by thousands of everyday Cubans, and show the world what Obama has hailed as “a new era” of the Americas.
The White House tried to anticipate the image problem – Obama laughing with Castro about baseball while world leaders spoke of a war on western values – by releasing a photo on Tuesday morning of the president at his most intense.
Celebrities and tech executives were among the top donors around the country to the Baltimore mayoral bid of Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson. But the candidate is still polling at less than 1% in a race against more than a dozen other candidates.
Actors Susan Sarandon and Rashida Jones contributed $500 and $2,500 respectively. Executives from companies including Twitter, Netflix and Slack made donations of the $6,000 legal limit, according to campaign finance reportsfiled Tuesday. In all, McKesson received contributions totaling more than $222,000 from close to 5,000 individual donors in every state in the US, reflecting the national support for a candidate with broad name recognition and a major national social media following.
But that national clout and celebrity support has not yet translated into local momentum, in a city where as much as 30% of the population does not have regular internet access. McKesson’s campaign has spent $127,523.47, leaving just over $97,000 in the war chest for the city’s hotly contested Democratic mayoral primary – which has traditionally determined the winner in the general election in this deeply Democratic city.
Senator Ted Cruz on Tuesday proposed reinstating an intrusive and controversial surveillance program that targeted Muslim neighborhoods in New York after the September 11 terrorists attacks.
Elaborating on his call to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods”, Cruz said he would replicate the law enforcement policies of the former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg that allowed NYPD detectives to eavesdrop on Muslim Americans.
“If you look here in the city of New York, New York had a proactive policing program that Mayor Michael Bloomberg championed to work cooperatively with the Muslim community to prevent radicalization,” Cruz said.
The programs in question were stopped in 2014 and have been the subject of a string of lawsuits, drawing criticism from civil rights groups and even some security experts who argued that they sowed mistrust between law enforcement and Muslim American communities. Cruz called the program “successful” and lambasted the New York mayor for having “succumbed to unfounded criticisms” when he disbanded it.
Updated
New Bloomberg poll makes the case for John Kasich
John Kasich has only won a single primary in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination - and it was his home state of Ohio - which has led prominent members of his party, including fellow candidate Ted Cruz, to decry his candidacy as a spoiler that will throw the nomination to Donald Trump.
But a new poll from Bloomberg Politics shows that in hypothetical head-to-head general election matchups between each of the remaining Republican candidates and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Kasich is the only one who comes out ahead.
In a hypothetical race against Clinton, Kasich wins 47% to Clinton’s 43% (with 11% undecided, to be fair). In contrast, both Trump and Cruz fall behind Clinton (36% to 54% and 42% to 51%, respectively).
In an in-depth interview with Slate, former speaker of the house and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich came within inches of saying that he supports Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, dismissing criticism of the billionaire’s immigration policy and Nato platform as “liberal tripe.”
“You are talking about a guy who was smart enough to build Trump Towers, build lots of hotels, build lots of casinos, and own the Miss Universe contest,” Gingrich said. “He is not stupid. For many people, that seems to be inconceivable because they have a university Ph.D. theory of being smart.”
The entire interview is worth a read, but this might be the most telling nugget:
What we know is that Trump has had the nerve to raise questions in a clear language because he represents the millions of Americans who are sick and tired of being told that they have to be guilt-ridden and keep their mouth shut.
Former Florida governor and long-gone Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has dropped a line to his supports, encouraging them via email to fundraise and volunteer for one-time foe Ted Cruz.
“Ted is a consistent, principled conservative who has demonstrated the ability to appeal to voters and win primary contests,” Bush writes. “For the sake of our party and country, we must overcome the divisiveness and vulgarity Donald Trump has brought into the political arena or we will certainly lose our chance to defeat the Democratic nominee, most likely Hillary Clinton, this fall.”
Bush finishes the latter by telling his former supporters that “I hope you will join me in supporting Ted’s campaign by... contributing and volunteering.”
Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, showed his characteristic restraint in responding to Bush’s endorsement:
Low energy Jeb Bush just endorsed a man he truly hates, Lyin’ Ted Cruz. Honestly, I can’t blame Jeb in that I drove him into oblivion!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2016
I think having Jeb's endorsement hurts Lyin' Ted. Jeb spent more than $150,000,000 and got nothing. I spent a fraction of that and am first!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2016
Barack Obama has declared wiping out Islamic State his “top priority” as his secretary of state, John Kerry, prepared to visit Brussels in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that killed 31 people and wounded 270.
Speaking during a visit to Argentina, the US president called for countries around the world to unite against Isis, which claimed responsibility for the attacks at Brussels airport and a metro station.
“I’ve got a lot of things on my plate, but my top priority is to defeat Isil and to eliminate the scourge of this barbaric terrorism that’s been taking place around the world,” Obama, using an alternative acronym for the group, told reporters. “There’s no more important item on my agenda than going after them and defeating them. The issue is, how do we do it in an intelligent way?”
Hillary Clinton calls Ted Cruz's Islamic State strategy "dangerous"
Hillary Clinton directly attacked her Republican rivals’ strategies to defeat the Islamic State, calling them “dangerous” in a speech on counterterrorism.
In her speech at Stanford University, Clinton singled out Donald Trump, who has called for banning Muslims from entering the US, and Ted Cruz, who proposed patrolling Muslim neighborhoods.
She called Cruz’s proposal “wrong and counterproductive. It’s dangerous.” She also noted Trump’s seemingly cozy relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and criticized Trump for suggesting the US should re-negotiate its terms of involvement with NATO. “If Mr. Trump gets his way, it’ll be like Christmas in the Kremlin.”
“In our fight against radical jihadism, we have to do what actually works. What doesn’t work: offensive rhetoric that demonizes all Muslims,” Clinton said.
Updated
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has lambasted the long lines faced by would-be Arizona voters at polling places in the state’s most populous county, calling reports of five-hour waits by prospective supporters “a disgrace.”
“People in the United States of America should not have to wait five hours in order to vote,” Sanders said during a press conference in San Diego, California. “We do not know how many thousands of people who wanted to vote yesterday in Arizona did not vote.”
The long lines were the result of a cost-cutting decision by Maricopa County - which includes Phoenix, the sixth-largest city in the county - to reduce the number of polling places from more than 200 during the 2012 election to a mere 60 for this year’s primary. According to the Arizona Republic, there were more than 21,000 voters in Maricopa County for every polling station, leading to long lines that forced some voters to wait until past midnight to cast their ballots in person.
Sanders lost Arizona’s presidential primary last night by nearly twenty points.
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have gone full caveman, writes the Guardian’s Jessica Valenti:
For all of the unexpected turns 2016 has held for Republicans, one thing is certain: this year will be remembered as the election season that launched a thousand women’s studies dissertations.
If “small hands” and “Little Marco” didn’t convince you that the Republican presidential primary is actually a controlled study in anxious masculinity, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have now gone full caveman - trading barbs over their wives’ honor. (Sure, it’s a Twitter fight – not quite as testosterone-laden as an old-fashioned duel – but hey, it’s a new world.)
After an anti-Trump group ran Facebook ads in Utah ahead of Tuesday’s primarythat featured a nearly-nude shot of Melania Trump, the blustery candidate accused Cruz’s campaign of being behind the picture. “Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a GQ shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!” Trump tweeted. Cruz responded by tweeting to Trumpthat the picture did not come from him and that “if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought. #classless”
Sure, misogyny has been a staple of the Republicans’ run this year – whether accusing women of menstruating while moderating or upholding a platform that would strip women of hard-won rights – but this kind of one-upmanship is different than the Republican’s everyday sexism.
Would you rather be shot or poisoned? was how senator Lindsey Graham put it. But then he hosted a fundraiser for Cruz – so maybe it’s not such an intractable conundrum.
VOTER: “If you don’t get this nomination, will you support this bozo Trump or this Cruz?”
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) March 23, 2016
KASICH: “Boy, I wish I hadn’t called on you."
