Cruz victorious in first of five Saturday election contests

Washington (AFP) - US Senator Ted Cruz struck first in the series of five presidential nomination contests held Saturday, besting Donald Trump in Kansas and boosting his claim as the most viable alternative to the billionaire frontrunner.

With nearly half of the votes counted, networks called the midwestern state for Cruz, who earned some 49 percent of the vote, doubling up on Trump who was second with 25 percent. Senator Marco Rubio was in third, followed by Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Kansas and the other contests will provide the first test of whether the Republican establishment's desperate effort to halt Trump, led this week by 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, is having any effect among voters.

The brash real estate mogul Trump is ahead in the all-important delegate count for the Republicans, having won 10 of the 15 states that have voted to date in the process that determines the nominees for both parties.

But Cruz's win is a reminder that while Trump still appears to be the likely nominee, it is by no means inevitable.

"God bless Kansas!" Cruz told a campaign rally in Idaho, upon learning that he was projected the winner.

"What we're seeing is conservatives coming together... and standing as one behind this campaign."

The GOP race has been winnowed down to four men: political outsiders Trump and Cruz, and the more mainstream candidates Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Ohio Governor John Kasich. Many in the Republican establishment are in virtual panic over whether anyone can stop Trump's march.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is well ahead of rival Senator Bernie Sanders, hoping to expand her lead as she inches closer to securing the nomination.

Clinton and Sanders do battle Saturday in Kansas, Louisiana and Nebraska, while the Republicans are contesting Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine.

The former secretary of state is expected to dominate in Louisiana, the weekend's biggest prize, because of its large African-American vote.

But Sanders could bounce back in the other two states -- plus Maine, which holds its Democratic caucus Sunday -- because they have largely white populations, a demographic with which Sanders has done well.

Saturday's races are wedged between far more consequential contests: the dozen states that voted on "Super Tuesday" March 1 and the big battles on March 15, when many Republican races, including in Rubio's Florida and Kasich's Ohio, become winner-take-all affairs.

Cruz received an added boost Saturday when he won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a prominent gathering of grass roots far-right activists.

Cruz finished first with 40 percent, followed by Rubio with 30, Trump with 15 and Kasich at eight percent.

Trump made waves when he cancelled a scheduled Saturday morning appearance at CPAC near Washington, opting instead to hold a rally in Wichita, Kansas.

A woman holds a sign as she waits for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a rally on …
The move angered members of the American Conservative Union which hosts CPAC.

"I think it was a big mistake for Donald Trump not to be here," ACU chairman Matt Schlapp told CNN.

- 'Establishment is against us' -
Trump told the Wichita crowd that Romney, who on Thursday called Trump "a fraud," was a "loser" who should have defeated President Barack Obama.

"It's the establishment. The establishment is against us," Trump said.

Rubio, seen by many political observers as the best hope to defeat Trump, issued a forceful repudiation of the frontrunner, challenging him, like many Republicans have, on his conservative credentials.

Rubio brought the house down at CPAC when he warned about a dire future for Republicans "if the conservative movement is hijacked by someone that's not a conservative."

With Trump's challengers insisting they are in it for the long haul, there is a chance no candidate will rack up the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the convention in July.

That would mean a contested or "brokered" convention, a scenario that could turn chaotic, especially if establishment figures seek to somehow actively prevent delegates from coalescing around Trump.

There are 155 delegates at stake in Saturday's Republican races.

Heading into Saturday, Trump led the field with 329 delegates, followed by Cruz with 231 and Rubio with 110. Kasich trailed with 25.

Trump has won 10 state contests, while Cruz has claimed five including Kansas. Rubio has won one.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Trump heaps scorn on war hero record of 'loser' McCain

WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump, known for his incendiary rhetoric on the 2016 campaign trail, lobbed his latest verbal grenade Saturday, dismissing the military record of Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war.

The flamboyant billionaire businessman, reality TV star and Republican presidential contender said McCain -- a decorated aviator who was tortured in a prison camp for five years -- did not deserve hero status for his Vietnam War service.

"He's not a war hero," Trump told a gathering of social conservative activists in the Midwestern state of Iowa.

"He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, okay?"

The 69-year-old has never served in the US military.

