After a momentary flurry of potential presidential excitement, it’s time for the campaign – and this live blog – to take a rest.
Considering running.
— Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo) February 9, 2016
Quitting. Can't take the heat.
— Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo) February 9, 2016
We’ll be back bright and early on Tuesday morning for New Hampshire’s day of reckoning. See you then, and thanks for reading:
Spirited final rally for Clinton
Under the wire – almost – is this postscript from the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino in Hudson, New Hampshire, where she’s witnessed a rally with Hillary and Bill Clinton:
In the final hours before polls open, the Clintons did not relent in their criticism of her opponent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Lauren writes:
“I do not think it’s a good deal,” Clinton said at a rally in Hudson, New Hampshire, knocking Sanders’s healthcare plan without mentioning him by name.
At an earlier rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Clinton ticked off a list of Vermont politicians who are supporting her over their Sanders.
“They are supporting me because they know me,” she said. “They know my opponent, too, that is absolutely true.”
The crowd could not have given Clinton a better send-off. Despite the snowstorm – or maybe because of it – the audience was especially revved up. They stomped on their seats and cheered loudly at every punchline.
Updated
Summary
We’re going to wrap up our live-wire coverage from New Hampshire for the evening. It’s out into the snow for us – stay cozy and see you in the morning, for New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.
Eric Trump on Donald: 'a sweetheart of a man'
Guardian reporter Adam Gabbatt has a close encounter with Eric Trump, Donald Trump’s second son:
Eric Trump was relaxing in a Manchester restaurant earlier this evening. At least he was until Ben Jacobs and I spotted him. I went over to talk to Donald Trump’s son while the cosmopolitan Jacobs sipped on an espresso.
Trump the younger, 32, was in Manchester to watch his dad appear at the Verizon Wireless Arena.
He seemed very happy to chat, describing the presidential candidate as “his best friend” and inviting me to sit with him while he waited for a pizza.
Currently watching @adamgabbatt interview @EricTrump for @GuardianUS pic.twitter.com/aEyoC6amap
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 8, 2016
“He’s the nicest guy in the world he’s a sweetheart of a man, no one is more charitable,” Eric Trump said of Donald Trump.
E. Trump also suggested that his father could become a case study for future political campaigns.
“If you fast-forward four years… I think… he’s forever re-written the rules of US politics. Maybe even worldwide politics.
“I think if you fast-forward 20 years there will be case studies being conducted at Oxford and Harvard and Princeton about how he changed the political landscape in the world.”
Eric Trump is very affable. When his pizza arrived he carried on chatting. He didn’t even seem to mind when I mentioned his father’s unfavourability ratings – nationally, among all voters, he is the least liked of all the Republican candidates – and asked how it felt that people don’t like his dad.
“I wouldn’t say he’s unpopular,” said Trump’s son.
“I can’t walk down Fifth Avenue [in New York City] without having twenty people say: ‘Tell your father to go all the way, please tell him to go all the way,” he said. “I can’t walk ten feet without people saying it.”
The youthful Trump is tall and was well-dressed and apart from a bit of a dubious hairstyle has the looks of a man who might do well himself in politics. I suggested as much to him. Could we see a Trump dynasty?
“It’s too early ,I guess anything in the world’s possible, I could be an astronaut tomorrow, but it’s probably unlikely even for now,” the young Trump said.
“Could it possibly happen, sure.”
And that was that.
Updated
Rubio repeats himself, again
It’s déjà vu all over again, again. Florida senator Marco Rubio has once again repeated himself, back-to-back, verbatim – not on the topic of Obama, this time, but on “the values they try to ram down our throats.”
Rubio was mocked at Saturday’s debate for repeating a line about Obama’s not knowing what he’s doing being a fiction.
Here’s footage from a Rubio rally tonight in Nashua, New Hampshire:
The key bit:
We know how hard it’s become to instill our values in our kids, instead of the values they try to ram down our throats. In the 21st century, it’s become harder than ever to instill in your children the values they teach in our homes and in our church, instead of the values that they try to ram down our throats... “
(h/t: @jonswaine)
Cable news: “Is Rubio repeating himself too much? Stay tuned as we’ll cover this story for the next 4 hours across all of our networks.”
— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) February 9, 2016
Updated
Here’s video of the Trump/Cruz/ “pussy” moment:
trump calling cruz a pussy the night before the NH primary is PEAK AMERICA POLITICS what a fucking time man https://t.co/KzgNqPWnX8
— van (@vcav) February 9, 2016
Trump event wraps
Trump says he’s going to let the crowd go because of the rough drive home.
“You have to do me a favor, I don’t really care if you get hurt or not, but don’t get hurt until tomorrow! You have to vote first!” Trump says he’ll visit voters in the hospital.
He closes. Trump says he loves everyone. Revolution comes back and he’s out.
The big crowd heads up the steps to their sketchy rides home.
Updated
Trump supporter: Ted Cruz a 'pussy'
Trump was talking about Texas senator Ted Cruz’s equivocating over waterboarding, which Cruz declined on Saturday to say that he would re-institute as US practice for dealing with terrorism suspects.
A crowd member yells out, “Pussy!”
“She just said a terrible thing. You know what she said? Shout it out, ‘cause I don’t want to...” Trump says.
She says it again.
“Heh,” Trump laughs. “OK. You’re not allowed to say, and I never expect to hear that from you again,” Trump says, mock reproachfully. “I never expect to hear that from you again! She said he’s a pussy. That’s terrible. Terrible! Terrible.”
trump calling cruz a pussy the night before the NH primary is PEAK AMERICA POLITICS what a fucking time man https://t.co/KzgNqPWnX8
— van (@vcav) February 9, 2016
Now there’s a big, big, cheer from the crowd, and chants: Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump! The emotional high point of the night.
Delighted crowd chants "Trump! Trump! Trump!" after he repeats description of Cruz as a pussy https://t.co/qphoprmq4w
— Paul Owen (@PaulTOwen) February 9, 2016
“What kind of people do I have here?” Trump asks, rhetorically.
“I want to just tell you right now, ma’am, you’re reprimanded, OK? Can she stay? Can she stay?”
Big cheer.
“You’re reprimanded. So, for the press: this was a serious reprimand,” he says.
There’s a uniformity of thinking on this issue within the Trump family, apparently:
Defending his father on Fox, Donald Trump's son Eric says waterboarding is not that different from what happens on college campuses.
— Connor O'Brien (@connorobrienNH) February 9, 2016
Updated
Trump refers to the blizzard outside to disprove climate change. He’s right that it’s not warm outside.
Trump had the crowd chanting USA! USA!. Now he gets them chanting Mexico! Mexico!
Trump: “Just let me ask you one question about the wall. Who the hell is going to pay for the wall?”
