Republican
U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the media after
receiving former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson's
endorsement at a campaign event in Palm Beach, Florida March 11, 2016.
REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
PARIS
(Reuters) - European Parliament President Martin Schulz said on
Saturday that neither Europe nor the United States was prepared for a
Donald Trump presidency as the likely Republican candidate had no
international experience and was a populist.
"Trump
belongs to these people that we also have here in Europe, who have a
scapegoat for all issues but never have a concrete solution," Schulz
told French television i-Tele.
"Honestly,
I prefer another candidate," he said, referring to Democratic
front-runner Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State.
Schulz,
a German Social Democrat, is president -- or speaker -- of the European
Union's directly elected parliament, whose 751 members have the power
to approve, amend or reject legislation affecting the whole 28-country
bloc.
Billionaire
Trump has a significant lead in primary contests for the Republican
nomination for November's election to the White House. He has drawn
fervent support as well as harsh criticism for his calls to build a wall
along the U.S.-Mexico border and to impose a temporary ban on Muslims
entering the United States.
A
Trump rally scheduled for Friday night in Chicago was cancelled after
the event turned into a chaotic scene, with thousands of attendees split
into opposing camps of his supporters and protesters inflamed by his
candidacy.
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Catherine Evans)
GOP rivals questioning whether they'd back Trump as nominee
View PhotoSupporters
wait for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Wright
Brothers Aero Hangar for a campaign rally Saturday, March 12, 2016, in …
View PhotoLindsay
Otters of Waverly, Ohio, waits in line with her 3-month-old daughter
Emma outside of the Wright Brothers Aero Hangar for a rally by
Republican …
PALM
BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and
John Kasich suggested Saturday they may not support Donald Trump if he
becomes the GOP nominee, as violence at the front-runner's rallies
deepened the party's chaotic chasm.
Rubio told supporters that
while he was currently sticking with his pledge to back the nominee if
he wasn't the party's choice, "it's getting harder every day."
Kasich said the "toxic environment" Trump is creating "makes it extremely difficult" to support him.
Rubio
and Kasich have previously committed to backing Trump should he win the
Republican nomination, despite reservations about his qualifications.
Their shift came hours after clashes between Trump supporters and
protesters Friday night in Chicago.
"To see Americans slugging
themselves at a political rally deeply disturbed me," Ohio Gov. Kasich,
said while campaigning in Cincinnati. "We're better than that."
Rubio,
speaking in Largo, Florida, said: "Last night in Chicago we saw images
that made America look like a third world country." Trying for a win
Tuesday in home-state Florida to keep his GOP campaign alive, Rubio said
that while some of the blame of lies with the protesters, much of the
divisiveness is in Trump's hands.
"This is what a culture and a
society does when everyone does whatever they want," he said. "This is
what happens when political candidates talk like people on Twitter."
In
Dayton, hundreds of people staked out spots for Trump's rally at a
hangar, and long lines passed passing through security screenings.
Claudia Young and her husband, Michael, came from Muncie, Indiana, arriving more than three hours before the late-morning event.
Her
view on what happened in Chicago? "We're supposed to have freedom of
speech in this country, but the people who came to see Trump couldn't
listen to what they wanted to hear."
There were about a dozen
young protesters on a corner about half a mile away from the hangar.
Messages on their signs included "Make love, not walls," and "Jews and
Muslims United."
On Friday night in Chicago, raucous cheers broke
out among a large portion of the crowd — and the spark was Trump's
decision to cancel.
Some isolated confrontations took place
afterward. Police reported arresting five people. Many anti-Trump
attendees had rushed onto the floor of the University of Illinois at
Chicago Pavilion, jumping up and down with their arms up in the air.
"Trump
represents everything America is not and everything Chicago is not,"
said Kamran Siddiqui, 20, a student at the school who was among those
celebrating. "We came in here and we wanted to shut this down. Because
this is a great city and we don't want to let that person in here."
Some supporters of the Republican front-runner started chanting "We want Trump! We want Trump!" in response to the celebrations.
"It's
a shame," said Trump supporter Bill Tail, 43, of the Chicago suburb of
Oaklawn. "They scream about tolerance, but are being intolerant
themselves. That doesn't make sense."
As Trump attempts to unify a
fractured Republican Party ahead of Tuesday's slate of winner-take-all
primary elections, the confrontations between his legion of loyal
supporters and protesters who accuse him of stoking racial hatred have
become increasingly contentious, underscoring concerns about the
divisive nature of his candidacy.
A North Carolina man was
arrested after video footage showed him punching an African-American
protester being led out of a Trump rally in that state on Wednesday. At
that event, Trump recalled a past protester as "a real bad dude."
"He
was a rough guy, and he was punching. And we had some people — some
rough guys like we have right in here — and they started punching back,"
Trump said. "It was a beautiful thing."
At Trump's rally earlier
Friday in St. Louis, he was repeatedly interrupted by protesters. Police
there charged nearly three dozen people with general peace disturbance
and one person with assault.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, second in
delegates to Trump in the GOP race, said late Friday that the
billionaire has created "an environment that encourages this sort of
nasty discourse."
"When the candidate urges supporters to engage
in physical violence, to punch people in the face, the predictable
consequence of that is that is escalates," Cruz said. "Today is unlikely
to be the last such incidence."
In a telephone interview after
postponing his event in Chicago, Trump said he didn't "want to see
people hurt or worse" at the rally, telling MSNBC, "I think we did the
right thing."
But Chicago
police said they had sufficient manpower on scene to handle the
situation and did not recommended Trump cancel the rally. That decision
was made "independently" by the campaign, said police spokesman Anthony
Guglielmi.
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