Donald Trump attacked his insurgent Republican rival Ted Cruz and ignored his crushing defeat in Wisconsin on Wednesday, electrifying thousands of passionate supporters at a home state rally in New York.
“It’s great to be home,” the 67-year-old Manhattan tycoon told a fist-pumping, cheering crowd at Grumman Studios in the Long Island town of Bethpage, where Apollo Lunar Module spacecraft were once built.
Trump ignored his drubbing by evangelical Cruz in the Wisconsin state primary and mocked the Texas senator for denigrating New York values and reportedly pulling in a far smaller crowd earlier Wednesday.
Photo: AFP
Cruz berated the supposedly non-conservative values of the US’ largest city earlier in the campaign, which saw Trump defend the city for its bravery and resilience after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“The bravery that was shown was incredible. We all lived through it. We all know people that died,” he repeated to cheers.
“I’ve got this guy standing over there looking at me, talking about New York values, with hatred,” he said. “So, folks, I think you can forget about him. Forget about him. He is Lyin’ Ted.”
Trump leads Republican polls for the New York state primary on April 19, but faces a steep ascent to the Republican nomination, increasing the likelihood of a contested convention in July that could throw the party’s nod to someone more to the liking of the establishment.
Trump’s Wisconsin defeat also saw his daughter Ivanka make a return to her father’s side on the campaign trail, introducing him in Bethpage one week after giving birth to her third child.
The crowd lapped up his stump speech, responding with deafening cheers to his promises to defeat the Islamic State group, bring back jobs and build a wall along the border with Mexico.
Trump at one point claimed there were 17,000 people in the audience, but there was no independent confirmation of the precise number there.
Families, mothers clutching babies, retirees and young voters professed as much love for Trump as ever, but beneath the surface some expressed concern that he might be coming unglued.
“Sometimes, I’m watching him and I’ll cringe and I’m like ‘oh Donald,’” said Dorine Lambert, a proofreader for a community newspaper from Smithtown, accompanied by her grown-up daughter.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic camp, Sanders questioned whether his rival Hillary Rodham Clinton is “qualified” to be president after she spent much of the day criticizing his record and his preparedness for the job.
Sanders also on Wednesday said that Clinton is not qualified because of her vote on the war in Iraq and her support for trade agreements that he says are harmful to American workers.
“She has been saying lately that she thinks that I am quote unquote not qualified to be president,” Sanders told a crowd of more than 10,000 people at Temple University’s Liacouras Center in Philadelphia. “I don’t believe that she is qualified if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special-interest funds.”
It was the latest salvo in a war of words that has gotten increasingly heated as underdog Sanders has gained ground on frontrunner Clinton, capped by the Vermont senator’s victory in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary.
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon responded to Sanders’ comment, writing on Twitter: “Hillary Clinton did not say Bernie Sanders was ‘not qualified.’ But he has now — absurdly — said it about her. This is a new low.”
Indeed, Clinton did not say Sanders was “unqualified” or “not qualified” during a much-quoted interview Wednesday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
In a discussion of an interview with Sanders that appeared in the New York Daily News, Clinton was asked if “Bernie Sanders is qualified and ready to be president of the United States.”
She responded, “Well, I think he hadn’t done his homework and he’d been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn’t really studied or understood, and that does raise a lot of questions.”
Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs on Wednesday evening said that Sanders was responding to reports on the CNN and the Washington Post Web sites.
A Post story was headlined: “Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president.”
Additional reporting by AP
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