Trump Says That He Could ‘Shoot Someone’ and Wouldn’t Lose Voters

Trump’s remarks about shooting someone earned him plenty of social media attention, and while Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley has said he will not be endorsing any candidate for the 2016 cycle, his appearance on the stage with Trump Saturday afternoon turned plenty of heads and sported a strong symbol for some Iowa voters.

Donald Trump boasted Saturday that support for his presidential campaign would not decline even if he shot someone in the middle of a crowded street.

In Ankeny, Cruz trotted out a high-profile celebrity endorser: conservative talk show host Glenn Beck. The Iowa senator, known as the “hog farmer from New Harford”, has never endorsed in the caucuses and always been beloved among Republicans in the Hawkeye State.

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”.

Trump told an enthusiastic audience at a Christian school, Dordt College.

Trump and Cruz, Trump’s chief obstacle to a victory in Iowa, held competing rallies across the state while in New Hampshire, other candidates battled for votes in that state’s February 9 first-in-the-nation primary for the November 8 election.

Trump on Saturday also reprised a line he used against Cruz on Twitter just a day earlier, noting that Cruz “could run for the prime minister of Canada”. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican and conservative firebrand, and Iowa social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats encouraged local Republicans to unite behind Cruz.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that Cruz may not be eligible to serve as president because he was born in Canada, raising the question of whether Cruz meets the Constitutional requirement that the president be a natural-born citizen. The same headliners were to appear at an evening rally in eastern Iowa.

He claimed one Republican candidate “for over 60 years of his life” supported so-called partial-birth abortion and a “Bernie Sanders-style socialised medicine for all”. Trump is 69 and unlikely to have had positions on abortion and health care as a child.

“My people are so smart – and you know what else they say about my people?”

“I hope he runs”, Donald Trump told reporters Saturday. “I have the most loyal people – did you ever see that?”

He added that he would keep his criticism focused on issues: “I don’t intend to go into the gutter”.

“Complaining and being frustrated alone will not be enough”, Rubio said.

Donald Trump on Saturday floated the idea of suing his presidential rival Sen.