Trump calls his manager 'spirited'

Campaign chief in rally incident

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at his primary election night event at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 15, 2016. At right is his son Eric Trump and at left is campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at his primary election night event at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 15, 2016. At right is his son Eric Trump and at left is campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his team's insistence that campaign manager Corey Lewandowski behaved appropriately while forcefully engaging with a protester at a rally in Tucson on Saturday afternoon, commenting that local police and security appeared "a little lax" at the event.

Video footage shows Lewandowski and a man -- who appears to be a plainclothes member of Trump's security team -- heatedly speaking to a protester. In a few seconds, the young man is suddenly pulled back by the collar. The protester then begins shoving the man to Lewandowski's left.

The incident immediately sparked speculation on social media about whether Lewandowski was the one who yanked the protester and provoked the shoving, which the campaign denied in a statement on Saturday evening.

But even with no clear consensus on whether Lewandowski was responsible for the physical altercation, it is clear that he was involved in handling the protester. The incident puts him again at the center of a debate over what constitutes appropriate security measures, raising questions about the propriety of a campaign manager being involved in handling protesters, particularly in the volatile environment that characterizes Trump rallies across the country.

Trump on Sunday praised Lewandowski's efforts.

"I will give him credit, spirited," the GOP presidential front-runner said on ABC's This Week on Sunday morning when asked about Lewandowski being in the crowd. "I give him credit for having spirit. He wanted them to take down those horrible profanity-laced signs."

Lewandowski has been under heavy scrutiny since being accused of manhandling a Breitbart reporter earlier this month. The Trump campaign has strongly denied those allegations as well.

"Additional security measures will be put in place moving forward," Lewandowski said in a statement to The Washington Post on Saturday when asked about his participation in security efforts at future events.

Trump indicated Sunday that Lewandowski's participation in managing the protesters stemmed from uncertainty about the way police were handling the situation.

"Security at the arena, the police were a little bit lax. And ... they had signs up in that area that were horrendous, that I cannot say what they said on the sign. But the ultimate word -- and it was all over the camera -- and, frankly, the television cameras can't take it, and they can't do anything about it," Trump said.

Trump himself has faced harsh criticism from detractors, who say he has set a tone that encourages violence at his campaign rallies. He denies doing so, but violence has become a regular feature of Trump campaign events, culminating in a tense situation in Chicago involving brawls after one such event was canceled because of security concerns.

Trump has dismissed the violence at his events and has denied responsibility. He also has frequently winked at the incidents, saying at one event last month that he wanted to "punch a protester in the face" and telling supporters at other times that he would pay their legal bills if they got involved in physical altercations with demonstrators.

At the Tucson rally on Saturday, a man sucker-punched and stomped on a protester being escorted out by police. The protester's friend, who was also being escorted out, was wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. Trump said Sunday that the costume enraged the assailant, who was black.

"Frankly, that was a, you know, it was a tough thing to watch. And I watched it," Trump said. "But why would a protester walk into a room with a Ku Klux Klan outfit on?"

The incident carried echoes of an attack in Fayetteville, N.C., earlier this month in which a man slipped past security and sucker-punched a protester as he was being led out of the venue.

"These are professional agitators, and I think that somebody should say that when a road is blocked going into the event so that people have to wait sometimes hours to get in, I think that's very fair, and there should be blame there, too," Trump added later in the interview, referring to protests along the main road that led to his outdoor Phoenix rally.

"When signs are put up, lifted up with tremendous profanity on them, I mean the worst profanity," he continued, "and you have television cameras all over the place and people see these signs, I think maybe those people have some blame and should suffer some blame, also."

Tuesday primaries

The presidential campaign tumbled on toward more primaries to be held Tuesday, with Republican and Democratic candidates making stops in states such as Arizona and discussing strategy on Sunday talk shows.

Trump's campaign in Arizona is centered on his hard line against illegal immigration, a stand that supporters embraced in a series of tense rallies ahead of Tuesday's presidential primary in the border state.

"Illegal immigration is gonna stop," Trump said Saturday night in Tucson. "It's dangerous," he said. "Terrible."

