I could ‘shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters’

During a campaign rally held at Iowa’s Dordt College on Saturday, Trump said, “I have the most loyal people, did you ever see that?”

Trump was drawing a distinction between his supportive based of supporters and rival Ted Cruz’s backers, who he described as “soft”.

With Iowa to kick off the Republican search for a presidential candidate with its February 1 caucuses, Trump and his aides reacted with scorn to the editorial in National Review, which was signed by 22 prominent conservatives.

Cruz, who has 26% of the Republican vote share as against Trump’s 40%, simply said: “Listen, I will let Donald speak for himself”.

One supporter, who spoke to ABC News, said he found Trump’s point clear – but mentioned Trump could have articulated it differently.

Having already been endorsed by four senators, Rubio’s campaign says it’s preparing to unveil a series of endorsements from high-profile elected officials in the coming weeks, part of an effort to push more mainstream Republicans to coalesce behind his candidacy.

One of her latest ads in Iowa shows images of Trump at one of his rallies and a gun-toting Cruz, vowing to prevent Republicans from “ripping all of our progress away”.

Trump demonstrated the extent to which some in the Republican establishment have begun to accept a potential Trump nomination when Grassley introduced him at a later event in Pella.

The real estate magnate, who previously told CNN that he’s going to win the African-American vote, announced the endorsement Friday on Twitter.

Trump has also increased his criticism of Cruz in recent days as the Texas senator gains in the polls. The gap widens substantially between the two men in the New Hampshire and SC primaries with Trump holding more of a commanding lead in those states.

Beck asked. “Last names don’t mean anything, even if you splash it on the back of a plane or your husband was president or your brother and dad were president”, he said, referring to Democrat Hillary Clinton and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

Trump then says immigrants are “pouring in” and “doing tremendous damage if you look at the crime, if you look at the economy”. “But I don’t know about other campaigns”.

It was hardly the first gaffe in the Trump presidential campaign.

This was a reference to Trump’s attempted use of eminent domain in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the 1990s, when the real-estate mogul was investing in the city’s casino empire.