Crowd: “Mexico!”
Trump: “Who?”
Crowd: “Mexico!”
Trump: “The head of Mexico came out today, he said there’s no way we’re going to pay for a wall. It’s just going to get bigger if he acts that way.”
Trump gets his first USA! USA! USA! chant, by talking about how awesome that he will build between the United States and Mexico will be.
“Walls work!” Trump says. “Ask Israel.”
Updated
#Trump pic.twitter.com/Hwr7eblNHg
— Paul Owen (@PaulTOwen) February 9, 2016
Trump says that if Parisian civilians been carrying guns on 13 November 2015, they could have stopped the perpetrators who killed 130:
If guns were on the other side of the equation, where the bullets could fly in a different direction, you wouldn’t have had that kind of carnage. You wouldn’t have had it.
Trump says when he is president, “We’re going to have so many great things” pertaining to health care. He promises that drug companies are going to hate him.
That sounds alright.
Then Trump accuses the Republican National Committee of giving away tickets to Saturday’s debate – he loves talking about Saturday’s debate. He got booed there. But he has an explanation: the RNC gave tickets to his enemies.
“I had the most beautiful applause from Don and Eric and Melania in the front row – and that’s it!”
Updated
Trump says Rubio 'sweating like a dog' at debate
Trump dishes on what it was like to stand on the debate stage Saturday as Chris Christie picked Marco Rubio apart.
“I’m standing at the debate, I’m watching Marco sweating like a dog on my right,” Trump says.
“Honestly, Marco was having a hard time. And he’s a nice guy. I said, he said that three minutes ago. And then I said, wait wait wait! He said that two minutes ago. And after about the fifth time I said, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’”
Trump says that because he is self-funding his campaign – not true; he has raised more in individual contributions than he has lent to his campaign, according to FEC figures – he will not be beholden to anyone, once he becomes president. It is true that the Trump candidacy appears not to have accepted large outside donations.
He’ll be friends with everyone, he says, but if anyone asks him for anything, “I’m saying bye-bye. I’m working for these people out here.”
Big cheer.
Then he says if he’s president, “People are going to start saying Merry Christmas again.”
Bigger cheers!
Updated
Trump explains Carson's botched debate entry
At Saturday night’s Republican debate, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson confusingly stalled out on the runway to the stage:
Trump explains “you could not hear a thing”:
In all fairness to Ben Carson, you could not hear a thing. You couldn’t hear a thing. It was nobody’s fault, it was actually a production mishap. And it makes it more exciting. Isn’t it more exciting?!
Here’s video of the moment:
Updated
Jonathan Freedland was sitting near the spot where a man was just ejected as a “protester”. What was he chanting? “Trophy wife! Trophy wife!” at Melania and Ivanka.
A protester or two is tossed. Inaudible protest. “They’re getting rid of some protesters, look. Are the police the greatest?” Trump says.
I like protesters, because that’s the only way the camera shows how big the crowd is. Sometimes we even stage protesters!”
Ivanka Trump graciously thanks the crowd. She speaks to her father’s life of hard work. “I’ve never known him to do anything other than rise to the occasion, and I’m sure that will happen here, she says.
Trump: 'Please, Ivanka, have the baby tonight!'
Trump says it’s been tough running for president and it takes guts. For one thing it’s been difficult to stay in touch with his wife about what’s happening on the road. She can’t see on TV how big his crowds are.
“The biggest crowd for a candidate running for president tonight is 212 people. And look what we have tonight!” Trump says.
Big cheers! Then Trump asks his wife to take the mic.
Melania: “We love you New Hampshire. We together, we’re gonna make America great again.” Amazing moment, in her Slovenian accent.
Trump tells the crowd his wife is beautiful.
“She’s beautiful, but she’s even more beautiful on the inside. And boy is she smart. And speaking of smart, has anyone ever heard of Ivanka? [His daughter.] Come on up here Ivanka.”
She comes on up here. Melania takes a seat.
Then Trump exhorts her, “Please, Ivanka, have the baby tonight!”
Trump: vote tomorrow, even if your wife leaves you
Trump says he’ll build a wall on the border with Mexico. The crowd roars.
“This is gonna be a wall that’s gonna stop the heroin and drugs coming to New Hampshire, alright?”
More big cheers. Then Trump does his own special brand of Get Out the Vote.
“Tomorrow, you have to get out, and you have to vote, no matter what,” he says. “If you’re sick, if you can’t move... your wife is disgusted with you, she said I’m leaving.
“She says, ‘darling I love you but I’ve fallen in love with another man.’ I don’t give a damn! You’ve gotta get out to vote.
“My wife doesn’t like it when I say that. Speaking of my wife, Melania, come on up.
She comes on up.
Trump is talking about the movement he’s started. “You come from all over. Whether I go to Dallas. .. Mobile, Alabama. .. The other night in South Carolina we had 12,000 people, three days’ notice.
“And you look at tonight, in a blizzard, we have a lotta people. I guess!”
Then he points to a protester apparently dressed like him.
“Oh no, look at this guy back there. Look at that guy. Do I look like that or not?!”
“Melania, would you have married that guy?
“Good luck, guy, I hope you’re making a lot of money.”
The crowd roars and laughs. They love the line.
Updated
They turn the volume up to 11, and play Revolution by the Beatles.
Trump takes the stage. No Trump family.
He begins:
“You know there’s like seven accidents outside, I have never seen anything like it, it cannot be like this tomorrow!
“[The snow] stops tonight at 2 o’clock, we think. So there can be no excuses.”
Updated
Trump rally kicks off
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Trump family!”
But it’s not the Trump family. It’s a sizzle reel of people talking bad about him. Megyn Kelly, George Will, Karl Rove, Bret Baier. And then it pivots, with Eric Trump, Donald’s son, talking about what a great president he would be.
Now footage of an earlier large Trump rally and cheering crowds. Galvanizing inspirational music, heavy on the horns. The Trump rally in New Hampshire is clapping along to footage of a Trump rally.
Ohio governor John Kasich has all his chips riding on a good result in New Hampshire, having put in 100 town hall events in in the state in recent months. And there are signs that his efforts are bearing fruit, writes the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt:
A poll released on Sunday showed Kasich in second place in the state, behind Donald Trump and just ahead of senator Marco Rubio of Florida. The Monmouth University poll showed Kasich with 14% of the vote. It was a big boost, especially since he is likely to withdraw if he does not manage a breakthrough in Tuesday’s primary.
“He’s said before if he doesn’t emerge out of New Hampshire as a strong viable candidate then he’s not … he has a state to go back to,” Emmalee Kalmbach, Kasich’s New Hampshire spokeswoman, told the Guardian.
