Donald Trump either doesn’t see fellow Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio as a threat to him yet or he truly is concerned about the Florida senator’s perspiration problems.
For weeks, the billionaire GOP candidate has bullied former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush over his campaign troubles and family name, and ferociously attacked Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Last week, he branded Cruz the “worst liar” in the 2016 field and just today, he doubled down on his threat to challenge Canadian-born Cruz’s eligibility to be president.
Meanwhile, Rubio has dodged the brash businessman’s incessant insults and sharp criticism — except when it comes to Trump attacking his bodily functions. Since the eighth GOP debate last Saturday, Trump’s harshest line of attack against the Florida senator has been related to his perspiration.
“He was soaking wet,” Trump said of Rubio during a campaign rally Monday. He was referring to the senator’s sweat-ridden forehead during Saturday’s debate. Trump later added that he would fare better than Rubio in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin because he doesn’t sweat as much.
“Can you imagine Putin sitting there, waiting for the meeting, and this guy walks in and he’s like a wreck,” he said. “You gotta have Trump walk into that meeting, folks. We’ll do very nicely.”
Just before the New Hampshire primary, Trump claimed Rubio was “sweating like a dog” during the seventh GOP debate, marking the first time in months the real estate mogul had pursued that line of attack against his opponent.
Trump’s perspiration-related insult dates back to September, when he described Rubio as a “child” and seemed to suggest that Rubio’s painfully long sip of water during his 2013 State of the Union rebuttal was the result of his dehydration from sweating so much. “He sweats more than any young person I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve never seen a guy down water like he downs water … They bring it in buckets for this guy.”
Now, nearly six months later, Trump has demonstrated he’s unwilling to retire the bizarre attack against his opponent — perhaps because it’s his only one.
During a town hall Tuesday evening in Beaufort, S.C., Trump once again hit Rubio for sweating. “Two weeks before I saw him melt. I thought he was coming out of a swimming pool.”
Unlike Bush and Cruz, who’ve slammed Trump’s record of supporting big government policies and denounced his name-calling, Rubio has been rather reluctant to take the billionaire on. Last week, however, the first-term senator criticized his billionaire opponent for having virtually no experience in handling foreign affairs.
“Donald Trump has zero foreign policy experience. Negotiating a hotel deal in another country is not foreign policy experience,” Rubio reportedly said during a town hall in Hilton Head, S.C.
Trump and Rubio, who are polling at 36.6 and 15.6 percent in South Carolina, will each spend the remainder of the week there ahead of the state’s Feb. 20 primary. For Rubio, who finished fifth in the first-in-the-nation primary last Tuesday, a strong finish in the Palmetto State could be just enough to keep him afloat in a GOP field that is narrowing rapidly.