In warning Donald Trump against attacking his wife Heidi, which Trump threatened to do on Twitter, Ted Cruz borrowed a line from the film The American President:
Ted Cruz literally lifted a line from The American President pic.twitter.com/BdG7Qcr4Ye
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) March 23, 2016
Paul Ryan on ugly political discourse: ‘It didn’t use to be this bad’ – video
Clinton to speak on national security
Hillary Clinton will train her fire on Republicans’ “rhetorical bluster” during a speech on counterterrorism at Stanford this afternoon, one day after the attacks in Brussels.
Clinton will argue that the US must be “nimble and comprehensive” in its efforts to defeat ISIS, according to a campaign official, and she will call for strengthening international alliances, specifically NATO.
Clinton is expected to target Republicans’ responses to the Brussels attacks. On Tuesday, Ted Cruz called for patrolling Muslim neighborhoods, while Donald Trump reiterated his call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country.
Updated
Cruz attacks Trump on home turf
Ted Cruz is in New York City today – and uses the occasion to attack two hometown boys and the former senator from the state, reports the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino from the scene in midtown:
.@tedcruz says Democratic candidates consist of a "wild-eyed socialist with dangerous ideas for America, and Bernie Sanders"
— Lauren Gambino (@LGamGam) March 23, 2016
.@tedcruz goes after @realDonaldTrump on his home turf, calling out Trump for "bankrolling" New York Democrats at rally in Midtown
— Lauren Gambino (@LGamGam) March 23, 2016
Big cheers when they mentioned @tedcruz big Utah romp pic.twitter.com/ewf1i1He1G
— Lauren Gambino (@LGamGam) March 23, 2016
Cruz on Graham endorsement: "I never had an event held by someone who three weeks ago had publicly called for my murder."
— Caitlin Huey-Burns (@CHueyBurnsRCP) March 23, 2016
CNN notices that Trump appears to have a light week scheduled. In any case there’s not much Republican voting going on before a stack of states on 26 April. Wisconsin votes on 5 April, Colorado votes on 8 April and New York votes on 19 April.
As Ted Cruz adds events & slams Trump on national security issues, Trump's keeping a light schedule. No public sked for the rest of the week
— Sara Murray (@SaraMurray) March 23, 2016
Updated
Obama cricitized for carrying on with Cuba trip
President Barack Obama’s decision Tuesday to carry on with his Cuba trip instead of returning to the United States in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Brussels was criticized by all three Republican presidential candidates and others who questioned whether Obama could help coordinate an international response to the attacks from the Estado Latinoamerico in Havana.
Obama attended an exhibition baseball game Tuesday afternoon in Cuba as key aspects of the attacks – from the casualty count to the suspects’ names to links to the November Paris attackers to a claim of responsibility by the Islamic State – were emerging or had freshly emerged.
Obama also addressed Cuban officials and dignitaries at Havana’s Gran Teatro on Tuesday. The speech, in which the president called for free speech for political dissidents, was broadcast in Cuba and internationally.
Multiple European countries announced new border controls, meanwhile, as Belgian authorities and Nato allies worked with US officials to organize a response to the attacks.
Obama should have been there, too, said Ohio governor John Kasich.
“What I hope he will say is, he’s leaving Cuba and heading back to the White House,” Kasich told Fox News. “He’s gonna begin to organize meetings with the leaders around the world and at the same time get himself in the position of where we can send teams of people immediately to Europe to begin to dig in terms of what we need to do to address the vulnerabilities we have.”
Obama addressed the criticism in an interview with ESPN during the baseball game.
“It’s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, particularly in this age of 24/7 news coverage,” Obama said. “You want to be respectful and understand the gravity of the situation, but the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives.”
The White House released a photo of Obama and national security adviser Susan Rice taking a call about the attacks at the residence of the US chief of mission in Havana:
Ted Cruz, who on Monday hit Obama for complying with a photo opportunity in Cuba that featured in the background a large mural of Che Guevara, said Tuesday that Obama should either return from Cuba or travel himself to Brussels:
“President Obama is spending his time going to baseball games with the Castros,” Cruz, the Cuban-American son of a Cuban refugee father, said. “The American people deserve a president who doesn’t grovel before a communist dictator who hates America,” Cruz said.
