Marco Rubio becomes the latest Trump Target
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – Wednesday was Marco Rubio's turn to get Trumped.
The Florida senator was the most frequent target of Donald Trump's vitriol during an address at a South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce forum Wednesday afternoon.
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Trump, who participated in a town hall event in Columbia, South Carolina, on Wednesday evening, said he was asked by the group's hosts to drop by and say just a few words.
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But his appearance before a mostly white audience of supporters turned into a 40-minute riff that found him paying special attention to one particular rival for the Republican presidential nomination.
"Marco Rubio, who by the way has the worst attendance rating in the U.S. Senate. He's got the No. 1 worst attendance record, and they want him to be president," Trump began.
He was irritated that the headline of a news clipping on a new Florida poll showing him in the lead featured Rubio and Jeb Bush, rather than him.
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The Florida Atlantic University survey showed Trump with 32 percent to Rubio's 19 percent and Bush's 11 percent.
"But I'm not in the headline. That tells you about the press," he complained. "Do you think there's a little bit of a problem?"
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He then tossed the paper into the crowd.
Later, Trump name-checked Rubio for suggesting he doesn't know much about foreign policy, to which he replied, "I don't like telling people what I'm going to do."
But his most biting attacks against the senator were personal.
Reflecting on the length of the last debate, Trump described how his opponents perpetually perspired on the hot stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
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He said he felt bad for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an implicit reference to his weight. He said when he touched Mike Huckabee's back, he found him to be "soaking wet."
"Rubio, I've never seen a young guy sweat so much. He's drinking water, water, water," Trump recalled.
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But Trump also unfurled a more substantive attack against Rubio that has been used before by Democrats: his finances. When Rubio was a state lawmaker, he used the state party credit card for personal expenses, a decision he later called a mistake. He also struggled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt, mortgages and loans, as outlined earlier this year by The New York Times.
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"He's had no money, zero," Trump said of Rubio. "Maybe it's fine ... to say you owe money because you over-borrowed on your credit cards. He had nothing."
A Rubio campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump also went on a rant about the Bush-Rubio rivalry and painted the two men as faking their espoused fondness for each other.
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"They hate each other but they can't say it. It really does bother me," Trump said.
He also bashed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as "shrill" and "coming down like a really, really sick rocket" in polling.
Trump devoted a good portion of his speech to his own performance in polls, which show he remains in first place for the Republican nomination.
At an event tailored for African-American business people in an area still shattered from a mass shooting by a white supremacist, he made only a pair of brief references to race.
One, of course, involved a poll, showing Trump receiving 25 percent of the black vote in a general election.
"You get 25 percent of the African-American vote, the election's over, you win," he said, recalling a friend's assessment of the poll.