Kalmbach, who has also worked for Kasich in Ohio, has been on the ground in New Hampshire for nine weeks. The governor has 15 paid staff members in the state. Kalmbach said he also had “hundreds and hundreds” of volunteers. It seems to be paying off.
“We’re beyond the point of, ‘Kasich, who’s Kasich?’” Kalmbach said. “They know him, they like his experience … and they realise that he has the experience on day one to act and get this country back on track.”
Meanwhile, in Nashua, New Hampshire, Florida senator Marco Rubio invites – and draws - a significantly smaller crowd:
About 500 people in a community college gym in Nashua for Marco Rubio's final NH rally pic.twitter.com/cfYBcaoZ6R
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) February 9, 2016
Updated
An advisory from the stage at the Trump event:
“Due to severe weather, Mr Trump has been slightly delayed. He is currently en route to the arena, and will arrive shortly.”
Then the crowd gets brief training on how to handle protesters, should any materialize. Trump “supports the first amendment just as much as he supports the second amendment,” the crowd is advised.
“However some people have chosen to take advantage of Mr Trump’s hospitality” by protesting his speeches, the onstage lackey operative says. “While they certainly have the right to free speech, this is a private event paid for by Mr Trump.”
The crowd laughs at being informed that there’s a protest area... outside. Baby it’s cold outside! Then the crowd is told “not to touch or harm the protester” but to chant Trump Trump Trump.
With Donald Trump in Manchester, New Hampshire
The blog has just pulled up to a Donald Trump rally at the Verizon Wireless Arena in snow Manchester, New Hampshire.
How snowy? This snowy:
The Verizon arena has variable seating of about 10,000 – and tonight it appears to be about half full.... though it’s still filling. This is an arena rock rally. Here’s a view of the room:
Trump’s scheduled to start any time now. Meanwhile the crowd is treated to the usual Elton John-Beatles-Rolling Stones mix.
Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain took a not-so-subtle shot at current Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump today over the real estate tycoon’s declaration that a Trump administration would do “a hell of a lot worse” to terrorist suspects than waterboarding.
“It is important to remember the facts: that these forms of torture not only failed their purpose to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies, but compromised our values, stained our national honor and did little practical good,” McCain said. The senator’s comments, which he pegged to “loose talk on the campaign trail,” reflect McCain’s lifelong opposition to so-called “enhanced interrogation.” McCain, a former prisoner of war, was tortured five years while he was detained during the Vietnam War.
McCain also added that the US needs a president who understands that “sacrificing our respect for human dignity will make it harder, not easier, to prevail in this war.”
Donald Trump’s rise to the top of the polls has been driven by his large-scale rallies, where frenzied crowds of thousands have captured the national imagination, writes Ben Jacobs:
But Trump’s crowds may also have blinded the Republican presidential frontrunner to key weaknesses in his campaign, and left him vulnerable in New Hampshire to what could be one of the biggest upsets in American political history.
As organizing tools, Trump rallies are unsuccessful. Part of the blame for this can be laid at the candidate’s door: on Saturday, he admitted to reporters that he “never realized” the importance of building a field organization.
“It would seem to me that people would just go out and vote,” he said.
Ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Adam Gabbatt went to the Chop Shop Pub in Seabrook and found out that the locals don’t mince words when asked why they’re rooting for The Donald. Some choice quotes:
“Any politician who thinks we’ve got to be disarmed needs to be strung up and killed. Write that.”
“I voted for my daughter from when she was 10 to 13.”
“Trump is the only one who’s going to get my vote because he’s off his goddamn rocker. He’s right, build a goddamn wall. He’s got the right ideas.”
“If Trump gets in office I honestly think he’ll be assassinated.”
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog visited the Democratic presidential debate in Charleston, South Carolina, last week, and got some facetime with the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington:
In the final stop of his New Hampshire campaign, Ted Cruz presented himself one last time as the sole true conservative in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, reports Jonathan Freedland in Manchester, NH.
Addressing a packed American Legion post in Manchester, the Texas senator said New Hampshire voters faced a choice: “Do they want to go with a campaign conservative or a consistent conservative?” He defined the former as those who say what they know voters want to hear on the election trail, only to revert to type once in office. Only he had stayed true to the conservative faith, day and night.
In the first of many invocations of the bible, Cruz – his rise-and-fall cadences familiar to anyone who has seen a TV evangelist in action – urged voters to follow the biblical test: “You should know them by their fruits.”
He suggested his Republican rivals talked the talk, but only he had taken a stand by fighting Barack Obama’s healthcare reform, his moves on gun laws and a proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants.
He mimicked his rivals: “‘Gosh diddly, I’m opposed to amnesty.’ Real easy to say that on the campaign trail.”
And later he mocked his fellow candidates for always claiming to be conservative. “They run pretending to be us,” he said, presuming his audience was comprised of the committed faithful. “They never say ‘Hi, I’m an establishment moderate squish.’”
He did not name names, except for a fleeting mention of Marco Rubio as the co-author of proposed amnesty legislation and a not-very-coded pop at Donald Trump – “a fellow from New York City” – whom Cruz accused of pandering to voters in Iowa.
Cruz is not heavily fancied here in New Hampshire, where his undiluted brand of Christian conservatism finds fewer takers than in Iowa, where he won last week. But it was clear that he believes he has a core constituency which, if mobilized, could deliver a creditable showing.
“It’s all about turnout,” he said. “That’s the whole game.” He urged his supporters to speak, “neighbour to neighbour, pastor to pastor” and bring a result that will “shock and astonish the world” – perhaps an admission that he knows he is very unlikely to win tomorrow.
Besides the usual brew on social issues – marriage, religious liberty and guns –Cruz stirred in a strong dose of personal testimony. He mentioned the half-sister he had lost to drug addiction, the father who had arrived in the US as an “immigrant with nothing” and the battle his father endured with alcoholism until “he came to the Lord”.
The atmosphere of a revivalist meeting was completed by Cruz’s closing, where he asked “everyone here to pray for this nation”. Given his less than stellar poll numbers in New Hampshire, Cruz will be praying more intently than most.
Marco Rubio is counting on a strong second-place finish behind Donald Trump to boost momentum, but Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Jeb Bush are close behind, reports Ben Jacobs from Manchester, New Hampshire:
Since 1976, no Republican candidate has won their party’s nomination without winning either the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary. That means the pressure is on for anyone not named Ted Cruz on Tuesday. After all, if they don’t win in the Granite State, the odds are low that they will win their party’s nomination.
In a year in which the rules of politics have been turned upside down, however, it’s possible that this dictum will join the long list of political certainties disproven by Donald Trump, who has led in every single poll in the state since July. His closest rival, Marco Rubio, stumbled in Saturday night’s debate. When asked by New Jersey governor Chris Christie to prove that he was capable of more than repeating talking points, Rubio repeated talking points.
