bill clinton cartoon

Donald Trump blasts Bill Clinton as 'one of the great abusers of the world'

Donald Trump launched new attacks against Bill and Hillary Clinton Wednesday as the war of words between both campaigns heated up.
The GOP hopeful told about 2,000 supporters in Hilton Head Island, S.C. that he was forced to fight back against the Clinton camp after the Democratic frontrunner accused him of displaying a "penchant for sexism."
Trump blasted the former president, saying, "And [Hillary] wants to accuse me of things. And the husband's one of the great abusers of the world. Give me a break. Give me a break. Give me a break."
"She came out saying [Trump] has a ‘penchant for sexism’… now she is playing with that card,” Trump explained. "I had no choice, but I had to mention her husband's situation," a reference to Bill Clinton’s previous extramarital relationships.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that Bill Clinton's past is in play during the election.
“Hillary brought up the whole thing with [calling Trump] sexist," he said. "She’s got a major problem [that] happens to be right in her own house. We'll go after the ex-president … it’ll come out well for us”.
Trump also acknowledged that his own personal "indiscretions" — including an affair with Marla Maples, who later became his second wife — were fair game.
The Clintons and the Trumps had been on friendly terms for years. The Clintons attended Trump's wedding to his third wife, Melania, and the couples' daughters, Ivanka and Chelsea, are friends. Trump came to Bill Clinton's defense when the Monica Lewinsky scandal was unfolding, calling efforts to impeach him "nonsense."
But in recent days, the rival campaigns have become increasingly hostile.
Trump first stirred controversy during a Michigan rally on Dec. 21, when he claimed Clinton got "schlonged" in the 2008 Iowa caucuses by Barack Obama. Clinton made her "penchant for sexism" claim in response to the real estate mogul's statement, but Trump said his remark was not meant to be vulgar.
Clinton's deputy communications director Christina Reynolds said Monday that Clinton "won't be bullied" by Trump and plans to "stand up to him, as she has from the beginning of his campaign" when he insults women and other groups.

In an effort to shape Clinton's image with the electorate Wednesday, Trump called the former secretary of state "low-energy", a label he has previously reserved for former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
He went further suggesting "no women" want to vote for Clinton in 2016. This drew loud cheers from the crowd.
”She won't win," said Trump, who added that he would "love, love having a woman president " — just not Hillary Clinton, whom he described as "horrible" and hard to listen to.
"I just have to turn off the television so many times. She just gives me a headache," he said.
Clinton leads Trump 46.3 percent to 41.3 percent in the latest Real Clear Politics average of recent polls.
Trump has predicted that a general election matchup with Clinton could lead to one of the largest voter turnouts in recent history.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Push for convention to amend Constitution energized by Rubio backing

Marco Rubio is getting behind a state-based effort to amend the Constitution with term limits and other restrictions on the federal government -- energizing the movement as the Republican presidential candidates try to woo Tea Party-aligned voters. 
The Florida senator joins a handful of other GOP candidates in backing the push, an against-the-odds campaign being waged by conservative advocacy groups and state lawmakers. He went all in at a campaign stop Tuesday in Iowa, where caucus-goers will decide the first-in-the-nation nominating contest in roughly four weeks.
“My first day in office I will announce I am a supporter,” said Rubio, after months of expressing tepid support.
In doing so, he is lending his name to a grassroots movement seeking what is essentially a national convention to amend the Constitution. Various groups have various goals, but Rubio specifically supports using the process to impose a congressional balanced-budget amendment and place term limits on Supreme Court justices and members of Congress.
He vowed if elected to “put the weight of the presidency” behind the effort.
Americans frustrated with what they consider Washington morass, insularity and gridlock point out that Article V of the Constitution says Congress must call a convention when two-thirds of state legislatures file an “application.”
The minimum 34 states appear to have given some measure of support. But the effort has been delayed for years over such issues as rules for a convention and how the petitions were approved and worded to meet varying agendas.
Rubio -- in third place in most national polls behind front-runner Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz -- is not the first 2016 GOP White House contender to champion the effort.
Fellow candidates including Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson have also expressed some level of interest or support.
But the backing of a top-tier candidate like Rubio appears to have ignited some in the GOP base.
“I’ve never been more excited about our prospects for achieving real governmental reform as I am right now,” Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Convention of States Project and president of Citizens for Self-Governance, said Wednesday.
“It is gratifying when a national-level leader like Sen. Marco Rubio acknowledges that it is imperative for the citizens to act to take power away from Washington, D.C., and return it to the people.”
Kasich is arguably the GOP candidate at the forefront of the effort. And as a fiscal conservative, he wants to use the effort expressly to force Washington to pass balanced budgets.
Though Rubio appeared Tuesday on stage to endorse the idea, he had expressed concerns earlier about state delegates uniting at a convention to rewrite the Constitution, which could jeopardize closely held First and Second Amendment rights.
After the rally, he also suggested that Congress doesn't have the will to impose term limits or pass a balanced budget amendment. As for how a convention might play out, he told reporters his campaign is “looking” at the specifics.
Concerns about rewriting the Constitution are not unfounded.
The Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1787, was purportedly to revise the Articles of Confederation. But the roughly four-month-long meeting resulted in George Washington and other organizers drafting the Constitution.
Rubio also said he’s following the lead of former Oklahoma GOP Sen. Tom Coburn, who joined the effort after retiring last year from Congress.
“Marco Rubio knows that the answers to American’s lack of confidence in Washington can only be fixed through an Article V,” Coburn said in a statement. “He also knows that Washington will not fix itself.”

