US Election 2016: Donald Trump ramps up attack on Marco Rubio as vote in Florida senator's home state looms

Billionaire's new television advertising campaign brands Mr Rubio a corrupt and 'no-action politician'

Donald Trump at the WGC Cadillac Championship in Doral, Florida (Getty)

Donald Trump has launched an all-out attack on Senator Marco Rubio in an attempt to prevent the Florida native from winning his home state next week – and thereby drive him out of the race for the Republican nomination.

The property tycoon turned his attention from contests being held in Michigan and Mississippi – where Mr Trump was believed to have the edge over his opponents – to Florida, with a new television ad campaign calling Mr Rubio a corrupt and “no-action politician”.

Mr Trump hopes to sustain momentum in the race for the Republican nomination through to next Tuesday, when Florida and Ohio hold the first winner-take-all primaries of this election cycle. They are also key because each is home to one of his rivals – with Governor John Kasich, currently well behind in fourth place, needing to win in his own state Ohio.

Mr Rubio’s campaign would surely crumble to nothing if he fails on his own turf to repel the New York billionaire. He has faced weeks of discouraging numbers but his hopes were boosted by a new Monmouth University poll that showed him just eight points behind Mr Trump across the state, far closer than before. He is performing particularly strongly in the Miami area.

But he has so far failed to win backing from former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Once allies, the men fell out when they found themselves competing on the campaign trail. Mr Bush abandoned his own candidacy two weeks ago.

The 60-second anti-Rubio advert from the Trump camp resurrects allegations that Mr Rubio abused a Republican Party credit card for personal expenses before he was a US Senator, an error for which Mr Rubio says he long ago made amends. “Another corrupt, all-talk, no-action politician,” its narrator growls.

In a statement, Mr Trump called the Senator a “lightweight” and “dishonest”.

“In my opinion, he is a total crook and I am doing the people of Florida a great favour by further exposing him,” Mr Trump added. The exchange over the Sunshine State, where Mr Rubio also faced negative advertising by supporters of Senator Ted Cruz, came as all the campaigns awaited results from voting in Michigan and Mississippi.

A double victory for Mr Trump next week in Florida and Ohio would put him on a fairly easy path to accumulating the simple majority of delegates he would need to lock up the Republican nomination. If he falters, however, a plausible alternative scenario would arise: that Mr Trump would arrive at the Party convention in July with only a plurality, not a majority, of delegates, at which point the anti-Trump movement would doubtless pounce and attempt to muster support for somebody else.


 Senator Marco Rubio speaks with patrons at the Melao Bakery in Kissimmee, Florida (AP)
 (Getty Images)

The Anyone-but-Trump forces are taking encouragement from a new Washington Post poll that showed a narrowing of Mr Trump’s lead among Republicans nationally. Mr Trump maintained the support of 34 per cent of Republicans against 25 per cent who back Mr Cruz. But when the same poll was last taken, he was leading Senator Cruz by 37 per cent to 21 per cent.

This comes after Mr Trump has battled through a series of new controversies and faced a more co-ordinated series of attacks against him than ever before. That effort has been led by Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee, who, after assailing Mr Trump in a biting speech last week, has been making telephone recordings for both the Kasich and Rubio campaigns urging households to reject the billionaire.

Mr Trump was put on defensive for leading a rally in Florida with a hand gesture that to some looked like a fascist salute, which he insisted was merely him feigning being sworn in. Earlier this week Mexico’s President, Enrique Peña Nieto berated him for making “these strident expressions that seek to propose very simple solutions” and added, “That’s the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived.”

Mr Trump said on ABC News that echoes of European fascism had never occurred to him. “I didn’t know it was a problem,” he said. “Sometimes we’ll do it for fun... Sometimes they’ll scream at me, ‘Do the swear-in, do the swear-in’.” He meanwhile evinced horror at Mr Peña Nieto’s remarks. “It’s a terrible comparison, I’m not happy about that certainly. I don’t want that comparison. But we have to be strong and we have to be vigilant.”

Immigration: The Latino vote

Donald Trump claims to have attracted a large number of new voters to his campaign, but his rise may also have inspired a rush of another sort. Record numbers of immigrants are reportedly applying for citizenship, in the hope of voting against the billionaire Republican frontrunner in November.

Mr Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric has frustrated many Latinos since his campaign launch last June, when he first claimed Mexico sent “rapists and drug traffickers” across the border into the US.

The New York Times found that applications for naturalisation from permanent US residents had gone up by more than 10 per cent from 2014 to 2015, increasing towards the end of last year. In 2016, immigration activists told the newspaper, the number of applications could be near one million: around 200,000 more than average.