Ohio – Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and John Kasich suggested Saturday they may not support Donald Trump if he becomes the GOP nominee, as violence at the front-runner’s rallies deepened the party’s chaotic chasm.
Tensions ran high at Trump’s latest rally, when Secret Service agents briefly formed a protective ring around the presidential candidate, then left the stage and allowed him to continue speaking at an airport hangar outside Dayton, Ohio.
Trump’s campaign said the agents rushed the stage after a man attempted to breach the security buffer. The man was “removed rapidly and professionally,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks said.
A defiant Trump has denied that he has encouraged violence at his events. But the scenes from his aborted rally in Chicago on Friday night appeared to be a final straw for some rivals who had pledged, despite deep concerns about his qualifications, to support the billionaire businessman if he were to become the nominee.
Rubio told The Associated Press that Trump is driving apart “both the party and the country so bitterly” that he may not be able to support the billionaire if he’s the Republican nominee.
“It’s an ongoing pattern,” Rubio said. “And it’s clear to me that he knows what he’s doing.”
Kasich, the Ohio governor, said the “toxic environment” Trump is creating “makes it very, extremely difficult” to support him.
“To see Americans slugging themselves at a political rally deeply disturbed me,” Kasich said while campaigning in Cincinnati. “We’re better than that.”
The extraordinary shift by the two came just a few days before Tuesday’s elections in five delegate-rich states, including their home states of Florida and Ohio.
The only candidate to stand by his pledge to support Trump if he becomes the nominee was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is closest to the businessman in the delegate count.
“I committed at the outset, I will support the Republican nominee, whoever it is,” Cruz told reporters Saturday.
President Barack Obama, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Dallas, said those who aspire to lead the country “should be trying to bring us together and not turning us against one another.” He said leaders should also “speak out against violence”
“If they refuse to do that, they don’t deserve our support,” he said.
Trump insisted he’d done nothing to exacerbate tensions, despite having previously encouraged his supporters to aggressively — and sometimes physically — stop protesters from interrupting his raucous rallies.
As reported by Vos Iz Neias