Trump Is a Little Surprised by Huge Backlash

He feels like a 'whipping post'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 6, 2015 1:10 AM CDT
Trump Is a Little Surprised by Huge Backlash
Donald Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association convention earlier this year.   (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Business partners including NBC, Macy's, and now NASCAR have been rapidly backing away from Donald Trump, and the candidate admits he has been taken off guard by the ferocity of the backlash against his comments about Mexican immigrants. "I didn't know it was going to be this severe," he told Fox News over the weekend, though he continued to defend his remarks, pointing to the murder of a woman in San Francisco and the arrest of a suspect who has been deported five times. "It seems like I'm sort of the whipping post because I bring it up," he said. "The crime is raging. It's violent, and people don't want to even talk about it. If you talk about it, you are a racist. I don't understand it."

Several of Trump's fellow GOP candidates have also denounced his comments, including Rick Perry, who says he found the remarks offensive, CNN reports. And in New Hampshire on Saturday, an angry Jeb Bush made his strongest criticisms of Trump yet, the New York Times reports. "To make these extraordinarily ugly kind of comments is not reflective of the Republican Party," Bush told reporters. "He's doing this—he's not a stupid guy, so I don't assume he thinks that every Mexican crossing the border is a rapist. He's doing this to inflame and incite and to draw attention, which seems to be the organizing principle of his campaign." Trump fired back, saying Bush is "out of touch" and doesn't "understand anything about the border or border security." (More Donald Trump stories.)

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