Finally, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders appears – in real time – on the CNN show.
He starts off with the same argument Saturday-night Cruz used, saying that Nevada shows how far his campaign has come. Clinton’s huge lead was diminished to six points, he says.
What about the wide margin in black voters in Nevada, who turned out for Clinton?
Sanders insists he’s going to keep winning over those voters as they learn about his campaign. “I think the more the African American community hears our message on a broken criminal justice system,” he says, “when they hear our message about the need for an economy that represents all of us, not just the 1%, I think you’ll see us making progress there as well.”
Tapper asks about Hispanic voters, and the Clinton campaign’s contention that early polls are wrong when the suggest Sanders won more of the demographic.
“Nationally it is clear that we are doing better and better with Latino voters,” he says, “for a campaign that started off as a fringe campaign at 3% in the polls, we have enormous momentum.”
“As the field narrows we’re seeing more and more people coming to us because we’re looking for a strong, proven, constitutional conservative,” Cruz goes on.
He then seems to suggest that Donald Trump has the similar record on issues – abortion, healthcare, immigration, Wall Street bailouts – as Hillary Clinton.
I don’t think that’s a path to victory. I think the way we win is to follow Reagan’s admonition ‘we paint in bold colors, not in pastels.’
Tapper asks Cruz how he’s going to win if he can’t muster up a victory in the +70% evangelical South Carolina. Cruz uses the same argument that Sanders did about his loss in Nevada, saying of Trump’s huge lead, “much of it disappeared in this last week.”
In fact, Cruz says, Marco Rubio’s the guy who should’ve won. “Marco had the popular governor support, he had the popular senator Tim Scott supporting,” he says. “All the political establishment of South Carolina came out behind him.”
So Rubio’s second-place loss – which Saturday-night Cruz refuses to concede is also his third-place loss – is “particularly striking”. He thinks it comes down to him and Trump in the next few weeks.
“It’s going be particularly clear that it’s a two-man race, and that I beat Donald head-to-head.”
Jake Tapper does a smash-cut to a pre-recorded interview with Ted Cruz, from Saturday night.
“I think we had a terrific night tonight,” Ted Cruz says. He’s wearing huge, white earphones of some kind.
Cruz says he’s totally happy with not winning South Carolina, because it “puts us in a position of having won a strong victory in Iowa, a strong second-place victory in New Hampshire, and now a strong second- or third-place.”
“The only campaign that can beat Donald Trump and has beat Donald Trump is our campaign.” He says that Trump is disliked by many Republicans, and that polls suggest “head to head Donald loses to Hillary. And head to head I beat Hillary.”
No Republican has won New Hampshire and South Carolina and then lost the nominee, Tapper tells Rubio. Are you fighting a losing battle against Trump?
“We never had a race where 15 credible candidates began,” Rubio says. “We’ve never had a race like this.”
He says history is no guide to 2016. “I think last night was truly the beginning of the real Republican race for president. … Here’s where it really begins at this point now.”
So would he prefer a brokered convention, if it came down to it?
“I don’t think it’s likely,” he says. “I most certainly don’t want party insiders deciding this.”
How do you feel about Jeb Bush dropping out, Tapper asks.
Rubio says his departure, and John Kasich’s very narrow strategy “gives us an opportunity now to coalesce, and bring together Republicans”.
He makes an electability argument, saying it comes down, “ultimately, [to] who can win. Who do the Democrats fear most? Democrats now acknowledge that that’s me. That’s why they spend so much time attacking me.”
Rubio says that he thinks the smaller field of rivals “accrues to our benefit”.
He says twice that Americans should check out Marco Rubio dot com.
Next up is Florida senator Marco Rubio. Tapper asks: What would an endorsement from 2012 nominee Mitt Romney mean?
“That report is false. I have no reason to believe he’s about endorse,” Rubio says.
We’d love to have his endorsement, we’d love to have the support of everyone … We’re not going to defeat Hillary CLinton or Bernie Sanders in November if we don’t unite the Republican party.
“We’d love to have his endorsement,” but there’s no reason to believe those reports are true, Rubio says.
Tapper asks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Donald Trump said he would be a “neutral” in. Clinton says he missed the mark.
First of all Israel is our partner, our ally, we have longstanding and important ties with Israelis going back to the formation of the state of Israel. I will defend and do everything I can to defend Israel.
