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Sanders and Cruz make final Iowa dash to beat Clinton and Trump – campaign live Sanders and Cruz make final Iowa dash to beat Clinton and Trump – campaign live
(35 minutes later)
2.38pm GMT
14:38
Martin Pengelly
Here’s some more video of the Vampire Weekend-Bernie Sanders This Land Is Your Land Woody Guthrie Iowa singalong, as shot live in concert by the Guardian’s own David Taylor, who in order to cover the Iowa caucuses has intrepidly left the New York island to walk that ribbon of highway, seeing above him that endless skyway, and the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling. Or, a lot of snow.
For further reading on and around the subject:
2.38pm GMT
14:38
And now Tapper has apparated onto Marco Rubio’s campaign bus, where the Florida senator has donned a monogrammed UnderArmor fleece.
The CNN host immediately asks about Cruz’s accusations of flip-flopping on immigration. Rubio says Cruz lying. “The lie that his whole campaign is built on is that he’s the only conservative and everyone else is a sellout.”
“He helped design George W Bush’s immigration policy,” Rubio says. “At the end of this election he’s just making things up … he’s obviously spooked by something so we expect the kitchen sink here in the next 48 hours.”
He adds that as president he would undo Obama’s executive actions.
2.34pm GMT
14:34
Cruz continues to bash Rubio. “If you’re asking who can I trust to do what he said, the fact that on his signature issue Marco broke his trust.”
“That would be like my coming to Washington and suddenly discovering I was for Obamacare.” He segues into stump speech mode.
If we nominate a candidate who supports amnesty, the same position … the same millions of Reagan democrats, of steel workers and autoworkers and truck drivers … we’ve got to be fighting for the working men and omen of this country … we’ve got to be on behalf of the men
But Rubio, Cruz says “led the fight for amnesty and Ted Cruz led the fight against it .”
He sideswipes Trump. “During that whole battle Donald Trump was nowhere to be found.”
Cruz ends by saying that Trump “wasn’t willing to submit to the scrutiny, and I think that’s a mistake.”
“He can’t defend his substantive record,” Cruz says, saying Trump is in line with Bernie Sanders on healthcare.
His position on cronyism and corporate welfare is the same as Barack Obama … He supported Obama’s stimulus he [thought] it should’ve been larger … I get that it is unpleasant to have your record subject to scrutiny … but this is a job interview.
2.31pm GMT
14:31
But Trump’s ideas are fair game, if not his personality, according to Cruz.
He and I have very, very different views on questions like life and marriage and religious liberty … healthcare and amnesty … I think the people of Iowa deserve more and I think the American people deserve more than just a battle of petty insults.
He moves on to criticize Florida senator Marco Rubio, who’s risen in the polls against Cruz in the last few weeks. Cruz says Rubio failed voters on immigration.
“The central question of this primary is trust … they don’t do what they say. If you look at when Marco and I both ran … I promised the men and women of Texas I would lead the fight against amnesty. … But when we got to Washington he and I made very, very diferent decision.
Cruz lumps Rubio together with Democrats – Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid and Barack Obama – and blames the Florida senator for supporting “tens of thousands of Syrian refugees without mandating any background checks” and granting “amnesty to 12 million people illegally”.
The senator, alas, is making some of this up whole cloth. The US has accepted only about 2,500 Syrian refugees, and Obama’s executive actions do not grant “amnesty”; his immigration protect some undocumented people from deportation but millions are unshielded, and his latter actions are going before the supreme court. The Obama administration also continues to target families for deportation, especially those who have fled from Central America.
2.22pm GMT
14:22
Next up for CNN is Texas senator Ted Cruz, who’s on a bus with Tapper and second to Donald Trump in the Republican primary.
Cruz downplays his fall in the polls to Trump.
We are competing hard … we’re competing hard in the ground in New Hampshire, in South Carolina and Nevada … all across Super Tuesday.
We don’t view any state as a must-win. I think we’re positioned to do very well in Iowa.
Tapper asks about Trump himself and the acrimony between the candidates. (Trump called Cruz “an anchor baby in Canada” last week.)
“There’s a phase to every campaign,” Cruz says. “A month ago Donald was telling everyone how much he liked me.”
He says Trump has good insults though. “I’ll give him credit that when he insults someone it’s always memorable and colorful.”
But he won’t fire back, apparently. “No matter what he says I like Donald. I will continue to praise him as bold and fresh.”