He went on to assert that McCain "graduated last in his class" at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis in the late 1950s.

McCain, 78, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate against Democratic rival Barack Obama, was captured during a bombing raid over Vietnam in October 1967.

- Daughter reacts -

He did not personally react to Trump's comments, but his daughter, 30-year-old broadcaster Meghan, expressed outrage.

"I can't believe what I am reading this morning. Horrified. Disgusted. There are no words," she wrote on her Twitter account.

"I have a brother that just returned from Afghanistan a month ago. Glad he can come home to this being said about his father and his service," she added with irony.

Trump's remarks triggered immediate political uproar, as other top Republicans defended McCain's military record -- and in the process tried to cash in on their rival's faux-pas.

"@SenJohnMcCain is an American hero, period. I'll denounce any attack against his service and anyone else who wears the uniform. -SW," said Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who, like Trump is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.

Mitt Romney, the Republicans' 2012 presidential candidate, wrote: "The difference between @SenJohnMcCain and @realDonaldTrump: Trump shot himself down. McCain and American veterans are true heroes."

- Leading the pack -

Going into the weekend, Trump was the frontrunner in a crowded field of 15 candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.

His bold remarks in June about undocumented Mexican immigrants being rapists and drug runners kept the bombastic real estate tycoon at the top of the national news agenda for days.

But it remained to be seen how his McCain comments might undermine his run for the White House, given how Americans as a whole value the men and women of their armed forces far more than their politicians.

Trump attended a New York area military academy during his high school years, but never served in uniform.

Selective Service documents obtained during his 2011 White House bid indicated that he managed to avoid the Vietnam War draft thanks to student and medical deferments.

By his own account, McCain -- the son and grandson of admirals who now chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee -- graduated in 1958 fifth from last in his class of 899 cadets at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, east of Washington.

On his 23rd bombing mission from an aircraft carrier off Vietnam, McCain was shot down in October 1967 and held as a prisoner of war for more than five years.

He endured torture in captivity, but refused an offer of early release out of solidarity for his fellow POWs.

The latest public opinion polls, for Fox News and USA Today, have seen Trump leading the Republican pack with 18 percent, one percentage point ahead of former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

Those numbers have so far ensured him a place at the first televised debates of the US primary season, on Fox News on August 6.

soource: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Donald Trump received threat from Mexican drug lord - aide

WASHINGTON - An aide to Donald Trump said on Monday the FBI is investigating threatening tweets to the US Republican presidential candidate purported to have originated from Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, a notorious Mexican drug lord who escaped from prison on Saturday.

Reuters could not confirm the authenticity of the Twitter accounts from which the threats were allegedly made.

Trump, a real estate billionaire who has generated controversy by saying many illegal immigrants from Mexico are criminals and rapists, said in a statement on Sunday that "corrupt Mexican officials" had let Guzman escape.

A Twitter account made out in the kingpin's name, Joaquin Guzman Loera, that on Sunday had celebrated his escape sent a message threatening Trump if he continued to speak out.

Four Mexican government officials said they could not say whether the account, as well as several others in the name of some of Guzman's children that were linked to it, were genuine.

"I am told they are apocryphal," said Mexican Deputy Interior Minister Roberto Campa.

A Trump aide said in a statement: "The FBI is fully aware of the situation and is actively investigating this threat against Mr. Trump."

It quoted Trump as saying: "I'm fighting for much more than myself. I'm fighting for the future of our country which is being overrun by criminals. You can't be intimidated. This is too important."

An FBI spokesman said the agency had no statement on the issue. "Standard practice is to neither confirm nor deny FBI investigations," he said.

Guzman, who escaped from a maximum-security prison through a tunnel, ran the powerful Sinaloa cartel after an earlier prison breakout in 2001 until he was arrested last year.

The cartel has smuggled billions of dollars worth of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Guzman posed a threat to public safety in the United States, and that Washington has "made quite clear to the Mexicans our interest in ensuring that he faces justice here in the United States."

In his statement on Sunday, Trump said: "Corrupt Mexican officials obviously let him go a second time. The last time he was free for 13 years. He has been selling drugs in the U.S. big time - a major kingpin."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com