I also believe the Palestinians deserve to have a state of their own. That’s what I support and that’s what I worked on. … Three very intense conversations between the prime minister of Israel and the president of the Palestinian authority. I happen to think that moving toward a two-state solution, trying to provide more support for the ]Palestinian people] is in the long-term interests of Israel.
Are you worried about Donald Trump in the general election, secretary Clinton?
Clinton: “I don’t know Jake, I’m not thinking that far ahead. They have to finish their nomination process, we have to finish ours.”
She flips into stump-speech mode: “We can do better together. We can build those ladders of opportunity again. We can have rising prosperity, and break down those barriers that are holding people back.
“That great recession was such a terrible blow to so many people, and the repercussions are still working its way through the economy and the political system … I want to find common ground wherever I can.”
Tapper asks about whether Clinton believes that Hispanic voters were more won over by Sanders than her campaign, as polling data suggests.
“That’s just not what our analysis shows,” she says. “We don’t believe that the so-called entry polls are that accurate.”
There’s a lot of evidence that we did very, very well with every type of voter … Held our own up in Reno, so it was a broad base of voter turnout, and we dominated of course in Clark County, which is where Las Vegas is. … We always have to work hard for every single voter, and we do that in every place.
Clinton acknowledges to Tapper that there’s a question of trust in a lot of independent voters’ minds. She says she knows voters wonder whether she’s in the race for them or for herself, and she insists she’s in it for them.
I know that I have to make my case … I have to really make clear that we want to make progress in our country, we want to make a real difference in their lives, and that’s what I’ve always been about.
Hillary Clinton is now on the CNN program, where Tapper asks her what went right in Nevada.
I think it was a lot of things. First of all we’ve been on the ground there for months, so we’re building an organziation, developing relationships … so as we build that we were able to udnerstand more of what was on people’s minds, how best to connet with them, to make my case to them. We have as I said thousands of people who were engaged from Las Vegas to the smallest rural town.
She thanks the people working on her campaign, who “did not get in any way knocked off course”.
Tapper asks whether Bernie Sanders was gracious in his call to concede the primary. Clinton doesn’t really say: “He did call me before I made my speech and I did appreciate that very much.”
She then says that she isn’t a fighting to lead a “single-issue country”, which may be her new line of attack on Sanders’ unshakeable insistence that inequality and Wall Street are the central problems of the day.
I want to knock down all the barriers that are holding people back. … Of course a lot of it is economic, and a lot of that needs to be addressed … Mroe good paying jobs with rising incomes again, you know, once and for all making sure women get equal pay … clean energy, especially in a state like Nevada that should be the solar capital of the west.
“We’re going to talk about the issues that are on the minds of Americans and that’s a broad number.”
Tapper: What’s up with all those retweets of white supremacists…?
Trump: “I know nothing about these groups that are supporting me.”
But don’t you worry about whether you can get elected against a Democrat? I don’t worry, Trump says.
As a candidate I will bring over many, many Dems … We’re going to bring over the Reagan Democrats … the independents … tremendous youth … They say that it will be the largest voter turnout in the history of the United States elections. …
If it’s Hillary against me, it’s going to be a tremendous turnout. I’m going to win, I’m going to win places like Michigan that Republicans won’t even think about it.
Trump says he’s going to have a chance at winning New York, which hasn’t been one by a Republican since Calvin Coolidge in 1924. “If I win New York I win.”
“I’ll win states that Republicans don’t even think of … Upstate New York I’m like the most popular person that’s ever lived, essentially.”
The billionaire doesn’t back down when asked about his commitment to healthcare reform – he just says it’ll be a repeal of the Affordable Care Act and then some other, different healthcare reform: “People are not going to die in the middle of the street when I’m president. They’re just not.”
Finally Tapper asks about Trump’s wife, Melania, who made rare public comments at Trump’s victory celebration on Saturday night. “She’s a very, very brilliant woman. I know her academic background,” Trump says. “She’s also a very private woman … She has some interesting causes that are going to be fantastic for the country. I really just surprised her when I said that.
Did calling Jeb Bush “low-energy” and mocking him writ large lead to the governor’s collapse?
Trump: “I can tell you I like him, he’s a good person, he’s a good man, but he really hit me with a lot of commercials.”
Not as tough as Ted Cruz’s “tough, tough tough” robocalls, he adds. “I’ll tell you, this is a tough business. I think real estate in Manhattan is a lot easier.”
Was the rejection of Bush a “referendum” on the family’s legacy in the White House?
Trump: “I hope not, because it shouldn’t be, it wasn’t meant to be … Jeb fought hard, it just wasn’t his time.”
