Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders shakes hands with people during a campaign rally on Sunday in South Bend, Indiana. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders shakes hands with people during a campaign rally on Sunday in South Bend, Indiana. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Did you get heckled by a preteen, told that an entire state’s population “don’t want you,” questioned about your citizenship and have your spouse grilled about whether you are actually a prominent serial killer who operated in northern California from 1968 to 1970?
If not, you had a better day than Texas senator Ted Cruz, whose attempts to win over last-minute undecided voters in Indiana were as awkward as his attempted handgrab with “running mate” Carly Fiorina:
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Less than 24 hours before voting begins in the Hoosier State, all eyes were on the Midwest today. Here are some of the highlights from the campaign trail:
Cruz said on Monday that he “absolutely” has a path to the nomination if he loses in Indiana, where the victor is expected to gather 40-some delegates. If Donald Trump collects such a prize, he would need to grab about 45% of the remaining pledged delegates to cross the line, very doable for him based on past performance. (And Trump could still get to 1,237 without winning Indiana.) The path Cruz sees to the nomination after an Indiana loss, in short, remains well-hidden to everyone else, and would seem to involve a sudden and drastic shift in momentum in the race of the kind that’s difficult to imagine.
Hillary Clinton raised more money than Bernie Sanders last month for the first time in 2016, according to end-of-month totals released by the campaigns. Clinton reported a $26m haul for April, while Sanders reportedly took in $25.8m – significantly down from his high-water-marks in February and March, when he took in $43.5m and $44m, respectively.
Asked to comment on the Internet joke pretending that Cruz is the Zodiac Killer, would-be first lady Heidi Cruz was unbothered. “Well, I’ve been married to him for 15 years and I know pretty well who he is, so it doesn’t bother me at all. There’s a lot of garbage out there,” Cruz said.
Nominal Cruz running mate Carly Fiorina slipped off a stage at a Cruz rally, although she was apparently uninjured.
That’s it for today - tune in tomorrow for wall-to-wall, up-to-the-second coverage of the Indiana primaries!
Hot on the heels of a piece by CNN’s Dylan Byers that highlights a close relationship between Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity and billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, the candidate is making an appearance on Hannity’s show this evening in a last-minute bid to pump up his followers ahead of tomorrow’s primary in Indiana.
Hannity and Trump. Photograph: Fox News
After touting tomorrow’s election as having “the potential to change the direction of the Republican race,” Hannity asked Trump via satellite why the most recent polls showing him beating Texas senator Ted Cruz in Indiana is “is so important.”
“It’s just been, like, a lovefest,” Trump said of his reception in the Hoosier State, declaring that “it just all ends in Indiana, and then we start against Hillary.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to unify [the party] in the end?” Hannity asked.
“It’s better, but I don’t think it’s necessary,” Trump said.
Carly Fiorina has sent out a fantasy-fueled email to supporters of Texas senator Ted Cruz after his terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day, asking them to help fund his “surging” campaign ahead of tomorrow’s Republican primary in Indiana, emphasizing that he is “running neck and neck with Trump.”
“Ted’s surging ahead of tomorrow’s Indiana primary - but we can’t win without your help right away,” Fiorina writes. “On the ground, our crowds have been growing and our momentum has reached fever pitch.”
Sidenote: A picture of the crowd at tonight’s Cruz rally tells a different story...
“Recent polls show us running neck and neck with Trump in Indiana,” Fiorina continues, apparently using a definition of “neck-and-neck” with which we were previously unaware.
“This is still anyone’s race,” Fiorina concludes. “If we’re going to win we have to keep fighting as hard as possible, right down to the wire - and that’s why Ted and I are counting on you right now.”
Texas senator Ted Cruz’s dim prospects ahead of the Indiana primary that he himself has called a bellweather for the Republican nomination has had a silver lining: Several within the Republican party have floated him as a potential replacement to fill the vacant seat on the supreme court.
But don’t count Donald Trump as one of the “Justice Cruz” enthusiasts.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Trump said that “I’d have to think about it,” when asked if he would name Cruz to fill the seat once occupied by conservative icon Antonin Scalia.
“There’s a whole question of uniting and there’s a whole question as to temperament,” Trump said. “He’s certainly a smart guy, but there’s also a temperament issue. He’s got a tough temperament for what we’re talking about; you have to be a very, very smart, rational person, in my opinion, to be a justice of any kind.”
Political commentator and professional opinion-haver Bill Kristol has been one of the loudest voices of the #NeverTrump movement - although in an interview on Newsmax, Kristol indicated that “never” basically means “¯\_(ツ)_/¯.”