Both in Phoenix and Tucson, Trump was introduced by former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who pushed tough immigration laws in office, and Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff who made his name by chasing down people who are in the country illegally. The county includes Phoenix and nearly two-thirds of Arizona's population.

Arizona Democrats also vote Tuesday, and contender Bernie Sanders campaigned Saturday at the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales.

Standing in front of a tall, steel fence that divides the two countries, the Vermont senator promised to keep immigrant families together by taking more steps than President Barack Obama has to protect many from deportation. Sanders called Arpaio a bully, and he bemoaned the "divisive, bigoted and xenophobic comments of people like Donald Trump."

His opponent, front-runner Hillary Clinton, was scheduled to hold rallies in Arizona today.

Clinton's campaign, meanwhile, released its Federal Election Commission report Sunday, revealing that it raised more than $30.1 million in February to be used toward defeating Sanders in the Democratic primary and began March with $30.8 million on hand.

Her campaign raised just $715,408 in February to be used toward the general election. She also raised $4.4 million last month for the Democratic National Committee to use on state parties and down ballot races throughout the country.

On Sunday, Sanders shifted topics to superdelegates, arguing that it would make "common sense" for Democratic superdelegates to back him if he was the overwhelming favorite among voters in their states.

The vast majority of superdelegates, consisting of elected officials and party leaders who can vote any way they choose at the Democratic National Convention, has promised to support Clinton. Out of 712 superdelegates, Clinton reportedly leads Sanders 467-26. But Sanders argued on CBS' Face the Nation that those officials should follow the lead of the voters.

"Well, to say to a superdelegate, 'Bernie Sanders won your state by 20 or 30 points. You know, you might want to listen to your state.' You know, I think that is common sense and I think superdelegates should do that," Sanders said.

Sanders has beaten Clinton by wide margins in five states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Minnesota and Kansas. A candidate needs 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. Clinton has 1,614 pledged delegates and superdelegates to Sanders' 856.

Although Clinton swept the five states that held primaries last week, Sanders reiterated his belief that he will do better in upcoming states in the West. In addition to Arizona, Democratic contests will be held in Idaho and Utah on Tuesday.

"I think as we head to the West Coast, which is probably the most progressive part of America, the ideas that we're fighting for -- dealing with the grotesque level of income inequality, a national health-care system through Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour -- I think the people in those states really are not going to be voting for establishment politics and establishment economics," Sanders said. "They want real change."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, in a prerecorded interview that was broadcast Sunday, also dismissed suggestions that he had no path to winning the Republican nomination.

The Republican contender needs 1,237 delegates to win the nomination. Trump leads with 678 delegates, followed by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas with 423. Kasich has 143 delegates, including the 66 he won last week in his home state. On Tuesday, Republican contests will be held in Arizona and Utah.

Despite Trump's lead, he is not expected to have enough delegates to clinch the nomination before Republicans hold their national convention in Cleveland in July. John Dickerson, host of Face the Nation, asked Kasich how he could possibly make up his delegate deficit.

"Well, first of all, nobody's going to have the delegates they need going to the convention. Everyone will fall short," Kasich said. "We will go into Cleveland with momentum and then the delegates are going to consider two things: number one, who can win in the fall, and I'm the only one that can. And number two, a really crazy consideration, like who could actually be president of the United States."

Kasich dismissed pressure to drop out of the race to help Cruz, who has more delegates.

"He needs 80 percent of the votes to get it. That's not going to happen," Kasich said. He snapped at Dickerson when he asked Kasich whether anyone has urged him to drop out.

"Nobody is calling me directly and asking me to drop out," Kasich said.

"Have they called your campaign?" Dickerson asked.

"Wait a minute, John, why don't they drop out? I'm the one that can win in the fall," Kasich said.

In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Kasich seemed annoyed when host Chuck Todd asked him whether he would consider being the eventual Republican nominee's running mate.

"Under no circumstances. Are you kidding me?" the governor said. "I'm running for president."

Information for this article was contributed by Jose A. DelReal and Vanessa Williams of The Washington Post; by Ryan Vanvelzer, Jacques Billeaud, Astrid Galvan, Nicholas Riccardi and Vivian Salama of The Associated Press; and by Amy Chozick of The New York Times.

A Section on 03/21/2016

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