Half of Voters Would Be ‘Embarrassed’ by Trump as President

The current Republican frontrunner, whose 28 percent support in this poll tops his competition for the GOP nomination, would make 23 percent of voters “proud”, the poll found. Other recent national polls have found Trump’s lead for the GOP nomination at more than 20 percentage points. Later, after the debate, at a rally, he called Rump a “jerk”, which, on Sunday, Dickerson pointed out was itself an insult.

For almost a month now, Jeb Bush has established himself as the leading Donald Trump attacker, convinced that relentlessly criticizing the Republican front-runner’s temperament and rhetoric will draw fresh support.

But the former Florida governor seemed determined to keep his focus on Mr Trump, who was busy last Friday posting Twitter messages aimed at Mr Bush. “Who is he kidding?”

The comments came after the Bush campaign began running a series of digital ads that include Bush’s criticism of Trump during the last Republican debate, in which Bush branded Trump the “chaos candidate” and slammed his policy proposals as lacking seriousness. “He’s playing us, America, the way that Trump plays the press”.

“Oh yeah, you’re a tough guy”. “Let’s see; I’m at 42 [per cent] and you’re at three”. This country is far better than that.

Earlier in the debate, Trump remarked, “With Jeb’s attitude, we will never be great again, that I can tell you”. Bush said, referencing Trump’s garbled answer on modernizing the nuclear triad.

“Weak and low energy @JebBush, whose campaign is a disaster, is now doing ads against me”, Trump tweeted Tuesday. “I think we’ve got to write rules that if someone behaves this way you disqualify yourself”. Jeb Bush is now polling in the single digits in all of the major polls compiled by Real Clear Politics.

After the holidays, Bush will spend most of his time campaigning in New Hampshire, the state considered most critical to his chances, along with two campaign stops in Iowa in January, according to a campaign aide.

Meanwhile, CBS said Trump continues to hold big leads in the other early voting states of New Hampshire and SC.

Major news outlets have reported that donors to the Bush campaign have been anxious for weeks that their candidate will be out of the race after the first spate of primary contests. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson saw the sharpest drop among the top-tier Republicans, falling to 6 percent. At one point, Bush referred to a Trump-focused rant as “therapy”.