Brawl breaks out in GOP race, below the Trump tier

A nasty battle has broken out in the Republican presidential field, and it doesn’t involve Donald Trump.
As the calendar draws closer to the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, the second tier of GOP candidates – along with the super PACs supporting them – are unloading on each other in a blitz of ads, videos, tweets, stump speeches and interviews. The acrimony is at a level until now unseen, in a race dominated by vitriolic squabbles between Trump and whichever candidate of the moment displeases him.
Now, with Trump training his focus on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, the rest of the pack is fighting to rise above. The latest round involves Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
The super PAC backing Bush is out with a new ad blasting Rubio for missing a Senate meeting after the Paris terror attacks – and another contrasting Bush’s gubernatorial record against those of Christie and Kasich.
“Politics first, that’s the Rubio way,” the first ad says, slamming Rubio for fundraising while missing meetings and hearings on the Hill.
Rubio has long battled criticism of his attendance record in the Senate. In 2015, he has missed about 35 percent of roll call votes, according to GovTrack.us. That's more than any of the other senators running for president.
“Dude, show up to work,” Christie told a crowd in Iowa Tuesday, ribbing Rubio for missing a spending bill vote.
Rubio, speaking with Fox News, defended his missed votes on Wednesday. He said Washington is “completely broken” and “more than half the things that happen in Washington are just for show or for talk.”
As for Christie, he said, “He’s never in New Jersey. He’s gone half the time.”
On Tuesday, Rubio also fired back against the pro-Bush ad, charging that Bush is getting “increasingly negative in his attacks.”
Right to Rise USA, the pro-Jeb Bush super PAC, is spending $1.4 million on the ad buy which begins airing this week in the Hawkeye State.
While these fights are playing out in Iowa, many of these candidates are fighting even harder for New Hampshire.
Right now, Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are jockeying for the lead in Iowa, with the rest of the field far behind. But while Trump also leads in New Hampshire, five candidates – Rubio, Christie, Cruz, Kasich and Bush – are tangled up in a close race below him in that state. Candidates like Christie and Kasich especially, who have struggled to gain traction elsewhere, are banking on a breakout performance in New Hampshire to gain momentum in the race.
This could explain why Kasich’s campaign and its aligned super PAC are firing back hard at Bush.
In response to the latest ad, Kasich press secretary Rob Nichols said: “The latest ad from Jeb’s team forgot to check the box for ‘Which governor is living in the past because he has no new ideas for fixing anything?’ You only attack those you fear and who’s beating you, so this latest attack by Jeb on Gov. Kasich only reaffirms the governor’s strength in New Hampshire. It’s actually flattering.”
The Kasich campaign also put out a cheeky video casting Bush as out of touch with the times.
“Jeb loves the good ole’ days,” the video declares, before showing vintage footage of things like Sony’s Betamax and the “Macarena,” the 1994 hit by Los Del Rio.

US reportedly preparing fresh sanctions over Iran ballistic missile program

The U.S. is preparing to impose financial sanctions on Iran for the first time since this past summer's agreement on Tehran's nuclear program, according to a published report. 
The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials, reported that the sanctions would be aimed at companies and individuals in Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong for their alleged role in developing Iran's ballistic missile program.
The sanctions would forbid U.S. or foreign nationals from conducting business with the blacklisted firms, as well as freeze any assets the companies or individuals hold inside the American financial system.
The Wall Street Journal reports that part of the justification for the sanctions is ongoing ties between Iran and North Korea, including the alleged purchase of components from a North Korean firm and the dispatching of Iranian technicians to North Korea since 2013 to develop a rocket booster.
According to the Journal, if the Treasury Department goes through with the sanctions, it would do so in the face of defiance from Iran, which claims that any new sanctions would be viewed by the country's supreme leader as a violation of the nuclear deal. For its part, the Treasury says it retains the right to punish Iranian entities allegedly involved in missile development, international terrorism, and human rights abuses.
A senior U.S. official told the Associated Press that Congress is being informed about deliberations over whether to impose sanctions.
The report on the planned sanctions comes one day after U.S. defense officials slammed Tehran for conducting what it called a "highly provocative" rocket test near two U.S. warships last week in the Strait of Hormuz.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, responded to Saturday's incident with renewed criticism of the nuclear agreement.
"A rush to sanctions relief threatens to embolden an increasingly aggressive Iranian regime that has no intention of normalizing relations with the West or of retreating from a malign policy intended to destabilize the Middle East," McCain said in a statement released Wednesday.
In the months since the deal was agreed to this past July, Iran has conducted missile tests criticized by the U.S., as well as aired footage on state television of an underground missile base.
Iran has claimed its ballistic missile program is for defense purposes only and doesn't violate international law.