Bush, Trump on the attack at dueling N.H. town halls
It's par for the course when Donald Trump rains down attacks on his opponents -- but it's not every night that a competing candidate has a chance to fire back simultaneously.
Holding town halls in New Hampshire around the same time Wednesday evening, real estate magnate Donald Trump and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush both sharpened their tongues and let their insults fly.
"Mr. Trump doesn't have a proven conservative record," Bush told voters late Wednesday night, offering his most forceful criticism of the billionaire yet. "He was a Democrat longer in the last decade than he was a Republican. He's given more money to Democrats than he's given to Republicans."
Bush spoke in Merrimack to a room full of veterans and other New Hampshire Republicans, just minutes away from where Trump was holding another town hall-style event in Derry.
"When people look at his record, it is not a conservative record, even on immigration, where it's -- you know, look, it's -- the language is pretty vitriolic for sure," Bush said. "But hundreds of billions of dollars of costs to implement his plans is not a conservative plan."
Over the weekend, Trump unveiled the specifics of his immigration plan, which include tripling the number of officers working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and building a large wall along the southern border of the United States. Trump has suggested that Mexico should pay for the wall -- an idea Mexican officials brushed off last week.
In order to fund his plan, Trump also proposed hiking taxes at the border's ports of entry and increasing fees on temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs, diplomats and even NAFTA worker visas.
Meanwhile, in a neighboring town, a fiery Trump defended those same immigration proposals, saying he had received a lot of praise for his policy points. In his first town hall event, he promised to "build the greatest wall you've ever seen" -- and pledged that "it will even look great."
But the night's fireworks came when Trump took square aim at Bush, the GOP establishment favorite.
Trump began his attack by extolling his own crowd numbers -- "Every time I go out, [there are] massive crowds" -- but he guessed that only a paltry group turned out for the former Florida governor.
"Bush had 140 people. We have way over 2,000," Trump boasted.
The animated Trump went on to imply that anyone who did turn up for Bush's event didn't find it very interesting.
"You know what's happening to Jeb's crowd, as you know, right down the street?" Trump asked. "They're sleeping." The business magnate added that the only reason he was talking about Bush was that "he's going down like a rock" in New Hampshire, where the Florida Republican was expected to draw significant support.
In a 30-minute press conference before his town hall, Trump heaped on more criticism of Bush, saying his opponent is "a low-energy person -- for him to get things done is hard."
"Between Common Core, his 'act of love' on immigration and 'skin in the game' with Iraq ... I don't see how he's electable," Trump told reporters.