Trump homes in on victory after shrugging off critics
AN unrepentant Donald Trump yesterday vowed that criticism of his plan to build a wall on the Mexican border – even if it came from the Pope – would only encourage him to build it higher.
Despite a string of controversies, Mr Trump is poised for a victory in South Carolina today that would establish him as the undisputed, and possibly unstoppable, Republican front-runner.
At a rally in Myrtle Beach yesterday, he dismissed a recently recovered radio interview in which he expressed support for the invasion of Iraq.
Mr Trump has based much of his foreign policy platform around the “judgment” he showed in opposing the war, and said the latest revelations were irrelevant because, “by the time the war started I was against it”.
He also brushed aside Pope Francis’s statement that he was “not a Christian” because he favoured a border wall.
“We’re going to build it so high that when they get up there they’ll think, ‘I’m not coming down’,” he said to roars of approval from the thousands assembled.
Bill Waters, a local unemployed man who turned up to the rally in construc- tion gear with a sign reading “I’m ready to work on the wall”.
“It don’t bother me at all,” he said of the negative headlines. “Mr Trump is going to keep us safe and bring so much money to America.”
But opponents, particularly Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, hope his recent difficulties will close the gap.
Mr Cruz told an audience across town from the Trump rally that victory in 2016 by a Democrat or “the wrong Republican” could see American values eroded for good.
“It’s easy to say ‘Make America Great again,’” he said, referring to Mr Trump’s campaign slogan. “You can even print it on a baseball cap. But the question is, do you know what made it great in the first place?”
Mr Rubio, meanwhile, was calling himself a “new face of the conservative movement”.