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LEESBURG, Va. (AP) — Republican front-runner Donald Trump drew sharp criticism from his rivals in both parties Sunday for refusing to denounce an implicit endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, raising the specter of racism as the presidential campaign hits the South.
Trump was asked on CNN's "State of the Union" whether he rejected support from the former KKK Grand Dragon and other white supremacists after Duke told his radio followers this week that a vote against Trump was equivalent to "treason to your heritage."
"Well, just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke. OK?" Trump said. "I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists."
Trump's comments came the same day he retweeted a quote from Benito Mussolini, the 20th century fascist dictator of Italy. And in a boost for his campaign in the South, he scored the endorsement of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of the most strident opponents of immigration reform on Capitol Hill.
But it was Trump's statements about Duke that sparked a wave of censures with just two days to go before 11 states hold GOP primaries involving about a quarter of the party's total nominating delegate count. Several states in the South, a region with a fraught racial history, are among those voting in the Super Tuesday contests.
Marco Rubio quickly pounced on Trump's comments, saying the GOP "cannot be a party who refuses to condemn white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan."
"Not only is that wrong, it makes him unelectable," Rubio told thousands of supporters gathered in Leesburg, Virginia. "How are we going to grow the party if we nominate someone who doesn't repudiate the Ku Klux Klan?"
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called Trump's comments "Really sad."
"You're better than this," Cruz wrote on Twitter. "We should all agree, racism is wrong, KKK is abhorrent."
Trump has won three of four early voting states, roiling a party divided over the prospect of the brash billionaire becoming its nominee. Late Sunday, Nebraska's Ben Sasse became the first sitting Republican senator to say explicitly that he would not back Trump if he does win the nomination.
"If Trump becomes the Republican nominee my expectation is that I'll look for some 3rd candidate — a conservative option, a constitutionalist," Sasse wrote on Twitter.
With a strong showing on Super Tuesday, Trump could begin to pull away from his rivals in the all-important delegate count.
In the Southern states that vote Tuesday, Republican candidates will face an electorate that is overwhelmingly white. In South Carolina, the only Southern state to have voted so far, 96 percent of the GOP primary electorate was white, while 6 in 10 voters in the Democratic race were black.
While the South was once a Democratic stronghold, many white conservatives who backed the party started moving toward the GOP during the civil rights movement. Trump has borrowed from the rhetoric former President Richard Nixon used during that time to appeal to working-class white voters, describing his campaign has a movement of the "silent majority."
Trump holds commanding leads across the South, with the exception of Cruz's home state of Texas, a dynamic that puts tremendous pressure on Rubio and Cruz as they try to outlast each other and derail the real estate mogul.
Trump was asked Friday by journalists how he felt about Duke's support. He said he didn't know anything about it and curtly said: "All right, I disavow, ok?"
The billionaire hasn't always claimed ignorance on Duke's history. In 2000, he wrote a New York Times op-ed explaining why he abandoned the possibility of running for president on the Reform Party ticket. He wrote of an "underside" and "fringe element" of the party, concluding, "I leave the Reform Party to David Duke, Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani. That is not company I wish to keep."
Democrat Bernie Sanders also lashed out at his Republican rival on Twitter, writing: "America's first black president cannot and will not be succeeded by a hatemonger who refuses to condemn the KKK."
Trump also garnered backlash for retweeting a quote from Mussolini, which read: "It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep."
Trump told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, "I know who said it. But what difference does it make whether it's Mussolini or somebody else? It's certainly a very interesting quote."
Rubio and Cruz, two first-term senators, continued a personal and policy-based barrage against Trump, warning his nomination would be catastrophic for the party in November and beyond.
"We're about to lose the conservative movement to someone who's not a conservative and (lose) the party of Lincoln and Reagan to a con artist," Rubio said Sunday on Fox News.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton, who received another burst of momentum Saturday after her lopsided victory in South Carolina, turned her attention to the Republican field on Sunday, all-but-ignoring rival Bernie Sanders during campaign events in Tennessee.
Starting her morning with stops at two Memphis churches, Clinton offered an implicit critique of Trump, issuing a call to unite the nation and asking worshippers to reject "the demagoguery, the prejudice, the paranoia."
Asked by actor Tony Goldwyn, who later campaigned with Clinton in Nashville, about her thoughts on Duke's support for Trump, Clinton described it, simply, as "pathetic."
Trump also rejected calls from Rubio — who he repeatedly referred to Sunday as "Little Marco" — and Cruz to release his tax returns, saying he can't share returns that are under IRS audit. The senators on Saturday released summary pages of several years' worth of their personal returns. Trump says he's already shared his personal financial details in separate disclosure forms.