Trump also got in on the act:
Pres. Obama should leave the baseball game in Cuba immediately & get home to Washington- where a #POTUS, under a serious emergency belongs!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2016
Updated
From the comments / nothing
Hi, we’d omitted to enable comments on the blog. We’ve enabled them now. Sorry about that. No wonder no one was answering our callout to predict what Paul Ryan would say in his speech.
Thanks for reading and participating!
Ryan said “it did not use to be this way” and asserted it does not have to be this way.
But is he a general without an army? Donald Trump has won 20 states.
Paul Ryan is talking about a Republican party that simply does not exist today
— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) March 23, 2016
Ryan is asked whose job it is to improve political discourse.
“Sometimes today we see a politics that is degrading, a politics that goes to our base,” Ryan says.
Leaders, we need to raise our gaze, and raise our game, and talk about ideas, not prey upon people in their separate identities. [...]
People must accept that other people think differently, he says. “Every one of our jobs as citizens is to respect other people’s different opinions.. without impugning their motives.”
Ryan says he’s not going to name names. But “we are slipping into being a divisive country. We are speaking to each other in echo chambers.”
Ryan: "If we are going to keep this beautiful American experiment going, we are going to need to unify as a country."
— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) March 23, 2016
Updated
Politics can be a battle of ideas, not a battle of insults. It can be about solutions. It can be about making a difference. .. That’s what it can be, and that’s what it should be.
He’s done. Brief speech. A call for civility in politics. He’s going to take questions.
Ryan: 'I was wrong' to divide Americans
Ryan moves into a sketch of contrasts between what the national politics is and what it could be. There’s an implicit criticism throughout of the avatars of national political nastiness. Whomever he means by that.
“Instead of playing to your anxieties, we can appeal to your aspirations,” Ryan says. He says that playing identity politics is wrong.
“We don’t just resort to scaring you, we dare to inspire you,” in his ideal politics, Ryan says. “We don’t just oppose, we propose...We don’t just win your support, we win the argument, we win hearts and minds.”
Then Ryan gets personal, referring to a mistake he’s admitted before, in previously dividing Americans between makers and takers.
“There was a time when I would talk about a difference between makers and takers in this country... I realized that I was wrong... most people don’t want to be dependent, and to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a whole group of Americans just to make a point.
“I say this not to be politically correct. I say this because I was wrong.”
“The way we govern endures, through debate and not disorder,” Ryan says. He is paying tribute to the storied institutions of government and the rules that guide them. He says they make the country unique.
The in-room audience for the speech comprises Capitol Hill interns. So Ryan has shifted to an inspirational call to passion and ideas and vocations in government.
“That’s what politics can be. That’s what our country can be.... it sounds like a long way from where we are right now, doesn’t it?”
We don’t have to accept it and we don’t have to enable it, Ryan says, of lowdown political discourse.
He says he wants to talk about a brighter vision for the national politics.
Ryan: 'it did not use to be this bad'
“Don’t forget to go vote,” he says. But he doesn’t mean in the presidential election. There are votes on the House floor this morning.
He’s speaking in the ways and means (taxes) committee room. He says the setting is symbolic. Everyone on the committee, when he was on it, “took our jobs very seriously” – but they held themselves to a higher standard of decorum, he says. A bygone standard, he implies.
“We disagreed without being disagreeable... It almost sounds like I’m speaking of a different time.
“It is so easy to get disheartened. ..
“Our political discourse, on TV [and among each other].. It did not use to be this bad, and it does not have to be this way.”
Updated
Fodder for the Kremlinologists: Is it a bigger deal for Jeb Bush to endorse Ted Cruz for president – or for Ted Cruz to follow Jeb Bush on Twitter? How significant was this historic follow?
