Bernie Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton to a debate before the New York primary, and said the influence of “big money” in Hillary Clinton’s campaign is “obscene”.
He criticized wealthy people who would pay thousands of dollars to attend a pro-Clinton event hosted by actor George Clooney. “I have a lot of respect for George Clooney, he’s a great actor, I like him,” Sanders said.“It’s not Clooney, it’s the people who are coming to this event have undue influence over the political process.”
Donald Trump declared the entire world unsafe, saying: “I don’t think America’s a safe place for Americans, you want to know the truth. I don’t think Europe is a safe place.”
The Republican frontrunner said “Nato is obsolete” and should be restructured to combat terrorism. He also ruled out internment camps for Muslim Americans, but added: “Muslims in our country have to report bad acts.”
Texas senator Ted Cruz accused Trump of fabricating a tabloid story about extramarital affairs. “He refuses to debate because he doesn’t want to America to see his lack of knowledge,” he said. “So what does he do? He attacks my wife.”
Cruz also defended a plan to “fight Islamism at every level” by sending police to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods”. New York’s police chief scorned the idea on Saturday, saying Cruz “knows nothing about counterterrorism”.
Trump denied any part in the tabloid fiasco, and accused Cruz of committing a federal crime by coordinating with a Super Pac. “Just so you understand, that Super Pac is very friendly to Ted Cruz,” he said. “He knew all about it, 100%.”
Secretary of State John Kerry said the 2016 campaign has been “an embarrassment” to the US abroad. “It upsets people’s equilibrium about our steadiness,” he said, of the questions posed to him by world leaders. “It’s clear to me that what is happening is an embarrassment to our country.”
Hillary Clinton did not appear on any news show, and took no questions about her losses by large margins on Saturday in Washington state, Alaska and Hawaii. She leads Sanders by more than 200 pledged delegates, and tentatively by more than 400 “superdelegates”, who are not bound to vote according to their state’s results.
As we creep closer to the Republican convention, delegates who are not bound to vote according to their state’s results will become increasingly important in the campaign to keep Donald Trump from winning the nomination.
The University of Georgia’s Josh Putnam breaks down some of the math.
Update on current unbound Republican delegates (3/27/16). [MTP overstated number this morning.] pic.twitter.com/jJ9K8SCnGY
On Fox News Sunday this morning, Ted Cruz defended his plan to mount patrols in US neighborhoods in order to fight “Islamism”.
“This is pro-active law enforcement. It’s addressing the problem using all the tools at the disposal of law enforcement to defeat the enemy.”
He accused the Obama administration of “pursuing a policy of weakness and appeasement. We’ve seen these attacks over and over. For seven years, Obama and Hillary Clinton have refused to acknowledge what were fighting.”
Cruz. Photograph: AP
“The threat comes from radicalization. We can’t become Europe with its failed immigration policies. We can’t repeat their mistakes. We can’t be forced to live under Sharia law. We need to engage and find this enemy. We have to fight Islamism at every level.”
Moving away from how exactly these police patrols and surveillance would work, or not violate civil and privacy rights of American citizens, Cruz criticized the Obama administration over “political correctness”.
“Hillary and Obama are more mad at me than they are at the terrorists murdering us,” Cruz said. “If I become president we will carpet bomb Isis into the ground. We will use military force to destroy the enemy. We wont engage in national building. We’ll get the job done and get the hell out.”
He then changed tack again, and said that Donald Trump makes personal attacks because he has no answers on foreign policy or security questions.
“So what does he do? He attacks my wife. He sent out a nasty tweet, bragging his wife was so attractive,” Cruz said.
“Attacking spouses and children is off-limits. But this is what Donald does when he gets scared: he attacks. He doesn’t know what to do. It’s a sign of how scared he is. He refuses to debate because he doesn’t want America to see his lack of acknowledge.”
The senator did single out one of Trump’s proposals: the US withdrawal from Nato, or at least an overhaul of the alliance’s structure and priorities.
“It makes no sense,” Cruz said. “It would hand a massive victory to Putin and Isis. Trump lacks any understanding of foreign policy.”
Then he reverted back to a discussion of a tabloid story alleging the senator had several extramarital affairs. “It came for Trump and his henchmen. It came from Roger Stone, the enforcer from Donald Trump,” Cruz said. “It’s all made-up lies. Total Garbage and a sign of just how long he will go.”