When host Steve Malzberg asked Kristol whether there was anything that the billionaire Republican frontrunner could do to earn his support, Kristol said that Trump’s character deficits were almost too high a barrier to clear.
“It’s more of a matter of character, and I don’t know that you can change your character at age 69,” Kristol said. “And given the things he’s said, even very recently, about other people, the way he demeans other people.”
That all being said...
“I mean, I guess never say never,” he continued. “On the one hand, I’ll say #NeverTrump, and on the other hand, I’ll say, ‘never say never.’”
Conservative talk-radio host and would-be media titan Glenn Beck - remember him? - has called on his supporters to join him “for a day of prayers, fasting and humility” for Texas senator Ted Cruz ahead of the Indiana Republican primary tomorrow.
In a long and meandering Facebook post, the onetime Fox News host asks his fans, “beginning Monday night and running for 24 hours ending on Tuesday will you pray and if possible fast like you have never done before?” (All sic.)
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“Join me and my family in praying and fasting for our nation and our God to look down and forgive us of our misguided ways,” Beck continues in the post, with a sample prayer one might use in asking the almighty for guidance ahead of the nomination contest:
“Help us Lord to return to you and have the bravery to do the hard thing - to Trust in You and to do our part by standing firm in the eternal truths that Got us here in the first place.”
Cruz currently lags behind billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump in every major poll of the Hoosier State. On top of that, the Texas senator was today heckled by a child, quizzed about his birthplace and faced questions over whether he’s a serial killer.
'America is a better country without you': Ted Cruz's very bad day
Alan Yuhas
The Texas senator was heckled by a child, quizzed about his birthplace and faced questions over whether he’s a serial killer, reports the Guardian’s Alan Yuhas - all while polling behind in Indiana.
Politicians who run for president are used to scorn, mockery and a healthy skepticism from the American people. But few have been heckled by a 12-year-old, questioned about their Canadian birth, or had their spouse field questions about their resemblance to a serial killer. All in one day.
Ted Cruz suffered all this and more on Monday in Indiana, a state where he desperately needs to do well if he wants to preserve any hope of winning the Republican nomination for president. Simple arithmetic eliminated Cruz from an outright victory two weeks ago, but he has clung to the possibility that he could deny Donald Trump the 1,237 delegates a candidate needs to win the primary election.
The trouble started with a 12-year-old in La Porte, Indiana. At a rally there, a boy shouted “You suck!” and “Shut up!” during Cruz’s stump speech, thwarting the senator’s attempts to turn the pubescent heckler into a talking point.
“You know, one of the things that hopefully someone has told you is that children should speak with respect,” Cruz said. “Imagine what a different world it would be if someone had told Donald Trump that, years ago.”
Eventually he gave up, saying: “In my household, when a child behaves that way they get a spanking.”
Donald Trump is picking up all the Indiana sports endorsements today.
Former Purdue basketball coach Gene Keady speaks before a rally for Donald Trump. Photograph: Michael Conroy/AP
Before his event in Carmel, Indiana, longtime Purdue basketball coach Gene Keady endorsed Trump. Keady, who coached the Boilermakers for 25 years, said “I listened to his foreign policy speech the other day and he just won himself the presidency.” The college basketball coach is also famous (or perhaps infamous) for his now-late combover, which bore certain similarities to Trump’s coiffure.
The endorsement at the rally was paired with an online endorsement offered former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, who said “the main reason I am endorsing him is I’ve played his golf course, I’ve stayed in his hotels. He does nothing but first class in everything. He wants this country to be first class as well.”
The two coaches, along with legendary Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight, give Trump a trifecta of endorsements from each of Indiana’s three major universities. Trump though added to his celebrity glitter, throwing in an endorsement from former pro football player and actor Fred Williamson.
Williamson, nicknamed “the Hammer” for his hard hits as a safety for the Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs, was praised by Trump, “I love people that hit hard.” The newly minted Trump endorser, a native of Gary, Indiana, also had extensive acting career. He starred in the blaxploitation classic Black Caesar and also appearing films ranging from M.A.S.H. to From Dusk Till Dawn.
Donald Trump’s nickname for “Lyin’” Ted Cruz sometimes feels like it’s straight out of a schoolyard. Now, the Texas senator is hitting back on the billionaire Republican frontrunner with an ad that responds: “I know you are, but what am I?”
In the ad, titled Lying, a narrator tells voters that “Donald Trump is lying about Ted Cruz,” touting his opposition to trade deals and his against-it-after-he-was-for-it undermining of the Gang of Eight immigration bill while Trump donated to politicians of whom the gang was composed.
