Trump calls Cruz ‘a bit of a maniac’ following poll shakeup

Donald Trump has moved back into the lead of the 2016 Republican presidential contest, while Ted Cruz has surged into second place, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. “I was against going into Iraq”. “I was for bombing (the Islamic State’s) oil long before anyone else was talking about it. That’s good judgement”.

Both polls are the latest in several recent polls to show Cruz in the lead, and with it, the Real Clear Politics average of polls for Iowa has given Cruz his first lead there.

“He’s been so nice to me”.

“I like him”, Trump said on CNN.

Rubio on Sunday said he continues to believe that Trump is not qualified to be president because of his level of “understanding on some of these critical issues before our country”, including foreign policy and national security.

Trump’s response to the Cruz challenge was that the Texas senator lacked the temperament and judgment to be president.

Cruz has a reputation of being critical of his Republican colleagues in the Senate; in a speech this past summer, he said Republican leader Mitch McConnel was lying to the Senate.

“There’s no question as I haven’t spent a lot of time schmoozing and asking for big money and going to cocktail parties, but I’ve spent many a night in the operating room – cold, sterile place with a little child’s life on the line working very hard to preserve that”, Carson said.

“You can’t walk into the Senate and scream and call people liars and not be able to cajole and get along with people”, he said. He’ll never get anything done and that is the problem with Ted’.

‘Well, the natural follow up if that’s the question is, “who has actually stood up to Washington?”‘ “I mean, that is against our Constitution, it is against who we are as Americans”, Secretary of State John Kerry said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos”. “‘Now, I don’t know that they do that. Trump, and others, offer what appear to be easy solutions”, said Professor Jeffrey Hill, chair of the political science department at Northeastern Illinois University. I have some of the greatest assets anywhere in the world. I’m not one of these other guys that goes down. Further, he said that his repeated praise of Trump has been calculated to assure that when the former reality television star falters, he will collect “the lions share” of trump voters.

“I don’t think he has the right temperament”, Mr Trump told Fox News Sunday. “Well, you know, poll numbers go up and down”.

“We’re in medieval times”.

While Trump has readily dispatched candidates who have opposed his views with characteristic flair – branding Bush “boring” and calling Ben Carson “pathological” – his comments against Cruz have been markedly more mute.

Later Friday Cruz tried to dampen down the tension, responded on Twitter, “The Establishment’s only hope: Trump & me in a cage match”.