Donald Trump isn’t sweating the competition -- but apparently other candidates were during the second GOP presidential candidates' debate.
The Republican frontrunner described today -- in vivid and memorable detail -- how his fellow White House hopefuls reacted to the temperature during last week's three-hour marathon debate.
“So, let's have these suckers stand up there for another hour in a room that was a hundred degrees,” Trump said. “That room was hot.”
Donald Trump: What He Said About the Pope Republican Presidential Debate: 9 Moments That Mattered At The Second GOP Debate 7 Ways the Second Republican Debate Changed the 2016 Presidential RaceThen he turned up the head on some of his fellow competitors. “I mean, poor Chris Christie. No, it's true, it's true -- he's a nice guy, it wasn't fair,” he said.
Then it was Marco Rubio’s turn.
“Rubio, I've never seen a young guy sweat that much. He's drinking water, water, water,” Trump said about Rubio, who famously gulped water during his State of the Union response in 2013. “I never saw anything like this with him, with the water.”
And finally, Mike Huckabee. “Huckabee -- nice guy. He was seriously hot,” Trump said. “He was soaking wet. I grabbed him around his back. I said, ‘Good job,’ and it was soaking wet. I immediately -- he was drenched.”
Trump was giving a speech to the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce in Charleston after a post-debate poll from CNN/ORC showed Trump still leading the GOP field by 9 percentage points.
“You lose a lot of weight doing this,” Trump said. “Every room I have -- they’re so full -- and the rooms aren’t meant for that many people. So it becomes hotter and hotter. It’s like a steam bath.”
“The other candidates don’t lose any weight. You know why? Because nobody goes to watch them. It’s true. They have no people," he added.
Unlike many other Trump events, not every chair was filled this afternoon -- about 300 chairs were left empty in the back of the room.
Even the Democratic side was not spared from Trump’s jabs. He called Hillary Clinton “very shrill” and accused her of starting the rumors that President Obama was not born in the United States.
“And Hillary, who’s become very shrill. You know the word, shrill? She’s become shrill,” Trump said. “In 2008 she was the original birther. She’s the one who started that whole thing. Hillary is a birther.”
And when he wasn’t taking aim at his fellow presidential candidates, Trump was sparring with Fox News, tweeting that the network “has been treating me very unfairly & I have therefore decided that I won't be doing any more Fox shows for the foreseeable future.”
Fox News responded in a statement:
“At 11:45am today, we canceled Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance on The O’Reilly Factor on Thursday, which resulted in Mr. Trump’s subsequent tweet about his ‘boycott’ of FOX News. The press predictably jumped to cover his tweet, creating yet another distraction from any real issues that Mr. Trump might be questioned about. When coverage doesn’t go his way, he engages in personal attacks on our anchors and hosts, which has grown stale and tiresome. He doesn’t seem to grasp that candidates telling journalists what to ask is not how the media works in this country.”