Donald Trump’s national poll numbers continued to ascend as he concluded an incautious week that began with him embracing “tough guy” and convicted rapist Mike Tyson and concluded with him tying Ted Cruz’s father to the JFK assassination.
According to an NBC News/Survey Monkey tracking poll of registered and leaning Republican voters, Trump now leads Ted Cruz 56 to 22 percent. The week prior, Trump led 50 to 26 percent.
Voters in Indiana began heading to polling stations Tuesday to determine the course of the Republican primary race, which may hinge on Ted Cruz’s ability to pull off an upset victory over the GOP front-runner in the Hoosier state and impede Trump’s progress to a majority of delegates before the party’s national convention.
To get the day started on Fox News, Trump linked Cruz’s father, Rafael, to Lee Harvey Oswald, days after the National Enquirer published a photo of Oswald and a man the paper identified as Rafael Cruz handing out pro-Castro leaflets in August 1963.
There is zero corroboration of the story. Cruz’s campaign called the article “another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage” — the Enquirer published a story in March claiming that Cruz had affairs with five women. Trump said of that story, “Ted Cruz’s problem with the National Enquirer is his and his alone, and while they were right about O.J. Simpson, John Edwards, and many others, I certainly hope they are not right about Lyin’ Ted Cruz.”
Again, Donald Trump is leading the Republican primary by more than 30 percentage points in the latest NBC News/Survey Monkey poll.
