Posts
Trump
Threatens "Communist Friend" Bernie, Swamps Rubio In
Florida
13
March, 2016
Amid
the maelstrom of Sunday's political show machinations over Trump's
rallies, one awkward fact remains - The Donald's lead increases. The
latest NBC/Marist
polls show Trump
'swamping' Rubio in his home state of Florida (43%
to 21%), a solid lead
in Illinois (34%
to Cruz's 25%), and is closing the gap on Kasich in Ohio (33% to
Kasich's 39%). However, as
Reuters reports, despite
the growing social unrest, The Donald shows no sign of toning down
his rhetoric, theatening
to send his supporters to the campaign rallies of "Communist
friend" Bernie Sanders and
hammering Kasich's "Ohio recovery" narrative.
Donald
Trump took a defiant tone in response to criticism that his fiery
language is inciting violence,
denying that anyone has been injured at his campaign events and
threatening to send his supporters to disrupt Senator Bernie
Sanders’s rallies.
“I don’t accept responsibility,” the 2016 Republican presidential front-runner said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press” broadcast. “We had somebody that was punching and vicious and had gone crazy. They’re not protesters. They’re professionals.”
Trump, appeared unchastened after simmering discord between his supporters and protesters angry over his positions on immigration and Muslims turned into a palpable threat on Friday, forcing him to cancel a Chicago rally and shadowing his campaign appearances on Saturday.
Trump blamed supporters of Democratic candidate Sanders for the incidents in Chicago, where scuffles broke out between protesters and backers of the real estate magnate. He called the U.S. senator from Vermont "our communist friend".
On Sunday, he went a step further in an early morning post on Twitter:
Donald J. Trump
Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren't told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!
The scenes in Chicago followed several weeks of violence at Trump rallies, in which protesters and journalists have been punched, tackled and hustled out of venues, raising concerns about security leading into the Nov. 8 presidential election to replace Democratic President Barack Obama.
The disturbances continued on Saturday at a Trump rally in Dayton, Ohio, where Secret Service officers scrambled to surround the candidate after a man charged the stage.
Trump scheduled rallies on Sunday in Illinois, Ohio and Florida before the next five presidential nominating contests on Tuesday, which could cement his lead over Republican rivals U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich.
Trump, who has harnessed the discontent of white, working class voters angry over international trade deals that cost them jobs, has made his opposition to the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement and proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership a centerpiece of his campaign.
He has hammered Kasich on the issue before Tuesday's vote.
Ohio Gov.Kasich voted for NAFTA, from which Ohio has never recovered. Now he wants TPP, which will be even worse. Ohio steel and coal dying!
12:58 AM - 14 Mar 2016
But
as Politico reports, Donald
Trump is swamping Sen. Marco Rubio in his home state of Florida,
while John Kasich is holding on to a lead in Ohio, according to new
NBC/Marist polls released Sunday morning.
Trump is winning 43 percent of the vote in Florida, compared to just 22 percent for Rubio.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is essentially tied with Rubio, earning 21 percent, while Kasich brings up the rear with a mere 9 percent. Florida is winner-take-all and awards 99 delegates.
Kasich has a significant lead in Ohio, earning 39 percent of the vote to 33 percent for Trump. Cruz has 19 percent and Rubio has just six percent. Kasich's campaign has long pegged Ohio as a must-win on the governor's Midwestern-centric path to the nomination. Ohio, like Florida, is winner-take-all.
Trump also leads in Illinois with 34 percent of the vote to Cruz's 25 percent. Kasich has 21 percent and Rubio has 16 percent.
All
three states vote Tuesday, along with the states of Missouri and
North Carolina. Establishment
Republicans have said denying Trump a win there is crucial to
preventing him from earning a majority of delegates at the Republican
National Convention.
The
plan worked better than they'd ever imagined. Then the trouble began
CHICAGO
— By sundown on Friday night, the crowd assembled inside the arena
was chanting and ready to cheer on their candidate: Donald Trump. Six
thousand strong and still trickling in through the metal detectors at
the front gate, they had traveled from across the Midwest, taking
vacation days from work, booking bus tickets from afar, and waiting,
at times, more than 12 hours outside on the streets of Chicago for a
night with the GOP frontrunner.
But
not everyone was there to cheer. Just 50 feet in front of the podium
where Trump was scheduled to appear at any moment, Nathaniel Lewis, a
25-year-old African-American graduate student at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, had established a beachhead of sorts: a pocket
of about three dozen college students and activists. They were ready,
too.
Trump accuses Bernie Sanders of disrupting his rallies
Sanders says he was not behind Trump disruption
From the liberal, Establishment Rachel Maddow
To the unhinged Alex Jones man Paul Joseph Watson
This is so overblown. Please do not buy into Trump's canards about what happened in Chicago.
ReplyDeleteI am writing this from Chicago. I am a UIC graduate. There were four or five minor scuffles at the Pavilion. The news cameras probably caught all of it. If anything else happened off camera it was very minor indeed. There is no need to surmise that the 'protestors' were other than self-organized. There is no evidence at all that George Soros or David Brock or anyone stage managed this. As far as is known all scuffles were initiated by Trump supporters. They were not organized either. Just hotheads. Anything that deserves to be dignified by the word 'fight' never got started because no one wanted a fight.