Trump Launches Negative Ads Against Rubio In Florida

Donald Trump has so far spent next to nothing on advertising in his self-funded campaign for president. Trump has refrained from paid advertising attacking his opponents despite pro-Rubio and pro-Cruz SuperPACs dumping tens of millions of dollars into ad buys in early primary and caucus states accusing him of every imaginable misdeed. Trump is finally firing back. He's made an ad buy in Florida with a blistering attack on Sen. Marco Rubio. The ad taps into just a sampling of a large document that Democratic opposition research workers compiled four years ago on Rubio's alleged financial misdeeds. Recent polls show Rubio in striking distant of Trump, who had been leading in earlier polls in Florida. Trump had been counting on a win in Florida to help seal his bid to become the GOP nominee.

It's not just Trump who is taking out ads against Rubio. A SuperPAC backing Cruz has launched a series of negative attack ads against Rubio in the Sunshine State, hitting Rubio for supporting amnesty for illegal aliens, his poor attendance record in the Senate and his support of sugar subsidies in exchange for large campaign contributions from the sugar industry. Florida's primary on March 15 is a winner-take-all state. Cruz has little chance of winning in Florida, and his campaign would probably prefer Trump win there and deal a knock-out blow to Rubio so he can run head-to-head against Trump. Ohio Gov. John Kasich also appears to be surging at the right time in his home state, another winner-take-all state. If he denies Trump a win there, it's going to become increasingly difficult for Trump to arrive at the GOP national convention with the majority of delegates required to win the nomination.

Here's a YouTube clip in which Trump defends his Trump University against fraud claims. I like that he personally defends it rather than relying on a third party to do the talking for him. Trump maintains that some of the students accusing him of fraud completed evaluation forms upon the completion of their course work in which they rated it highly. Of course the biggest issue is that it's not an accredited school so it's misleading to call it a university. That's got New York's Attorney General going after him, who also claims Trump misled students by making it sound like he handpicked all of the instructors who taught the seminars when he had no knowledge of whom most of them were. The Attorney General also accused Trump of bait-and-switch by luring students at an initial lower enrollment fee and then telling them they needed to enroll at a higher level to learn beyond what was taught in the initial course offerings.