“He doesn’t want to talk about the issues. He has no answers. So he goes to garbage sleaze and lies. This has no place in politics.”
Bernie Sanders makes one last run at a talk show: NBC’s Meet the Press, where Chuck Todd asks him about the tenor of his rallies – he says there’s “a lot of booing of Hillary Clinton” at those events.
You had no reaction recently, Todd notes, whereas a month ago you would quiet the crowds and observe your respect for your opponent.
“No, no reason at all,” Sanders tells Todd about the different reactions. “I respect Secretary Clinton here, I don’t want our supports to be booing her.”
He notes the differences again between his views and Clinton’s: “People respond the way they respond.”
Sanders says his campaign is “trying to differentiate our [views] on the war in Iraq, on fracking, on how we raise money, that is what the American people want to hear.”
He admits, though, that he worries Clinton won’t debate him before the approaching set of elections in Wisconsin and the north-east. “I do have a little bit of concern about that, but I certainly would like to see a debate in New York state.”
Finally, Todd asks whether Sanders has any conditions for supporting Clinton, should she become the Democratic nominee. “I hope very much that you’ll be asking her that question,” Sanders jokingly replies.
Todd then makes an implicit note – similar to the explicit one made by ABC’s Jonathan Karl – that Clinton declined to appear on any talk show this week.
Back on NBC, Todd asks Kasich about whether it’s possible to “redraw the map” in the Middle East, as the governor has previously suggested would be necessary to resolve conflicts there.
Kasich says he doesn’t think “we should do that”.
“I believe we should destroy ISIS, and then once it settles down, let the regional powers sort this out,” he says. The Kurds are doing just that in northern Syria and Iraq, he says, without mentioning that the US’s partner, Turkey, has periodically bombed its other partner, the Kurds, in the last year.
Kasich. Photograph: EPA
“Let the regional powers sort this thing out,” he says. “I think there could ultimately be a redrawing of the map, but western powers shouldn’t do it. Let them do it where they live.”
The NBC host asks about the horse race. What exactly is your plan to win with one state victory, governor?
“I’m beating Hillary by 11 points,” Kasich says, although he’s also losing the Republican nomination contest by almost 600 delegates. “I’m the only one that can win in the fall.” He says he’s going to do well in Pennsylvania.
Todd: What about the tenor of the race? What do you make of it?
The governor sighs. “Families have to be off-limits,” he says, alluding to the bizarre spat between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz over their wives and a tabloid story. “If this becomes the order of the day, what kind of people are we going to have in the future that are going to run for public office?
“There’s got to be some rules, and there’s got to be something that gets set there. Some decency.”
So are you still going to support Donald Trump if he’s the Republican nominee?
“We’ll see what happens,” Kasich says. “We’ve got a long way to go.”
Dickerson asks Kerry about the Syrian civil war, and the complex negotiations with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, his Russian and Iranian backers, Syrian rebels, and the US and European mediators who oppose Assad.
“If Assad is not going to move to the side and cede to the transition that Iran and Russia and all the other nations” have called for, Kerry says, “if he doesn’t do that there will not be peace in Syria.”
Kerry. Photograph: Rex
“It is not sort of a discretionary” argument, he says, asserting: “you can’t end the war” with Assad in power. He says the Russians agree: “They believe that the Syrian people must decide in the context of this political process.”
Have the negotiations strengthened Russia in the Middle East? Dickerson asks.
“Russia has a foothold” already, Kerry scoffs. “Russia built the air defense system of Syria years ago.”
“We have bases all through the Middle East, in Bahrain, in Qatar,” he goes on. “I see no threat whatsoever to the fact that Russia has some additional foundation in Syria where we don’t want a base, where we’re not looking for some kind of a long-term presence.”
Finally Dickerson asks about how the US presidential elections are being received by the world leaders whom Kerry meets abroad.
“They ask about what is happening in America. They cannot believe it,” Kerry says. “They’re shocked. They don’t know what is taking place.”
“It upsets people’s equilibrium about our steadiness,” he concludes, a little sadly. “It’s clear to me that what is happening is an embarrassment to our country.”
Secretary of State John Kerry is on CBS’s Face the Nation, where he tries to reassure Americans that despite an extraordinary travel warning from the State Department for Europe, they should remain brave in the face of terrorism.
Kerry. Photograph: Rex
“We have to be vigilant,” Kerry says. “I would not tell any friend of mine or member of my family, ‘Don’t travel to Europe.’ But I would say, ‘be aware.”