Separately, Cruz warned the "Trump train" could become "unstoppable" if he rolls to big victories Tuesday. Cruz cast Trump as a carbon copy Clinton and suggested that not even Trump "knows what he would do" as president.
Still, Cruz confirmed to CNN's Jake Tapper that he "will support the Republican nominee, period, the end." Rubio has sidestepped questions about whether he could support Trump.
KENNESAW, Georgia (AP) — A flood of mainstream Republican officials and donors have lined up behind Marco Rubio in the week since former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended his campaign for president.
And yet Rubio's team concedes that neither the influx of support, nor the conversion of many of Bush's wealthy donors, is enough to stop Donald Trump.
Instead of riding the wave of new support alone, Rubio has been forced to speed up plans for an all-out assault on the billionaire businessman's character.
Rubio had hoped to wait until the chaotic Republican nominating campaign had shrunk to a two-man race. But with a growing sense of urgency among GOP stalwarts to settle on a Trump alternative, the young Florida senator is trying to simultaneously slow Trump and cast himself the savior of the party's future.
"I will never quit. I will never stop until we keep a con man from taking over the party of Reagan and the conservative movement," Rubio thundered at a rally with 2,000 people in Oklahoma City on Friday.
It is a delicate balance.
Rubio, a 44-year-old first-term U.S. senator, is trying to project leadership in the party while also going after Trump using his own game, marked by mockery and uncanny aim for his opponent's vulnerabilities.
But the hard-nosed strategy is necessary, says Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, Rubio's latest big endorsement.
"Rubio looked around and thought, 'Well, I might not like it, but that's what the media is covering and that's what people are responding to.'"
But Rubio is quickly getting a feel for what he began during Thursday's debate, launching a direct challenge to Trump's appeal to working class voters.
In recent days, Rubio has dished about Trump's on-stage perspiration and alluded, jokingly, that Trump may have wet his pants. He's also taken to referring to the billionaire businessman as a "con artist" dozens of times a day while campaigning.
"It's amazing to me. A guy with the worst spray tan in America is attacking me for putting on makeup," Rubio charged as he campaigned in Georgia on Saturday. "Donald Trump likes to sue people. He should sue whoever did that to his face."
But make no mistake: Rubio's new tack is a fight for survival.
He trails Trump in virtually all of the 11 states holding nominating contests on March 1, known as Super Tuesday. The Florida senator has finished in no better than second place in the first four primary contests. Trump has won three out of four. And Texas Sen. Ted Cruz remains a top-tier contender, even after finishing in third place in the last three contests.
Given Trump's momentum, Rubio's team says publicly the senator's best chance for the nomination might be a contested national convention in July. That could happen only if Rubio prevents Trump from accumulating the majority of delegates in the months-long primary season that extends through June.
Some Florida-based donors, as well as top donors and fundraisers in Washington, D.C., Chicago and elsewhere were ready to join Rubio's team immediately after Bush left the race.
"There are a number of us, now that Gov. Bush is out of the race, who were very impressed with his debate Thursday, and see him as the one to take down Trump," said Chicago investor Craig Duchossois, who shifted from Bush to Rubio. "He showed he's not going to take any crap from him."
In the past two weeks, Rubio has also won the backing of four governors and 20 members of Congress, more than all of his Republican rivals combined.
Rubio had hoped to forestall a one-on-one brawl with Trump until there were only two. Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson remain in the race, although none have the level of support from as many governors and members of Congress as Rubio.
In a year of the outsider, however, it's unclear how much that will boost his momentum.
And in the meantime, Rubio's assault on Trump's character continues.
Audiences in Super Tuesday states Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama ate up the tough talk as he whipped through Southern states.
"It's about time he take his gloves off and start fighting," said Gary Baker from Okmulgee, Oklahoma. "I think he should have started punching sooner."
Better late than never, said Greg Strimple, a Republican pollster and former adviser to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
"The Rubio campaign needs to set-up a contrast on Trump, equate Trump to the culture of corruption Americans hate — where the rich get richer and middle class pays the price," Strimple said.
Rubio says there's time, but none to waste.
"If you sense a sense of urgency, it's not just about winning," Rubio said. "It's about the idea that the party of Reagan and the conservative movement could fall into the hands of a con man, who's pulling the ultimate con job on the American people."
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood's diversity crisis has loomed large over awards season and the big question going into the 88th annual Academy Awards was whether it would dominate the ceremony, too. It did, of course, but it wasn't alone.
The evening turned out to be a platform not just for racial representation in the movies, led by host Chris Rock's incisive insight and parody, but a wide array of causes, from global warming and bank reform to sexual abuse in church and on campus. It was a subtle plea from the film community that the movies and artists honored at Sunday night's ceremony did have purpose and meaning — even in this second year of #OscarsSoWhite.