Yet, despite that stumble, Rubio is still counting on a strong second-place finish to give him momentum going into the next early state primaries in South Carolina and Nevada. New Hampshire’s primary is not just about winning – instead, it’s focused on beating expectations.
Meanwhile, the Bernie Sanders campaign seems to be going from strength to strength ...
Cruz makes closing argument
“I ask everyone to show up tomorrow and vote for me, and bring others, bring your family, bring your friends,” Cruz says.
“There is no force in politics as powerful as We the People. ... We have faced these challenges before, we have faced the abyss before. The people of New Hampshire, 36 years ago, came together and elected Ronald Reagan. We have done this before.
“Thank you.”
Clap clap clap. Kind of golf-clappy. The crowd streams for the exits.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan beat George HW Bush 50-23 in New Hampshire. Now that’s a margin.
Hillary Clinton: 'I’ll need your help tomorrow'
“I’ll need you tomorrow for sure,” Hillary Clinton told a female supporter after giving her a hug during a campaign stop at the Velcro Companies in Manchester, New Hampshire, reports Lauren Gambino.
Michelle Dionn said she had come just to see Clinton, and told the Democratic frontrunner her son would be 18 in time to vote for her in November.
“I’d be honored to be his first vote,” Clinton told him.
“Good luck,” one table told her.
“Thanks,” she replied. “I’ll need your help tomorrow.”
Referring to opponent Bernie Sanders, she said: “Ive got the set of skills and the experience that can actually delivers results. I’m tired of the rhetoric. I’m tired of the blame game and finger pointing.”
She added later: “I got a list - I got a list, and I’m keeping it. I’m checking it twice and we’re going to find out who’s naughty and nice.”
The table she was speaking to laughed.
Meanwhile, Clinton has responded to the Politico report mentioned earlier that claimed she was considering staffing changes after the New Hampshire primary, having become dissatisfied with her campaign’s messaging and digital operations.
Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, added:
There is zero truth to what you may be reading. It's wrong. Hillary stands behind her team, period.
— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) February 8, 2016
Updated
Cruz compares Isis fight to Cold War
Cruz calls for the “same focus on radical Islamic terror” that the United States had on the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
He says the United States defeated the Soviet Union, in part, by “unleashing the energy of the American enterprise system.” Passing tax reform and regulatory reform in the United States today, Cruz argues, would be similarly damaging to the terrorist cause. It’s a win-win.
Cruz says the US focus in Syria should not be on toppling president Bashar Assad, which he warns could uncork new regional chaos.
Earlier the Republican candidate talked about the breakdown of intelligence-sharing that government studies have faulted for the failure to prevent the September 11 attacks.
“It is clear there were plenty of mistakes made on both sides of the aisle in failing to confront the serious threat of radical Islamic terror,” Cruz says. “We had actionable intelligence that should have prevented 9/11, but the relevant parties weren’t talking to one another.”
Cruz takes a question about the Iraq war and uses it to describe the dangers of US intervention in the Middle East. He says that “knowing what we know now, I would not” have supported the 2003 invasion.
My approach has been, since I’ve been serving in the Senate I’ve been very critical of this administration... I opposed President Obama’s proposed military unilateral attack in Syria.” The line gets a smattering of applause.
Cruz says the result of “toppling Middle Eastern governments” is “handing the country over to radical Islamic terrorists.” He points to Libya.
Michael Bloomberg is 'looking at all the options' for a White House run
Billionaire media titan and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has stated for the first time that he is considering a run for the White House.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the three-term mayor of America’s largest city expressed frustration with the current field of candidates from both major parties. “I find the level of discourse and discussion distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters,” Bloomberg said, declaring that US voters deserve “a lot better” than the current frontrunners in the Democratic and Republican fields.
Bloomberg’s comments are the first public expression of interest in a presidential campaign since a New York Times report last month that detailed Bloomberg’s potential plan for an independent campaign. In that report, based on interviews with unidentified persons close to the former mayor, Bloomberg was said to be willing to spend as much as $1bn of his estimated $37bn personal fortune to win the presidency.
The speculative third-party presidential bid isn’t the first time that rumors of a Bloomberg campaign have reached the public’s ears, but with Bloomberg’s declaration that “I’m listening to what candidates are saying and what the primary voters appear to be doing,” they are by far the most serious. Bloomberg, 73, told the Financial Times that he would need to make a final decision by March, the rough cut-off for an independent candidate to qualify for election ballots in all 50 states.
The New York Times report pegged Bloomberg’s mulling of a presidential bid to the current state of the Republican primaries, dominated by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, both of whom Bloomberg reportedly considers unelectable. With former secretary of state Hillary Clinton facing a stiffer-than-expected challenge from Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race, Bloomberg sees a potential opening for a former mayor with moderate-to-liberal views on social issues but the close-knit relationship with the financial industry that only a billionaire financial mogul can claim.
An independent candidate for president has never won the White House, although they have proved to be kingmakers of a kind on occasion. In 1912, former president Theodore Roosevelt split the votes of progressives and Republicans, boosting the chances of eventual victor Democrat Woodrow Wilson. In 1992, Texas billionaire Ross Perot helped Bill Clinton win the presidency by siphoning votes from incumbent George HW Bush, and perennial Green party candidate Ralph Nader was been accused of helping doom Al Gore’s efforts against Bush’s son George W in the 2000 election.
Updated
Here’s video of Cruz urging voters to hold him accountable – and to get out the vote whatever it takes, even if it means they have to “crawl over broken glass with a knife between their teeth:”
Cruz quotes Reagan: “Freedom is not passed down in the bloodstream from one generation to the next. Every generation must stand up.”
Then he returns to an exhortation for voters to turn out tomorrow:
If we turn out conservatives and evangelicals and libertarians and Reagan Democrats ... if we turn out everyone now, with the bipartisan corruption in Washington, we will shock [the country].
Updated
Cruz encourages voters to brave snow
Cruz is talking about when he comes back here as president next year. “If I haven’t done even one word of what I said I would do, stand up and say Ted, why didn’t you do it?!’” Cruz says.
“We’re just a little over 24 hours out,” Cuz says. “At this point it’s all about voting.”
If it keeps snowing, it’ll be easier not to show up and vote. The men and women in this room love this country... this race now is going to be decided, not by TV ads – you’ve already seen plenty of those... but by New Hampshire person to New Hampshire person, one at a time.
Updated
What’s the feeling in the room? It feels like about half media. It seems strange there are no ashtrays, at this particular venue.
“When have you taken on not just Democrats but leaders of your own party?
Don’t test character when it’s easy,” Cruz says. As an example of his character he proffers his stated opposition, on the stump in ethanol-enthusiastic Iowa, to ethanol fuel subsidies.
