In the
race to become U.S. president, if Republican candidate Donald Trump was
coming off a bad week, it was hard to tell at a pair of political
rallies Saturday where he thumped both Democrats and Republicans.First at a convention center in Tampa, Florida, and then in an airport hangar outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the presumptive Republican nominee tore into fellow Republicans who have been slow to back him.
“I’d like to see Republican leadership be very strong, very smart, and you got to be cool,” he said in Moon Township, Pa., saying Republicans risk losing seats in the House of Representatives and Senate.
In Tampa, where Trump hugged an American flag, he saved his most vicious broadsides for former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who, speaking Saturday at a Republican retreat in Utah, said in a race between presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Trump, “either choice is destructive.”
“Mitt Romney is a sad case. He choked,” Trump said. “You know what a choke artist is? You know a guy who missed a kick — you get rid of him, right?”
Trump said he is expanding his slogan from “Make America Great Again” to “Make America Great Again for Everybody.” He has been criticised for his original, nostalgic slogan because it evoked memories for some portions of the American population of a time when the country was not as inclusive as it attempts to be today.
Trump also revived “Crooked Hillary,” his favourite moniker for Clinton, and called her a “maniac.” He again went after another one of his vocal critics, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, calling her “Pocahontas,” a reference to what she has said is her Native American ancestry.
The rhetoric came on the heels of a week that saw the billionaire candidate’s poll numbers slipping.
Real Clear Politics’ most current polling data showed Trump an average of 3.8 percentage points behind Clinton.
A Fox News poll had Clinton ahead by 3 points, while Reuters gave an 8-point advantage to the Democratic candidate