The "Spotlight" team, which won the first and last prize of the night — best original screenplay and best picture — and nothing else, celebrated the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of The Boston Globe journalists who exposed sex abuses in the Roman Catholic Church and the conversation the film has renewed around the world.
Leonardo DiCaprio, the forgone best-actor winner for "The Revenant," used the platform to talk about his life's passion outside of acting — climate change, which got a "thank you" from the official White House Instagram account.
Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, who won for best adapted screenplay for "The Big Short," spoke about the need for finance reform.
And Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, whose "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" spoke to the impact of her film.
"This week, the Pakistani prime minister said he would change the law on honor killing of women," said Obaid-Chinoy, who was also the only female director to win an award at Sunday's ceremony. "That is the power of film."
In some ways, the Oscars have always been a place where winners use the podium and their 45 seconds to opine on causes directly or indirectly related to the movies, from Sacheen Littlefeather's speech about Native American rights 43 years ago to Patricia Arquette's call last year for pay equality for women.
But perhaps no ceremony has had such a pointed target, and nothing this year could eclipse #OscarsSoWhite, which was woven into the fabric of the show, thanks to Rock. He launched immediately into the uproar over the lack of diversity in this year's nominees, and didn't let up, dubbing the show "The White People's Choice Awards" at the start.
Rock ensured that the topic remained at the forefront throughout the proceedings, usually finding hearty laughs in the process.
In an award show traditionally known for song-and-dance routines and high doses of glamour, Rock gave the 88th Academy Awards a charged atmosphere, keeping with the outcry that followed a second straight year of all-white acting nominees.
Streaks, broken and extended, dominated much of the evening, with an expected best actress win to Brie Larson for her breakout performance in the mother-son captive drama "Room" and a best supporting actress win for Swedish actress Alicia Vikander for the transgender pioneer tale "The Danish Girl."
Gasps went around the Dolby when Mark Rylance won best supporting actor for Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies" over Sylvester Stallone. Nominated a second time for the role of Rocky Balboa 39 years later, Stallone had been expected to win his first acting Oscar for the "Rocky" sequel "Creed."
The night's most-awarded film, however, went to neither "Spotlight" nor "The Revenant." George Miller's post-apocalyptic chase film, "Mad Max: Fury Road," sped away with six awards in technical categories for editing, makeup, production design, sound editing, sound mixing and costume design.
Alejando Inarritu, whose win for "The Revenant" meant three straight years of Mexican filmmakers winning best director and his second consecutive win, was one of the few recipients to remark passionately on diversity in his acceptance speech.
Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki ("The Revenant") also became the first cinematographer to win three times in a row.
Talk of election was largely absent from the ceremony, though Vice President Joe Biden was met by a standing ovation before talking about sexual assault on college campuses in an introduction to best-song nominee Lady Gaga.
Best animated feature film went to "Inside Out," Pixar's eighth win in the category. Asif Kapadia's Amy Winehouse portrait, "Amy," took best documentary. Hungary's concentration camp drama "Son of Saul" won best foreign language film.
Composer Ennio Morricone, at 87, landed his first competitive Oscar for "The Hateful Eight."
But the wins at times felt secondary to the unflinching host. Rock said he deliberated over joining the Oscars boycott and bowing out as host, but concluded: "The last thing I need is to lose another job to Kevin Hart."
Down the street from the Dolby Theatre, Rev. Al Sharpton led several dozen demonstrators in protest against a second straight year of all-white acting nominees.
The acting nominees restored "OscarsSoWhite" to prominence and led Spike Lee (an honorary Oscar winner this year) and Jada Pinkett Smith to announce that they wouldn't attend the show. Several top African American filmmakers, Ryan Coogler ("Creed") and Ava DuVernay ("Selma") spent the evening not at the Oscars but in Flint, Michigan, raising money for the water-contaminated city.
Rock also sought to add perspective to the turmoil. Rock said this year didn't differ much from Oscar history, but that black people earlier were "too busy being raped and lynched to worry about who won best cinematographer."
In a quick response to the growing crisis, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, led reforms to diversify the academy's overwhelming white and male membership.
In her remarks during the show, Boone Isaacs strongly defended the changes, quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and urging each Oscar attendee to bring greater opportunity to the industry.
Last year's telecast, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, slid 16 percent to 36.6 million viewers, a six-year low. How the controversy, and Rock's head-on approach, will affect ratings for the ABC show is the new big question, not to mention how well the causes of the movies and their artists will live in the conversation beyond Sunday's show.