“It’s really a matter of common sense, but there are guidelines and the State Department is ready to help anyone understand exactly what that means,” he said. “It means avoid a crowded place where you have no control over who may be there, have a sense of vigilance to watch who’s around you.
“If you see a guy walking into an airport with a black glove in one hand and nothing on the other and there are two of them the same way and they are pushing a big suitcase, maybe that tells you something.”
Host John Dickerson asks him about Barack Obama’s decision to continue with diplomacy in the aftermath of the Belgium attacks, and during his historic trip to Cuba. Obama was criticized for attending a baseball game with Raúl Castro the afternoon of the attacks.
Kerry is emphatic: “The president of the United States’ schedule is not set by terrorists.”
“Life doesn’t stop because one terrible incident takes place in one place,” he says. “The president of the United States has major diplomatic responsibilities.”
He also defends the US response in general. “He talked to the prime minister of Belgium from Cuba. I talked to the foreign minister from Cuba.” An FBI team is also working with investigators in Belgium, he adds.
Ohio Governor John Kasich is apperaing n NBC’s Meet the Press, where host Chuck Todd asks him about the proposals from his rivals to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods and temporarily bar the US from Muslims.
Todd: Why do you think Republican voters are responding to those ideas from Trump and Cruz?
Kasich: “I think when they see things, it makes them very concerned and very nervous. And so it’s sort of a knee-jerk, I think.”
He says we need “to have intimate communication and coordination with our friends in the Muslim community. There is no question about it. I mean, in order to find out about the radicalized friends and neighbors, or people that you may not even know at all, who you observe doing things.”
Kasich. Photograph: AFP/Getty
He wants to reform Nato, too.
Kasich: “I think it needs to involve itself in policing and in intelligence gathering. Because when we look at Europe right now, we find there’s so many holes, and an inability of their, their ability to get their act together.”
He says Britain’s existential crisis over whether to leave the EU is a reflection of Europe’s broader drift, and an example of why Nato needs an overhaul.
“Look, either we hang together, or we hang separately, is really what the message from a good leader is,” Kasich says. “And frankly, it’s got to include our friends in the Arab Muslim community. We cannot beat this unless we do this, strengthen ourselves militarily, destroy Isis.”
Todd: what about security in the US? Are our subways safe enough?
Kasich: “I don’t want to overreact to this. You have to have your counter-intelligence community, which is made up of the FBI, sometimes Homeland Security, state and local law enforcement. And they need to do the assessments.”
Todd: so is everything peachy? What about an attack like Brussels?
“The governor takes the bait to criticize Barack Obama. “I wouldn’t have gone to a baseball game in Cuba,” Kasich says. “I would have come home. I would have called all the world leaders.
“I would have gathered my intelligence and military experts. And I would have sent them to Europe to sit down, to assess our vulnerabilities. I mean, I’m not overreacting here. But you also can’t underreact.
“When somebody says we ought to ban all Muslims from coming in, that is a statement that – it’s not based in reality. I don’t even know how you would do it. And secondly, we can’t be out there aggravating the very people whose cooperation we need.”
Bernie Sanders appears next on the ABC show, for a brief Q&A.
“We’ve cut Secretary Clinton’s lead by a third,” the senator says. “Clearly we have the momentum. And I think at the end of the day we’re going to have more pledged delegates.”
Sanders. Photograph: Rex
“And then I think the superdelegates are going to have to make a very difficult decision.”
He says they’ll have to decide whether to vote with their state or not, and about whether he or Hillary Clinton has a better chance to beat Donald Trump in the general election.
“We think we have a real shot in New York,” he says, in addition to Wisconsin and California.
“I will not deny for one second that we still remain the underdogs, but we have come a long, long way.”
He says there are clear differences between him and Clinton: her backing from Wall Street sources and large corporations, her support for (regulated) fracking, her vote for the Iraq war and inclination toward military intervention, etc.
Karl asks whether Sanders would consider Clinton as a running-mate. The senator says he’s not thinking about that kind of thing right now.
And finally Karl asks about the war against Isis in Syria and Iraq.
“Of course I am opposed to the United States getting involved in perpetual warfare,” Sanders says, adding that he supports President Obama’s policies. Muslim forces have to do most of the work, he says.
“The United States should have special forces there, we should have air support and air attacks, and we should be training the troops.”
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