Donald Trump on Friday won New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s endorsement, and at the same time succeeded in taking back the news cycle from Marco Rubio, after Rubio successfully jabbed at Trump during Thursday’s debate and continued mocking Trump Friday morning.
Clearly satisifed with his own performance at the debate, Rubio held a rally in Texas on Friday where he continued to taunt Trump as he did at the debate, even suggesting that Trump had wet his pants during the confrontational event.
Footage from the rally was featured across CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. But soon after, Trump announced on his Twitter page that he would be holding a press conference with a major announcement.
And when he did make that announcement, cable news channels carried the event in full, and surprised many by showing Christie on stage endorsing Trump and answering questions about why.
The event, at least for about half an hour, took back the news cycle for Trump and threw some water on Rubio’s new fire. It also got people speculating about whether Christie might be Trump’s running mate, and seemed to immediately shut down talk of Rubio’s new momentum.
After the endorsement, the front pages of some news sites turned from Rubio’s debate performance to the Trump endorsement.
“Trump’s answer to Ted and Marco: Take that!” said the main headline on FoxNews.com. The dominant story at the top of CNN’s website was turned to the Christie endorsement. And many on Twitter agreed that Trump had stolen Rubio’s moment in the sun.
The master of media manipulation just stole Rubio’s media thunder from last night’s debate. The rest of the day will be all about Christie.
— Eye on Politics (@EyeOnPolitics) February 26, 2016