The crowd appreciates the example – biggest applause line so far, though still more polite than properly excited.
Cruz says opposing ethanol in Iowa is “almost like coming to New Hampshire and campaigning against the New England Patriots.”
Which to be clear I’m not doing – I’m not that crazy.
A laugh line. This guy is a cut-up.
The bar chatter grows in volume as Cruz grows in volume. It’s a bit like being at an open mic night, with a singer-songwriter having a hard time breaking through.
Ted Cruz on "standing up to Washington" #NHPrimary https://t.co/QyVUuCpHPc
— Paul Owen (@PaulTOwen) February 8, 2016
Cruz is telling the VFW crowd to judge candidates by their actions. “We get burned over and over and over again” by double-talking politicians, Cruz says.
He singles out the topics of Obamacare and immigration reform.
“Where were you in 2013 when the Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill was being debated?” Cruz asks, rhetorically.
Um, sponsoring amendments to block a path to citizenship but allow legal status for some undocumented migrants?
Cruz is talking about how “fabulous” New Hampshire is, for carrying out its responsibility as the first-in-the-nation primary state to pick the next president.
Cruz gets a bit of a laugh with an old New Hampshire politics joke:
Q: Are you voting for so-and-so for president?
A: No, I couldn’t possibly. I’ve only met him five times!
It went over nicely in person!
Cruz immediately lays into the monarchy and says the “American dream does not arise from the largesse of Washington but rather having the power of the people to stand on their feet.”
Cruz gets a bit of applause at the front of the room. At the back of the room the bar chatter proceeds. Some mild marveling among the elbow-benders at how packed full of cameras and suits the room is.
Ted Cruz in Manchester, New Hampshire - "Trus-Ted" #NHPrimary pic.twitter.com/BxYpzRl6bu
— Paul Owen (@PaulTOwen) February 8, 2016
With Ted Cruz in Manchester, New Hampshire
We’re set up now inside the VFW hall in Manchester, New Hampshire, where Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is due to speak momentarily.
But he won’t be here for a bit. We know this because we passed his campaign bus on snowy state 101, forty or so miles back. With five or so inches of snow having fallen in the area since late morning, the going’s a bit tricky, for a big bus.
Cruz’s introductory speakers are drawing it out before a crowd of a couple hundred packed – shoehorned – into the front of the hall.
At the back, however, under the trophy case (strong softball team it appears) past the packed midafternoon bar, there’s some room to spread out.
One of the warmup speakers asks all veterans at the VFW hall to stand up.
“That’s a dumb thing to ask for,” says a guy at the bar, laughing.
“Everybody stand up!” jokes his foil.
And here’s Cruz! That bus driver must be an accustomed local.
Updated
John Kasich supporters feel their man is on the rise in New Hampshire
John Kasich recently held his 100th town hall in New Hampshire. The Ohio governor is staking his presidential hopes on success here, after a poor showing in Iowa. There are signs that his efforts are bearing fruit. A poll released on Sunday showed Kasich in second place in the state, behind Donald Trump and just ahead of senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
The Monmouth University poll showed Kasich with 14% of the vote. It was a big boost, especially since he is likely to withdraw if he does not manage a breakthrough in Tuesday’s primary.
“He’s said before if he doesn’t emerge out of New Hampshire as a strong viable candidate then he’s not … he has a state to go back to,” Emmalee Kalmbach, Kasich’s New Hampshire spokeswoman, told the Guardian.
Kalmbach, who has also worked for Kasich in Ohio, has been on the ground in New Hampshire for nine weeks. The governor has 15 paid staff members in the state. Kalmbach said he also had “hundreds and hundreds” of volunteers. It seems to be paying off.
“We’re beyond the point of, ‘Kasich, who’s Kasich?’” Kalmbach said. “They know him, they like his experience … and they realise that he has the experience on day one to act and get this country back on track.”
What do British readers think of the New Hampshire primary? The Guardian’s DC bureau chief Dan Roberts weighs in for New Hampshire Public Radio.
In the final hours before polls open in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton let her imagination wander, writes Lauren Gambino from Manchester:
With a reworked stump speech that was softer and sunnier, Hillary Clinton told a packed gymnasium in Manchester to “imagine” the future they could create together.
“I have an active imagination,” she said, before listing the number of issues she would tackle as president: overturning Citizens United, ending LGBT workplace discrimination, reforming the Veteran’s Affairs office, ending the era of mass incarceration, reining in Wall Street, ensuring women’s access to safe and legal abortion, and finally securing equal pay for equal work.
"Imagine a time when we end discrimination against the LGBT community." Clinton said.
— Lauren Gambino (@LGamGam) February 8, 2016
Tipped to place second in New Hampshire behind senator Bernie Sanders from neighboring Vermont, Clinton made a forceful case for herself against her opponent, leaning heavily on a feminist message while the crowd chanted “We believe that she will win” and “Madam President”.
Clinton was introduced by former president Bill Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea Clinton. The former president criticized Clinton’s opponent for labeling her “establishment”.
“It bothers me to be in an election where debate is impossible because if you disagree you’re just part of the establishment,” Bill Clinton said. The former president spoke one day after he attacked Sanders supporters for making “sexist” and “profane” remarks.
On Monday morning, Bill Clinton seemed to acknowledge those comments.
“I wish I was just a former president and just for a few months not the spouse of the next one ... because I have to be careful what I say,” he said.
The absence of the Ames Straw Poll is being felt in New Hampshire
The unusually crowded Republican field right now is due in part to the end of the Ames Straw Poll, a longtime political tradition held in Ames, Iowa. The once-quadrennial event served as an organizational test for candidates who would bus in supporters from across the state, buy them tickets, ply them with food and hope that they would cast a ballot in the non-binding vote.
The event served as major fundraiser for the Republican Party of Iowa in the past, but was discontinued because it was also, in the words of one top Iowa Republican, “a goat rodeo.” (Ed.: Do a Google Image search for “goat rodeo. Go on - we’ll wait.)
While the event measured organizational capacity, it had also become an almost farcical carnival with free food, celebrities and millions of dollars spent all for a demonstration of strength which might not mean anything. The 2012 winner of the straw poll, Michele Bachmann, finished sixth on caucus night. In contrast, Tim Pawlenty’s third-place showing in Ames drove the well-respected establishment candidate out of the race. The result was that the state party let the straw poll die this cycle.
The absence of the straw poll, however, prevented any winnowing from taking place. No candidates would have their strength tested in Iowa until caucus night and, in a 16-person field, that meant that everyone who wasn’t broke could afford to stay in the race. The result is that a crowded, confused field has stayed even more packed and logjammed than it might be in years past.