“Trump also had a $1 million judgment against him for hiring illegals,” the narrator states, referring to a 1980 lawsuit in which a contractor hired undocumented Polish workers to build his eponymous Midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters. (Sidenote: Although the lawsuit aimed for a $1 million settlement, the presiding judge ordered Trump to pay considerably less, and the case was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.)
“Trump still brings in hundreds of foreign workers to replace Americans,” the ad states, referring to a New York Times article that pointed out the high number of legal-status foreign workers at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Brooklyn-accented Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been played by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David on Saturday Night Live for months, but for the first time, Sanders has been edited into the cast of the hit “show about nothing.”
The supercut pastes Sanders’ head onto the body of George Costanza, the neurotic best friend of the eponymous Jerry Seinfeld character, whose jeremiads about the state of inequality are met with eyerolls and skepticism by the rest of the gang.
Donald Trump has readily signaled his willingness to inject Bill Clinton’s sexual pecadillos into the 2016 presidential campaign, telling NBC in December that the former president might be likened to a sexual predator.
Donald Trump, who was for Bill Clinton before he was against him. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters
“There certainly was a lot of abuse of women, you look at whether it’s Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones, or any of them, and that certainly will be fair game,” Trump said at the time.
But comments unearthed by the Daily Beast show that at the height of the national controversy over the then-president’s affair with a White House intern, Trump was singing a different tune: the ballad of a “victim” injured by a cast of “unattractive” women.
“The whole thing, it’s just so unattractive,” Trump told Fox News host Neil Cavuto at the time. “Linda Tripp maybe one of the most unattractive human beings I’ve ever seen - not women, human beings. She’s just an unattractive person. This [Lucianne] Goldberg person, her agent or whatever she is, is just a terrible woman. You look at Paula Jones, I mean the whole cast of characters.”
“It’s like it’s from Hell,” he continued. “It’s a terrible group of people.”
Trump then went on, telling Cavuto that while he didn’t “necessarily agree with [Clinton’s] victims,” that Clinton was “really a victim himself. But he put himself in that position.”
The White House has faced tough questioning over comedian Larry Wilmore’s use of a taboo racial slur at its annual correspondents dinner.
Press secretary Josh Earnest was challenged repeatedly by April Ryan, an African American journalist and author of The Presidency in Black and White, who suggested that many people in the room were “appalled” by the N-word being uttered to the president’s face. Earnest said that Barack Obama appreciated “the spirit” of Wilmore’s remark.
Larry Wilmore speaks during the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images
Wilmore, who is African American, ended his after-dinner speech on Saturday by recognising the historical significance of America’s first black president, pounding his chest and telling Obama: “Words alone do me no justice. So, Mr President, if I’m going to keep it 100: yo, Barry, you did it, my nigga.”
The comment immediately divided people both in the room and beyond. Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post blogged: “Never before has the n-word been used to address the president. At least, not in public and most definitely not to his face. That’s why Wilmore’s use of it was as shocking as it was disrespectful.”
At today’s daily press briefing at the White House, the issue was raised by Ryan, Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks. She described it as “a word that is one of the worst words, many people say, you could say to anyone”.
Earnest did not address this directly but noted that following Obama’s act at the annual dinner is “one of the most difficult tasks in comedy”, since the president has shown himself “adept” at delivering one-liners and so expects comedians to go “right up to the line”.
But Ryan pressed further: “Many African Americans in that room – who included civil rights leaders, black comedians – were very appalled ... Black Republicans were upset, black Democrats were upset. People felt that not just throwing it at him, he threw it at them, and also, it diminished the office of the presidency and it diminished him. Did he cross the line?”
Earnest responded: “April, what I would say is it’s not the first time that people on the Monday after the White House correspondents dinner have observed that the comedian on Saturday night crossed the line.”
Ted Cruz’s hail Mary pass in picking a former California senate candidate as his potential running mate isn’t making the splash he was likely hoping for in the Golden State.
A new poll conducted by SurveyUSA shows that in California, billionaire Republican frontrunner is currently leading the Republican field with the support of 54% of registered Republican voters, while Cruz trails with 20%. Ohio governor John Kasich is currently at the bottom of the three-man dogpile with the support of a mere 16% of California Republicans.
As for the Democrats, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton currently leads among registered Democrats with 57%, with Vermont senator Bernie Sanders nearly 20 points behind at 38%.
At an event in Indiana, billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is making a bit of a hash over Carly Fiorina falling off a stage in the Hoosier State on Sunday.
“Carly’s perfectly nice - she fell off the stage the other day and Cruz didn’t do anything. Even I would have helped her!” Trump said.
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