Jeb Bush endorsed Ted Cruz this morning, so he just got a follow pic.twitter.com/PycFDvnDUc
— Hunter Schwarz (@hunterschwarz) March 23, 2016
Ryan to speak on 'state of American politics'
Yesterday House speaker Paul Ryan announced that he wanted to share his thought on “the state of American politics.” His staff has said that he did not plan to make an endorsement in the presidential race and certainly did not plan to express any personal designs on the White House.
You can watch video of the event below, when it starts (scheduled for 11am ET). What do you think he’ll say? That there’s too much incivility in American politics and while he understands frustration with Washington he fears that conservatives have strayed from core principles?
Cruz sidesteps question about call to 'patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods'
After Islamic State-linked attacks in Brussels Tuesday that killed dozens, Texas senator Ted Cruz cast suspicion on Muslim Americans.
“We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized,” Cruz said in a statement posted on Tuesday to Facebook, adding: “The days of the United States voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we can be are at an end.”
Challenged by ABC News Wednesday morning on how targeting Muslim communities was constitutional, Cruz sidestepped:
What we should be targeting is radical Islamic terrorism. The political correctness of this administration, they refuse to acknowledge that we are facing a global jihad from radical Islamic terrorism.
Here’s video:
WATCH: On @GMA, @TedCruz defends his proposal to patrol Muslim neighborhoods https://t.co/a2C2gsRQm1 https://t.co/0hD9p8S4KO
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 23, 2016
Ted Cruz responded last night to Trump’s Twitter threat to “spill the beans” on his, Cruz’s, wife.
Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought. #classless https://t.co/0QpKSnjgnE
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 23, 2016
Here’s some background for the wife-bashing that has broken out in the Republican race.
On the eve of voting in Utah, an anti-Trump super PAC made a couple Facebook ads meant to persuade Mormon voters, among others, that Trump was the wrong candidate for them. The ads – cheapo photoshop stills, not video – attacked Trump on two fronts. One, he used to be pro choice, to believe his own words. Two, his wife, former Slovenian model Melania, once posed naked, to believe your own eyes.
The ad about Melania Trump features the naked picture. “Meet Melania Trump, your next first lady,” it reads. “Or, you could support Ted Cruz on Tuesday.” Prompting Trump to tweet his threat.
The end?
This thing's in the gutter https://t.co/aofwGLnuBw
— Wayne Slater (@WayneSlater) March 23, 2016
The John Kasich camp is not impressed with Jeb Bush’s endorsement of Ted Cruz: “If he were a kingmaker, he’d be the king.”
True. But what if both Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham get behind a candidate?
Reaction from @JohnKasich spox to latest Jeb Bush endorsement news? "If he were a king maker, he'd be the king." #shaaaaaaaaade 👀👀👀
— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) March 23, 2016
Clinton and Trump win big in Arizona primaries – video
Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House.
Mother-was-right presidential candidate Jeb Bush has endorsed Texas senator Ted Cruz for president, arguing that Cruz has the best chance of beating Democrats in the general election.
“To win, Republicans need to make this election about proposing solutions to the many challenges we face, and I believe that we should vote for Ted as he will do just that,” a Bush statement said.
Republican voters must overcome “the divisiveness and vulgarity” that Donald Trump had brought into the political arena “or we will certainly lose our chance to defeat the Democratic nominee and reverse President Obama’s failed policies”, Bush said.
Divisiveness? Vulgarity? What is he talking about?
Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2016
Trump, meanwhile, has moved closer to cinching the Republican nomination, notching a big 47%-25% win over Cruz last night in Arizona (Ohio governor John Kasich came in third with 10%). Cruz stayed in range by sweeping delegates in Utah with an authoritative 68%-17% victory over Kasich. Trump came third.
Here’s the state of the Republican delegate race:
On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders turned in two skyscraper wins – we’re talking 80% territory – in Utah and Idaho. As Sanders supporters are very tired of hearing, however, his wins did not propel him forward much in the delegates race, owing to a robust 58%-40% victory for Hillary Clinton in Arizona.
With last returns still arriving, he appeared to have posted a net gain of six delegates. Here’s the delegates race on the Democratic side:
See full, county-by-county results from last night’s voting here:
Does Trump just mean this?
