Donald Trump and Marco Rubio plunged into a new round of insults at the start of the 11th Republican presidential debate Thursday, capping a day that saw the party establishment scrambling to keep the brash billionaire from winning the nomination.
The raucous debate capped a day that saw the Republican’s most recent presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, lambasting Trump, the current front-runner, calling him unfit for office and a danger for the nation, in an extraordinary show of intra-party chaos.
The feud marked a near-unprecedented scenario pitting the Republican Party’s most prominent leaders, past and present, against each other as Democrats begin to unite around Hillary Clinton.
Underlying the clash is a bleak reality for panicking Republican officials - Beyond harsh words, there is little they see to stop Trump’s march toward the presidential nomination.
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The chaos was reflected in the back-and-forth at the Republicans’ first post-Super Tuesday debate, where Trump repeatedly with the remaining candidates Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Rubio who is senator from Florida.
Rubio justified his attacks on Trump by saying the billionaire businessman had “basically mocked everybody” over the past year.
Trump then noted that Rubio had mocked his hands as small, widely viewed as an insult about Trump’s sexual prowess, and, holding his hands up to the audience, he declared, “I guarantee you, there’s no problem” in that area.
Trump piled more insults, too, on the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, Romney, who earlier Thursday made a rare public appearance to denounce Trump as “a phony” who is “playing the American public for suckers.”
Trump dismissed Romney as “a failed candidate” and an “embarrassment.”
“Obviously, he wants to be relevant,” Trump said dismissively. “He wants to be back in the game.”
There were moments of policy debate Thursday night, but insults were woven throughout.
When Rubio faulted Trump’s businesses for manufacturing clothing in China and Mexico rather than the U.S., Trump retorted, “This little guy has lied so much about my record.”
Pressed on when he would start making more clothes in the U.S., Trump said that would happen when currency valuations weren’t biased against manufacturing garments in America.
Cruz got into the mix, too, saying that while it’s easy to print campaign slogans on baseball caps, as Trump does, the question is whether Trump understands what made America great in the first place.
“For 40 years, Donald has been part of the corruption in Washington” that people are angry about, Cruz said, citing Trump’s campaign contributions to leading Democrats, including then—Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Trump said it is simply business.
“I’ve supported Democrats and I’ve supported Republicans, and as a businessman I owed that to my company, to my family, to my workers, to everybody to get along,” he said.
