Until recently, the group had focused on Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. “For months, until about two or three weeks ago, every single person that I encountered in the Republican Party would begin every sentence the same way: ‘When Trump is gone,’ ” Ms. Conway said. “That itself was a flawed premise.”
.. Yet Mr. Cruz has been dealing with more than Mr. Trump. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum continue to attack him, and the state’s six-term governor, Terry E. Branstad, urged Mr. Cruz’s defeat, part of an onslaught from allies of the ethanol industry.
The Twinned Egos of Cruz and Trump
Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, was introducing the candidate I’d come to see, but with descriptions that bore no relation to the candidate I’d come to know.
He called this man “one of the great listeners that I’ve ever been around in my entire life.” He praised him as “a person who is full of humility.”
Then it hit me: Perry was playing defense and asserting the precise virtues that the candidate famously lacks.
.. Many of us have worried that the increasingly circuslike, invasive, round-the-clock nature of modern campaigns would frighten off anyone with an inkling of modesty, an iota of self-doubt. Who would endure this ordeal and make this bargain?
The answer, all too often, is someone who finds the spotlight so mesmerizing that the ugliness on its periphery doesn’t matter, or someone whose hunger for validation is so prodigious that only Air Force One will sate it.
.. As a cocky teenager, he said that his life goals were to “take over the world, world domination, you know, rule everything.” He separately wrote of plans to “achieve a strong enough reputation and track record to run for — and win — president of the United States.”
Donald Trump Conducts Rare News Conference, and It Turns Testy
But the tensest moments came in an exchange with the NBC reporter Peter Alexander, who repeatedly tried to read Mr. Trump’s quotations from an old interview with Tim Russert in which he described himself as “pro-choice.” That footage is being used in ads by a “super PAC” supporting Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, with whom Mr. Trump is closely competing, and by the Cruz campaign. Mr. Cruz, he said, is a “wreck.”
Mr. Trump repeatedly cut off Mr. Alexander as he tried to read the quotation from the 1999 interview. “Excuse me, excuse me,” Mr. Trump said, talking over Mr. Alexander.
Later, when Mr. Alexander tried to ask again, Mr. Trump demanded to know if the reporter would apologize. Mr. Alexander said that he was sorry the candidate felt he didn’t represent the statement correctly, but that he was trying to read it.
“Forget you,” Mr. Trump said, cutting him off.
It was reminiscent of the news conferences that another pugnacious New Yorker, Rudolph W. Giuliani, held when he was the city’s mayor.
.. Later, when another reporter asked why it was a cheap shot for Mr. Sasse to ask about his infidelity when Mr. Trump had raised Bill Clinton’s transgressions as fair game, the candidate replied that in fact it wasn’t a cheap shot.
“I’m a religious person,” Mr. Trump then said.
Jerry Falwell Jr. Praises Donald Trump; Here’s How Other Evangelicals Compare
At America’s largest Christian college today, Donald Trump promised to protect Christians while Jerry Falwell Jr. praised the presidential candidate as a visionary whose “life has borne fruit” a la Matthew 7:16.
“In my opinion, Donald Trump lives a life of loving and helping others as Jesus taught in the Great Commandment,” said the president of Liberty University during the school’s thrice-weekly convocation.
.. Another sign of The Donald’s popularity: He drew five times more admiration than Billy Graham on Gallup’s latest list of the Most Admired Men in America.
.. “I would say that Ted Cruz is leading in the ‘Jerry Falwell’ wing, Marco Rubio is leading the ‘Billy Graham’ wing, and Trump is leading the ‘Jimmy Swaggart’ wing,” Moore recently told Roll Call.
.. The Capitol Hill newspaper went on to explain:
Cruz has largely followed the classic Moral Majority model that was the face of the conservative movement—he has received endorsements from figures such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson—while Trump ‘tends to work most closely with the prosperity wing of Pentecostalism’ which tends to believe that God would financially reward believers. As far as Rubio’s outreach to the ‘Billy Graham’ wing, this week the presidential hopeful announced a religious liberty advisory board that includes Rick Warren, the founding pastor at the influential Saddleback Church.
.. Indeed, about 40 Pentecostal pastors laid hands on Trump and prayed for him in October.
“Part of it is the fire,” explained Darrell Scott, an Ohio pastor who attended the meeting, to The Christian Science Monitor. “Pentecostal preachers are probably the most fiery preachers, and we appreciate directness, we appreciate bluntness, we’re more in-your-face.”
.. However, poll numbers from Reuters show a close but fairly steady unfavorable view of Trump by those who attend religious services weekly. The latest numbers show that about 52 percent of those who attend worship services weekly disapprove of Trump, compared to 48 percent who view him favorably.