After The GOP Debate, The Insults Continue: Marco Rubio Says Donald Trump ‘The Most Vulgar Person’ To Ever Run For President
In the midst of a scandalously rowdy – and sometimes raunchy – GOP debate on Thursday night, insults continued flying on Friday morning when Florida senator Marco Rubio kept up his critique of Donald Trump during an appearance on CNN. Capitalizing on Mitt Romney’s carefully orchestrated attack on Trump from the day before, Rubio continued driving home the point that the outspoken tycoon does not have the self-control and dignity to hold the office of chief executive.
“Donald Trump has been perhaps the most vulgar – no I don’t think perhaps – the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency in terms of how he’s carried out his candidacy,” Rubio said as he spoke to CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on New Day.
Although there is a large volume of controversial material emanating from Trump’s unorthodox campaign, Rubio was specifically referring to a moment during the Thursday night debate in which the real estate mogul appeared to comment on the size and functionality of his genitalia. The quip was a callback to a moment the previous week in which Marco Rubio lampooned Trump over his small hands, suggesting that they might be indicative of other deficiencies, including Trump’s manhood. Trump pushed back at the debate, as noted in transcript excerpts posted by Vox.
“Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands — if they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem, I guarantee.”
According to Mediaite, immediately following the debate, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Donald Trump if he realized he was likely the first presidential candidate in history to talk about the size of his private parts during a televised debate. Trump responded by denying the assertion, suggesting that he was only talking about his hands.
“No, I only made a joke about my hands. Look at these hands, aren’t they beautiful? I have very powerful hands, large hands. Relatively large hands.”
As previously noted, former Republican nominee Mitt Romney hit Trump hard yesterday in a speech that is ostensibly the GOP establishment’s most overt move thus far to take back the race from the billionaire’s insurgent candidacy. Like Rubio, Romney took issue with the tone and content of some of Donald Trump’s most incendiary remarks, not just from the campaign trail but from the course of the candidate’s entire life. A full transcript of Romney’s speech was published by the New York Times.
“Now, I’m far from the first to conclude that Donald Trump lacks the temperament to be president. After all, this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter’s questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity.”
To be sure, it seems like the vast majority of voters who side with Donald Trump are of a different mindset of the “Moral Majority” who steered Republican politics during the 1980s. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth by rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, along with GOP old guard types like Mitt Romney and John McCain, Trump still holds the top spot in an aggregate of national polling data compiled by Real Clear Politics. Whether his substantial lead in the primary season will carry over to a big win against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton remains to be seen. But if a recent national poll is correct, Donald Trump still faces a long and challenging road to the White House.
[Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