Hillary Clinton is considering staffing changes after the New Hampshire primary, having become dissatisfied with her campaign’s messaging and digital operations, according to Politico, citing “a half-dozen people with direct knowledge of the situation
“The Clintons are not happy, and have been letting all of us know that,” said one Democratic official who speaks regularly to both. “The idea is that we need a more forward-looking message, for the primary – but also for the general election too… There’s no sense of panic, but there is an urgency to fix these problems right now.”
Ultimately, the disorganization is the candidate’s own decision-making, which lurches from hands-off delegation in times of success to hands-around-the-throat micromanagement when things go south.
At the heart of problem this time, staffers, donors and Clinton-allied operatives say, was the Clinton’s decision not to appoint a single empowered chief strategist – a role the forceful but controversial Mark Penn played in 2008 – and disperse decision-making responsibility to a sprawling team with fuzzy lines of authority.
They piece includes this great quote from a “former Obama 2008 aide”: “They better worked this shit out fast because who ever the Republicans pick is going to be 29 times tougher than Bernie.”
John McCain has denounced a call from Donald Trump to return waterboarding and other torture techniques to the interrogations palette for US troops and intelligence operatives, reports Spencer Ackerman in New York.
“Sacrificing our respect for human dignity will make it harder, not easier, to prevail in this war,” said McCain, the Arizona Republican senator who endured over five years of torture at a North Vietnamese prison camp.
At the GOP debate in New Hampshire and later in a CNN interview, Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, pledged to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”.
Barack Obama in 2009 banned so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including waterboarding and stress positions, by CIA personnel. The ban built on earlier work by McCain in 2005 to prevent the US military from using similar torture techniques, following the revelations of torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
While not naming Trump specifically, McCain hit out at “loose talk on the campaign trail about reviving waterboarding and other inhumane interrogation techniques” in a Monday statement.
“These forms of torture not only failed their purpose to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the US and our allies, but compromised our values, stained our national honor, and did little practical good,” McCain said, noting that the US has “tried, convicted, and executed foreign combatants who employed methods of torture, including waterboarding, against American prisoners of war”.
Trump shocked observers in July by belittling McCain’s wartime heroism in Vietnam. As a Navy lieutenant captured after his A-4 Skyhawk was shot down in 1967, McCain refused the opportunity for early return that his captors extended him due to his rank and his position as a scion of a distinguished Navy family.
A voice against torture in a party that has often fetishized its effects or belittled its consequences, McCain has used his personal experience in arguing its futility as well as its immorality: the senator has said that under torture, the names he gave his captors as important intelligence targets were names of offensive linemen for the Green Bay Packers.
After a Senate investigation documented the extent of CIA torture during the Bush administration, McCain teamed up with leading Democrat Dianne Feinstein last year to formally ban a return to torture, adding an amendment to a critical defense spending bill mandating the use of rapport-based techniques. The amendment passed by a wide and bipartisan margin, 91-3.
McCain added a faith-based appeal against torture, stating that “Americans of conscience” needed to remember that even terrorism-related detainees are “endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights”.
It's gettin' hot in here
The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino watches former president Bill Clinton introduce Hillary Clinton at a rally in New Hampshire.
Clinton says:
The hotter this election gets, the more I wish I was just a former president, not spouse of the next one ... because I have to be careful what I say.”
The Hillary Clinton campaign must appreciate the restraint. In 2008, Bill Clinton drew fire for remarks made in apparent frustration during then-Senator Clinton’s run against Barack Obama. In the wake of Obama’s win in the South Carolina primary, Bill Clinton drew accusations of racially tinged messaging after he heatedly pointed out that Jesse Jackson had won the state in 1984.
Updated
As Republican candidate Donald Trump mentioned earlier, drug addiction has emerged as a central issue on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, writes Nadja Popovich in New York. In town hall meetings across the state, residents have shared personal stories and asked presidential hopefuls how they would address a growing drug abuse crisis.
The topic is hard to avoid in a state where drug overdose deaths have more than doubled in two years.
At least 399 people died from drug overdoses in New Hampshire last year, according to the latest data from the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The vast majority of those deaths — 365, or one every day — were attributed to opioid drugs, including prescription painkillers, heroin, and, most frequently, fentanyl, a drug 80-100 times more potent than morphine and up to 50 times more potent than heroin.
Fentanyl is legally prescribed to treat severe and chronic pain, often to cancer patients. But since 2013, it has exploded in popularity as a street drug, taken on its own or cut into heroin for a stronger but more dangerous high.
Presidential hopefuls from both parties have confronted the opioid epidemic while in New Hampshire. By and large, they have moved away from the tough rhetoric of the “war on drugs” to address addiction as a disease, something some observers have contrasted with the punitive response to drug issues that affect the African-American community.
Republicans
Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush each shared personal stories of drug abuse in their families while on the campaign trail. Bush also outlined a plan for combatting drug abuse in a Medium post, though he gave few specifics on implementation or cost.
A heartfelt speech by Chris Christie recounting a friend’s painkiller addiction and eventual death while in New Hampshire went viral last year. “We need to start treating people in this country and not jailing them,” he said at the time. More recently, the New Jersey governor put his money where his mouth was when he unveiled a $100m plan for combating drug addiction in his home state.
Ohio governor John Kasich has pointed to his own record at home, including the decision to expand Medicaid, to show that he takes drug addiction seriously. Last fall, Kasich also signed legislation that makes Naloxone, a drug that can reverse opioid overdose, available without a prescription and put $1.5m towards an automated system to track patients’ prescription histories.
Cruz and Trump, meanwhile, have mostly focused on securing the US-Mexico border as the main solution to the nation’s addiction crisis.
Democrats
Bernie Sanders called addiction “a disease, not a criminal activity,” and took aim at pharmaceutical companies for their role in the opioid epidemic during a debate earlier this year. Sanders argued that his plan for universal healthcare would help expand mental health and addiction treatment programs. But the Vermont senator has offered few concrete details on how his administration would tackle drug abuse.
Hillary Clinton proposed a comprehensive plan for combating drug addiction and overdose deaths in the New Hampshire Union Leader last September. She is the only candidate whose plan comes with a real world price tag: $10bn, the majority of which would go towards new federal-state partnerships over 10 years.
Updated
Wait, is that the same shirt?
For years, they called him the Big Dog. And in a modest, middle school gym in smalltown New Hampshire they finally let him bare his teeth, reports Jonathan Freedland from Milford.
Campaigning for his wife in the state he still credits for rescuing his own presidential bid when it seemed doomed 24 years ago, Bill Clinton tore into Bernie Sanders, the self-styled “democratic socialist” senator who heads into today’s/Tuesday’s vote with a commanding poll lead.