The interview was recorded before this bubbled up on Saturday…
Related: Cruz campaign draws condemnation for strategy of shaming Iowans to caucus
Updated
at 2.28pm GMT
2.17pm GMT
14:17
Martin Pengelly
CBS taped their interview with Donald Trump on Friday, 24 hours or so before the Des Moines Register poll which has defined this final weekend before the caucuses, partly by putting The Donald five points ahead of the man who we shall refer to here as The Cruzer.
The interview is broadcasting later this morning but there are, in the way of such things, excerpts bouncing around the ether.
Here’s one:
…I do have, actually, much more humility than a lot of people would think.
Presumably that’s also much more humility than anyone else ever in the history of humility. Huge humility, probably. Yoooge.
In the CBS interview, Trump also says “none of the other guys will win”.
Of course he does.
2.16pm GMT
14:16
Finally, Tapper asks Sanders about foreign policy and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server – and 22 emails deemed too classified for public release by an investigation into that server.
On the first question, Sanders harks back to his vote against the invasion of Iraq, calling it “the most important foreign policy issue in our lifetime or at least in the last 20 to 30 years”. He says he’s confident he can “prevent our young men and women in the military from getting involved in perpetual warfare”. He can build a coalition to resolve crises in the Middle East, he says.
As for the emails, “there is a legal process taking place. I do not want to poltiicize that issue. It is not my style.
“What I am focusing on, Jake, are the issues impacting the middle class of this country.”
Updated
at 2.24pm GMT
2.13pm GMT
14:13
Sanders adds that he’s all for new debates with Clinton, and would gladly go to the struggling town of Flint, Michigan. “Let’s do it before their primaries. I’ve always wanted more debates.”
“God knows what’s going on in Flint, Michigan,” he says of the city, where lead-tainted water has afflicted citizens for nearly two years. Sanders has called for Rick Snyder, the Republican governor of Michigan, to resign.
Tapper asks why Sanders now has secret service protection after months of campaigning without it. The senator says security is “something we should not talk about”.
Related: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders tentatively agree to four more debates
So Tapper asks about a scathing Washington Post editorial instead.
“I am not greatly beloved by the economic establishment,” Sanders says, “or by the major media of this country”
I am being attacked because I’m too ambitious, because I say among other things maybe we should have a tax on Wall Street speculation … and maybe we should use that money to make colleges and university tuition free … maybe we should use that revenue to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.
The Washington Post is the establishment, doesn’t surprise me they don’t like my ideas.
Updated
at 2.23pm GMT
2.10pm GMT
14:10
Tapper asks Sanders about ads produced by the Clinton campaign and its allies.
“I can’t keep up with what the Clinton campaign does,” Sanders says.
He mentions accusations “for example that I am attacking Planned Parenthood”, which he says is crazy. He says he’s always supported the reproductive rights group: “One of the great organizations in America. So I don’t know what the Clinton campaign is doing, all I know is we are bringing out large numbers of people, we are creating excitement.”
Sanders says Americans “are tired of seeing all this new income and wealth … want us to address climate change, want us to address a broken criminal justice system. So I’m feeling good, Jake.
“If people come out to vote I think you are looking at one of the biggest political upsets in modern political history.”
Updated
at 2.21pm GMT
2.06pm GMT
14:06
Bernie Sanders is on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, who asks how he expects to overcome Hillary Clinton’s narrow lead in the polls.
We were 50 or 60 points behind Secretary Clinton, and the reason for that is we have 15,000 volunteers … They’re going to be urging people to come out in very large numbers to vote … who previously were not involved in politics.
He says Iowa could be “the first state in the country to lead us in a very, very different direction”.
Updated
at 2.21pm GMT
1.53pm GMT1.53pm GMT
13:5313:53
Iowa is about to choose the first two winners of the 2016 election – and we’re covering the countdown live, with Guardian reporters following the campaigns on the trail as candidates make their last, sometimes desperate pitches to the people who could help elect one of them to the White House.Iowa is about to choose the first two winners of the 2016 election – and we’re covering the countdown live, with Guardian reporters following the campaigns on the trail as candidates make their last, sometimes desperate pitches to the people who could help elect one of them to the White House.
We’ll watch the talk shows so you don’t have to, and bring all the news from the final mad dash to win Iowa.We’ll watch the talk shows so you don’t have to, and bring all the news from the final mad dash to win Iowa.