Trump bashes US-Saudi Arabia ties
Republican presidential front-runner slams NATO allies
MILWAUKEE, April 3, (Agencies): Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Saturday questioned the United States’ protective relationship with Saudi Arabia and again accused US allies of not pulling their weight in the NATO military alliance despite mounting bipartisan pressure on Trump to soften his tone.
The billionaire businessman told a campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin that allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “are not paying their fair share” and called the 28-nation alliance “obsolete.”
“Either they pay up, including for past deficiencies, or they have to get out. And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” Trump said.
Trump has frequently criticized NATO in recent weeks as the race for the Republican nomination for the Nov 8 election has heated up.
At a campaign stop in Wausau, Wisconsin on Saturday, Trump expressed concerns over the United States’ relationship with oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which Trump accused of not pitching in fair pay for US defense.
“We take care of Saudi Arabia. Now nobody’s going to mess with Saudi Arabia because we’re watching them,” he said.
“They’re not paying us a fair price. We’re losing our shirt,” he said.
On Friday, Obama cast doubt on Trump’s fitness for office after the former reality TV star refused to rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe and said Japan and South Korea might need nuclear arms.
“The person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula, or the world generally,” Obama said, warning that the world is closely watching the US election rhetoric.
“I’ve said before that people pay attention
detection at airports.” (AP)
Train derailment kills 2:
Train service along a stretch of the US northeast ground to a halt early Sunday following a derailment near Philadelphia that local news reports said left two people dead.
US railway service Amtrak said in a statement that the train, the Palmetto, was en route from New York to Savannah, Georgia when it struck a backhoe on the tracks south of Philadelphia. to American elections. What we do is really important to the rest of the world,” Obama said.
Trump’s comments on NATO have also sent ripples through the Republican Party, which has traditionally promoted a muscular foreign policy.
Tuesday could be a turning point in the Republican nomination race, when Wisconsin hosts its nominating contest. Trump, 69, trails his leading rival, US Senator Ted Cruz, 45, of Texas in the Upper Midwestern state.
A Cruz win would make it harder for Trump to reach the magic number of 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the Republican national convention in July. The winner will get to claim all of Wisconsin’s 42 delegates.
US presidential primaries spark back to life Tuesday after an eventful 10-day break with clear frontrunners Trump and Hillary Clinton both facing the real possibility of losing in Wisconsin.
Defeat in the north-central state isn’t likely to immediately change the course of the overall nominating contest, but it could serve as an indicator of the race’s current status ahead of the New York primary on April 19, where polls show both in the lead.
It’s been a bumpy period for Trump, the Republican billionaire from New York.
Controversies
Although his campaign has seemed bulletproof up until now, his latest controversies — including abortion, opponent Ted Cruz’s wife and a journalist who said she was roughed up by Trump’s campaign manager — have alienated women voters further, polls indicate.
His divisive style is also under scrutiny, and the real estate magnate had a surprise meeting with Republican party
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a baby as he visits the Seaport
Farmers’ Market in Halifax on April 2. (AP)
chief Reince Priebus in Washington on Thursday amid rumblings that the party would fracture if he were to win the nomination.
Trump says he regrets retweeting an unflattering picture of the wife of arch-rival Cruz, in a rare act of contrition from the Republican presidential frontrunner.
Trump is in pole position to seize the Republican nomination but is doing poorly nationwide among women voters, polls show, and faced stern criticism from all sides in recent days after saying women who have illegal abortions should be “punished,” before he backtracked.
Following one of the worst weeks of his campaign, Trump was on defense Saturday as he kicked off a three-day sprint to Wisconsin’s primary.
Primaries
Contenders in both parties crisscrossed the Midwestern state seeking an edge ahead of Tuesday’s primaries, none more actively than Trump, who’s had a rough week and faces a likely struggle against Cruz in the state, who has passed Trump in recent Wisconsin polls.
The Republican race is overshadowed by a persistent effort by Trump’s rivals in the campaign and the party to force the nomination fight into the July convention — and by his equivocations on whether he will be loyal to the Republican Party or bolt for an independent candidacy if he feels mistreated.
Trump began the afternoon with a rally in the Milwaukee suburb of Racine, where he defended a series of controversial comments in recent days on NATO, abortion and his remark that Japan and South Korea should perhaps be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
“This politics is a tough business,” said Trump. “Because you can say things one way and the press will criticize you horribly. You say it another way and the press will criticize you horribly.”
Off the stage, in a more reflective moment, Trump expressed regret that he had retweeted an unflattering photo of rival Ted Cruz’s wife, Heidi, paired with a glamorous photo of his own wife, Melania, a former model, as part of a bitter feud between the two men.
“Yeah, it was a mistake,” he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. “If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have sent it.”
The Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has grown ncreasingly bitter, too, though it has not matched the Republcan contest for raw hostility. Their attention will quickly turn to an even more consequential contest, in New York on April 19, where the Democratic front-runner dearly hopes to avoid an upset in the state she served as senator. Sanders, who was born in Brooklyn, can claim New York as his home state.Trump predicted that the United States is on course for a “very massive recession,” warning that a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slump.
“I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble,” the billionaire businessman said in an interview with The Washington Post published on Saturday.
Coming off a tough week on the campaign trail in which he made a series of missteps, Trump’s latest comments bring him back into the limelight ahead of Tuesday’s important primary in Wisconsin where he trails in the polls.
The former reality TV star said that the real US jobless figure is much higher than five percent number released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Five others, including the pilot and his passenger, were injured in the crash on a stretch of Interstate 15 that has been the scene of several emergency landings.
Witnesses said the single-engine plane appeared to be having problems before it banked and came down Saturday, California Highway Patrol Officer Chris Parent said. One man said he didn’t hear the plane’s engine as it passed overhead.
The Lancair IV landed on its belly and skidded about 250 feet before striking the rear of a black Nissan Altima that was stopped on the shoulder of the road in San Diego County near Fallbrook. The driver of the car had pulled over to synchronize the Bluetooth device on his phone, Parent said.
The impact crumpled the back of the car, fatally crushing Antoinette Isbelle, 38, of San Diego in the back seat and injuring three others in the vehicle, authorities said.
“The plane went completely into the trunk and pushed the rear bumper almost into the rear passenger seat,” said John Buchanan, spokesman for the North County Fire Protection District.
Pilot Dennis Hogge, 62, and his female passenger suffered major injuries, Parent said. The driver suffered moderate injuries, and his other two passengers were expected to survive their injuries.
The plane was once owned by major league catcher Matt Nokes, who made a noteworthy landing on busy I-15 when the engine quit on its second flight on Feb 18, 2000.
Nokes guided the high-performance $500,000 plane to a smooth landing and safely taxied off the road without injuries. (AP)