Trump went even further, raising the possibility, to CNN’s Chris Cuomo, that he was being audited because he was a “strong Christian.”)
.. Cruz, with leading questions and prosecutorial zeal, forced Trump to acknowledge that he does not, indeed, want people to die “on the sidewalks and the streets.” Cruz made it clear that he considered this a damning admission.
.. Although he likes to portray himself as a successful entrepreneur who created a vastly profitable business, many people in the business world have long regarded him as a self-promoting huckster who emblazons his name on properties that don’t belong to him and habitually overstates his net worth.
.. During the debate, he claimed that tax returns don’t give any indication of a person’s wealth, which is nonsense. If Trump’s various businesses are worth as much as he claims they are, they must generate a great deal of revenue and income, at least some of which would be reflected on his tax returns.
.. Back in the nineteen-seventies, Johnston points out, New York City Mayor Abe Beame gave Trump a four-hundred-million-dollar tax abatement to facilitate his first big real-estate deal, the conversion of a hotel next to Grand Central Terminal. During the nineteen-eighties, when the city refused to give Trump seven hundred million dollars in tax breaks for his controversial Riverside South development, he had a bitter dispute with Mayor Ed Koch.
What Is Marco Rubio Waiting For?
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets … and I’ve pointed out the things that Hitler is for that I don’t agree with, and if he says something I don’t agree with, especially about conquering all of Europe, I’m gonna correct him on it.
.. Candidates with a near-zero chance at the nomination, from Ben Carson to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, are still carving up the electorate in ways that clear Trump’s path. And the man who now, finally, has the support of the institutional party, the very talented and frequently eloquent junior senator from Florida, has decided that Trump is still better mostly ignored than actively opposed.
.. So if you’re the Rubio campaign, looking at this landscape, you might say: Why change what we’re doing when we’re actually gaining ground? Why give Cruz a new lease on life by starting an ugly war with Trump just days before the S.E.C. primary might all but finish off the Texan’s chances? Why act panicked about Trump when he’s still so many hundreds and hundreds of delegates away from the magic 1,237? Why not do everything you can to get an effective two-man race before you face the slings and arrows of Trump’s outrageousness?
.. From their perspective, there’s no reason to play Churchill yet because Trump’s advance is less Hitler-in-France than Napoleon-in-Russia, and they’re like Marshal Kutuzov, the much-maligned Russian commander whose wait, wait, wait strategy was vindicated when winter overwhelmed the French. (With winter, in this case, being Trump’s relatively high unfavorable numbers relative to Rubio, his poor performance in general election polls, the ad campaigns that haven’t yet been unleashed against him but will be, etc.)
.. If Rubio can’t actually pull ahead of Trump in swing-state polls by March 15, when Ohio and Florida hold their winner-take-all votes, then he won’t be Kutuzov after Napoleon took Moscow ..
The Devil in Ted Cruz
At a town hall in South Carolina that CNN televised, he answered a question about his miserable relations with fellow lawmakers in Washington by assuring voters that “it’s not that I speak with a lack of civility or respect.”
“The Bible talks about if someone treats you unkindly, repay them with kindness,” he added. “That has been the standard I’ve tried to follow. That’s how I’ve approached it in the Senate. So I have not attacked or insulted my colleagues in the Senate, Democrat or Republican.”
Is he suffering from delusions? Amnesia? On the Senate floor he called Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, a liar. He also likened Senate Republicans who recognized the impossibility of defunding Obamacare to Nazi appeasers.
Who gains the most when the GOP field shrinks?
When we ask registered Republican and Republican-leaning voters about their second choices, the results show that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are in the best position to gain supporters if and when voters decide to make a switch. Cruz is the second choice of 18 percent of registered Republicans, while Rubio is the second choice of 17 percent.