The former president, who had previously confined himself to serving as chief character witness to Hillary Clinton, rattled off a list of what he saw as the inconsistencies, hypocrisies and distortions peddled by the Sanders campaign. “When you’re making a revolution, you can’t be too careful with the facts,” he said acidly, nodding to Sanders’ rallying cry for a “political revolution.”
Wearing a lumberjack shirt and dark jeans, and in his trademark conversational style, he cited an episode when Sanders aides had helped themselves to voter data gathered by the Clinton campaign, mocking their defence as equivalent to protesting that it was legitimate to steal a car if the keys had been left in the ignition.
He went on to fault the Vermont senator’s campaign for lifting quotations out of context from New Hampshire newspapers – to give the impression those papers had backed Sanders when in fact they backed Clinton – and for using a photograph of a war veteran to suggest the man was a Sanders supporter when he was not.
The ex-president, now 69, hit back at the repeated Sanders claims that Clinton is too close to the bankers and hedge fund managers, referring to a CNN report which suggested that Sanders too had benefited from corporate donations. “But you’ll never hear her call him a tool of Wall Street.”
He was especially pointed in his assault on Sanders’ online defenders, the so-called Bernie Bros. He said that those who spoke up for Hillary on line were subjected to “vicious trolling and attacks that are literally too profane often, not to mention sexist, to repeat.” Other Hillary backers were instantly and unfairly deemed to be “a tool of the establishment,” he said.
And here’s a flashback to 1992, when Bill and Hillary Clinton were campaigning at Blakes restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Hillary and Bill Clinton visited Chez Vachon, a Canadian-American breakfast spot that is a hot spot on the campaign circuit, on Monday morning, Lauren Gambino reports from Manchester, New Hampshire.
Clinton entered the restaurant with a big smile, waving to the roughly three dozen people who were eating breakfast.
“I need some fuel,” she told the table closest to her.
The table of four men, complimented her campaign efforts in the state.
“I love Manchester. I love New Hampshire,” Clinton said. “For me this is a labor of love.”
“Well nobody could have worked harder,” one man said to her.
One woman, Tallie Widness, popped up from her chair for a photo with the Clintons. She said she was still undecided with less than 24 hours before polls open, but is debating between Clinton and Marco Rubio, one of the Republican candidates.
Widness, a regular, said she had come to the restaurant because she had heard Clinton was on her way and wanted to see what she was like among “normal people”.
“I was impressed,” she said. “She’s really personable and sweet.”
But did Clinton win her over? Widness said she would have to think about it.
Clinton posed for a photo with a mother and baby, taking charge of the phone and manipulating it sideways.
“I’ve had a lot of practice recently,” she said.
Bill meanwhile greeted tables and talked to customers asking for his wife’s vote. At one point he slid into a booth next to two older women to pose for a photo.
Linda Monahan, a waitress at Chez Vachon, said in her 33 years working there the only person she had not seen come in was Barack Obama. The back wall is covered with framed photos of politicians who have stopped by the restaurant, among them one of Hillary Clinton with Monahan’s young daughter, Kelly Jo, from many years ago during one of Bill Clinton’s primary campaigns in the state.
As soon as Monahan heard Clinton was coming she called her daughter to ask her to come to the restaurant. The Clintons appeared to ask about Kelly Jo several times before she arrived.
When she arrived, Linda Monahan pushed her daughter to the front and handed Clinton the photo. “She’s old enough to vote now,” Linda said; her daughter explained she would be 18 by November.
“This is so great,” Clinton said, clutching the photograph and staring at the young girl. Holding the photo, Clinton, Kelly Jo and Bill posed for a new photo.
Updated
Sanders’s campaign strategy so far seems to have been based on delivering a jolt to the political system through strong showings in the first two states to vote, Iowa and New Hampshire. He didn’t manage to win Iowa, as we know, although it was incredibly close, but for weeks now he has been way ahead in the polls in New Hampshire.
Why is he so popular among Democrats here? The conventional wisdom points to the fact that he represents the next-door state of Vermont, and contrarian New Hampshire residents like to stick it to the establishment, but as Mother Jones’s David Corn reported the other day those explanations don’t quite add up.
In fact, Corn notes, New Hampshire Democrats backed establishment favourites Hillary Clinton in 2008, John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.
In recent decades, the only time that New Hampshire Ds fully embraced an outsider was in 1984, when Senator Gary Hart of Colorado mounted a stunning defeat of former Vice President Walter Mondale .. All told, the usual outcome in New Hampshire is that the preferred candidate of party regulars is fancied. And twice New Hampshire has rescued a Clinton who was close to extinction.
And as for neighbourliness, “last spring, in a series of polls in New Hampshire, Clinton trounced Sanders by between 10 and 44 points. If Sanders’s next-door-enhanced name recognition did not help him at that point, there’s no cause to think it’s doing so now.”
So why is Sanders performing so strongly here? Dante Scala of the University of New Hampshire tells Mother Jones that for a “progressive insurgent” Sanders is doing unusually well among moderate Democrats and working-class men, while Sanders’s stance on gun control - one issue on which Clinton stands to his left - may have boosted his popularity.
Body language expert Dr David Givens examines Republican candidate Ben Carson’s strange reluctance to take the stage at Saturday’s GOP debate:
After viewing the video several times, my analysis of Carson’s strange behavior – conjectural and based on body language alone – points in two directions: either severe stage fright or momentary confusion, possibly brought on by sedation.
You can read the full piece here:
Updated
One of the women who has accused former US president Bill Clinton of sexual assault says she has agreed to work for an anti-Clinton political group being formed by a former advisor to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Reuters reports.
Kathleen Willey, a former White House volunteer who says Bill Clinton groped her in an Oval Office hallway in 1993 when she came to him seeking a paid job, said she had agreed to become a paid national spokeswoman for a group being created by Roger Stone.
Stone, a Republican strategist, said the group would become active should Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton’s wife, win the Democratic nomination in the 2016 race for the White House.
“This gives me more of an opportunity to get this message out to young voters who weren’t even born or don’t even remember what happened and to the women who have suffered,” Willey told Reuters.
Willey said she will give interviews and speeches and appear in political advertisements to ensure the accusations remain part of the political discourse during the election campaign.
Spokesmen for Hillary and Bill Clinton did not respond to questions about Willey.
Stone’s political action committee, which can raise virtually unlimited funds to advocate for or against candidates, was originally created last year under the name Women Against Hillary. It was renamed in January as the Rape Accountability Project for Education PAC, or RAPE PAC.
In a 1998 deposition, Clinton “emphatically” denied Willey’s accusation he groped her, describing her as having “been through a lot” in reference to her family’s financial woes and her husband’s suicide on the day Willey says her encounter with Clinton happened.