It was really just not his time. You know, four years ago, I think he would’ve won. Although with Mitt, you know, it would’ve been a good contest.
We’re on to CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper. He says the state of the union is “frontrunning”, whatever that means.
Donald Trump is on first, which was probably a condition of his appearance. Can he be stopped?
“Well, certainly you can be stopped. I’m dealing with very talented people, they’re senators, do we have any governors left? I don’t know … Certainly nobody’s unstoppable.”
Tapper asks why he’s doing so well. “Well, I’m an outsider.”
I was a member of the establishment, totally … I was a very big donor to the Republicans, I used to be a donor to everybody because as a businessman that was a good thing to do. On the day I decided to run, June 16, I became an outsider. … I don’t need donor money, special interest money, and that bothers them.
Trump goes on: “I’m going to be fair to everybody but I’m going to do what’s right.” Politicians are bought and controlled, he says, even though the “Very talented” Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio could still beat him. That said, “I don’t think we’re going to have a convention, a brokered convention.”
Donald Trump is on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, a show he calls more than maybe any other. The billionaire says he’s feeling pretty good.
Host Joe Scarborough asks about Trump’s spat with Pope Francis earlier this week, in which the pontiff suggested Trump is “not Christian” if he’s so committed to building a wall to keep immigrants out.
“I don’t think it helped me or hurt me. I think it was neutral,” Trump says.
Trump says at first he was surprised the pope said anything at all, and described his reaction to the pope’s remarks as: “I said this is bad, this is not good.”
But he was glad the way it turned out, in the end, with both sides stepping back from their initial statements. Trump says he was “very honored” to be talked about by the pope.
“I’ve never seen a pope talk about anybody before,” he says. “They usually talk more important things than Donald Trump.”
The hosts ask about Trump’s victory in South Carolina last night, and the billionaire brags about winning all seven congressional districts. “What I thought was going to hurt me were those robocalls ,” he says, talking about automated phone calls to voters, “and they were put out by Ted.”
Finally Trump waxes generous toward the primary voters so far, and mocks the way Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are describing their second- and third-place finishes as “historic”.
“The person who came in third was like a superstar,” he says, describing the Rubio campaign (and the media’s) excitement after Iowa.
The hosts also ask Trump about a tweet in which he appears to suggest Barack Obama is Muslim, which he is not. Trump says it was a joke. They don’t ask Trump about how last week he said: “No leader, especially a religious leader, has the right to question another man’s religion or faith.”
I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque? Very sad that he did not go!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2016
Updated
Hello and welcome to our coverage of the celebration, despair and soap opera spite of the 2016 election, the day after Donald Trump, the maroon menace of the Republican party, swept South Carolina, and Hillary Clinton, breaker of ceilings, fended off Bernie Sanders’ success with Hispanic voters in Nevada.
It’s still high drama the morning after. Republicans Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz finished in a virtual tie, with 22.5% and 22.3% of the vote respectively in South Carolina, and both of them are spinning those results – they both lost, after all – so hard that one might well fall over on a talk show this morning.
The tribulations of Jeb Bush finally came to an end last night, when the former governor of Florida conceded that Americans don’t like him lingering at their parties, Republican or otherwise. John Kasich and Ben Carson remain in the race: the Ohio governor gave up in South Carolina long ago to focus on Michigan and other states; the retired neurosurgeon hasn’t been seen for a while, and may have fallen asleep.
Trump lorded over his victory and his opponents.
“It’s tough, it’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s vicious,” he said, before departing the state for Nevada, where Republicans will caucus on Tuesday. “When you win, it’s beautiful.”
In Nevada, Clinton finally put space between her and Sanders’ rising campaign, which de facto tied her in Iowa and defeated her soundly in New Hampshire. The former secretary of state won by 52.7% to 47.2%, with a huge margin of support from African American voters in urban areas.
“Some may have doubted us but we never doubted each other,” she told supporters in Las Vegas. “The fight is on – the future that we want is within our grasp.”
But because Nevada’s caucus system is not a winner-take-all system, and because Sanders’ had more success winning over Hispanic voters than predicted, the senator’s campaign will undoubtedly spin its loss as just another step toward “political revolution”.
With reporters on the trail and candidates going groggily back to work, we’ll distill the insults, bickering, half-truths and everything else for you this morning so you don’t have to.
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Campaign live: Trump lords South Carolina win over rivals as Bush drops out of the race
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