Several Republican candidates, particularly Donald Trump, have reminded voters of the previous allegations against Clinton while campaigning. The Clintons and their staff have dismissed this as dirty politics.
When asked at a campaign event in New Hampshire in December about accusations by Willey and others, including Juanita Broaddrick, who has accused Clinton of rape, Hillary Clinton - who has said victims of sexual assault have the “right to be believed” - replied that people who say they were sexually assaulted should be “believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence”.
Jonathan Freedland saw Jeb Bush make his closing argument at a town hall meeting in Salem, New Hampshire, on Sunday, offering himself as the candidate of quiet competence - and an alternative to what he called the damaging “divisiveness” of Donald Trump.
Fielding questions on everything from climate change to foster care, student loans to drug treatment, his pitch was that of the capable executive steeped in policy substance. Voters were all handed a copy of “Jeb’s Plan for America” as they arrived.
Like his fellow governors, Ohio’s John Kasich and Chris Christie of New Jersey, Bush made great play of his hands-on, everyday executive experience – even describing how he helped one Florida constituent get rid of a varmint in her attic. “If you want someone who has a servant’s heart,” he was the man to choose, he said.
But he combined that executive pitch with a heavy dose of policy detail, each answer peppered with acronyms, pilot schemes or policies that had been tried and tested in Florida or elsewhere. Unusually for a US presidential campaign, Luxembourg got a mention.
For some that worked. Deb Gurry, 51, said afterwards, “I’m a results person. I want to see a plan. I’m not looking for an entertainer for president. I watch movies for that.” Others offered similar reasons to prefer Bush over Trump.
But few described themselves as excited by Jeb. The most gushing praise Tom Hilse, 58, could offer was to say that Trump was “more palatable than the other candidates.”
The trouble for Bush, in this year of voter anger, is that people are looking for more than palatable competence. As the candidate himself said in one telling aside, “For whatever reason, policy doesn’t have the priority it should this year.” That’s one explanation for why the onetime presumed frontrunner is now fighting to break into the Republican top tier on Tuesday - before it’s too late.
Donald Trump was just interviewed down the line on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which has almost become his second home over the last few months.
He repeated many of his usual talking points, and called Jeb Bush “a stiff”, but asked about his message to the voters of New Hampshire, he mentioned the heroin problem in the state.
You don’t think of New Hampshire as having that problem … It’s a massive problem up here.
His solution veered quickly back towards his signature policy to build a wall along the US-Mexican border. “I’m going to stop the borders. We’re not going to have the drugs coming up here. The cost of the drugs is so cheap, it’s like buying bubble gum.”
Later he was asked why NH voters might vote for him. “They have a tremendous vet problem ... and they know what I do for the veterans,” Trump said.
Trump also discussed the differences between Iowa’s caucus system and New Hampshire’s more typical primary voting in a way perhaps characteristic of his own approach to policy.
[In New Hampshire] you walk in and you pull the trigger and you vote and go home, as opposed to sitting around for hours discussing things.
He added of the snow forecast here over the next couple of days: “I don’t know what it means if the snow comes - does it mean maybe people don’t come out and vote? I guess maybe some people won’t.”
Asked about Florida senator Marco Rubio’s much-mocked repetition of a phrase about Barack Obama in the Republican debate on Saturday night, Trump said:
I have a good memory … I heard him make the statement, and that was fine. And then he made it a second time. And that was sort of fine, you know, that was OK. And then he made it a third and a fourth and a fifth time, and I’m thinking: am I hearing things? What’s going on over here?
He added uncharitably: “I like Marco but Marco has a tendency to sweat, perhaps at a record-setting level.” He said of the whole incident: “I think it could have a pretty big impact on him, I just don’t know what.”
Earlier ex-Florida governor Jeb Bush was asked whether Rubio was robotic.
“No,” said Bush. “ I know him as a bright, charismatic leader that hasn’t been tested, hasn’t gone through the - all of the things that people that have been governors have gone through, but I don’t - I don’t consider him that at all. I thought it was really weird because that’s not who he is that I know.”
Their fellow Republican candidate New Jersey governor Chris Christie had offered praise for Bernie Sanders, the Democratic frontrunner in New Hampshire, calling him “incredible - guy’s an incredible politician. He would be an awful socialist president - but incredible politician.
Updated
Good morning from New Hampshire, with one day to go before the crucial primary which could see Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders convert their insurgencies against the party establishments into electoral success.
For some of the Republican candidates, such as New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Ohio governor John Kasich and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a poor showing tomorrow could be the end of their presidential ambitions.
The Real Clear Politics polling average has Trump ahead by 17 points, with Florida senator Marco Rubio, Texas senator Ted Cruz and Kasich jostling for a fairly distant second. The polls could be wrong, as they were in Iowa, but they would have to be very wrong to deny the New York businessman and reality TV star victory.
For the Democrats, Sanders is nearly 13 points ahead of Hillary Clinton, although once the race moves to South Carolina and further afield the former secretary of state, for now at least, has substantial leads over the Vermont senator.
Snow is forecast here throughout the day, which might affect the candidates’ plans as they attempt to crisscross the state after a bit of a break for the Super Bowl on Sunday evening. Well, some of them had a break. Other campaign staff found it harder to take time out:
Almost every Super Bowl commercial so far has urged Americans to embrace the future. Bad news for @HillaryClinton. Good news for @TeamMarco
— Alex Conant (@AlexConant) February 8, 2016
Almost every Super Bowl commercial so far has been 30 seconds and pre-scripted. Good news for @TeamMarco https://t.co/tS5wEoYFty
— Josh Schwerin (@JoshSchwerin) February 8, 2016
The pro-Rubio Conservative Solutions pac and the pro-Bush Right to Rise super pac also interrupted the coronation of Beyoncé as Super Bowl champion – in New Hampshire at least – with an ad for Rubio featuring jaunty Seinfeld-type music (perhaps aiming to take the Sanders vote), and an ad for Bush starring his brother George W, which I would have considered a slightly risky move. He must have been elevated to the status of national treasure without me noticing.
“He knows how to bring the world together against terror,” noted W, reassuringly – he should know!
As usual, Guardian staff will be fanning out across the state all day, with Lauren Gambino following Clinton, Ben Jacobs on the trail of Trump, Sabrina Siddiqui catching up with Rubio and Dan Roberts spending time with Sanders, ending the day at a concert in Durham featuring the dreaded Vermont “jam band” Phish.
I’m feeling the Bern as much as the next crazed Sandernista, but you would have to pay me the combined income of the entire 99% to get me to that gig. Instead, Tom McCarthy and I will catch up with Cruz this afternoon and Trump tonight in Manchester. Jonathan Freedland will be catching as many events as he can, too.
Stick with us for live coverage throughout the day.
Updated
