Trump: Debate audience stacked; RNC denies charge
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said in Greenville Monday that the Republican National Committee stacked the audience at Saturday night’s presidential debate at the Peace Center with supporters of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, two of his rivals for the GOP nomination.
Trump made the remarks in an exclusive interview with The Greenville News right before he took the stage for a rally at the TD Convention Center that was attended by thousands of cheering supporters.
The New York billionaire – apparently trying to explain why he got so many boos during the debate -- accused the RNC of stacking the audience with “donors and special interests.”
“The room was stacked with all people that were all Bush people, and also Rubio people,” Trump said. “Not Cruz people. But it was Rubio and Bush. Every time they sneezed the place would go crazy and interrupt. I just don’t think that’s the right thing to do.”
Officials with the RNC and South Carolina Republican Party denied the charge.
Sean Spicer, the RNC’s chief strategist and communications director, said out of 1,600 available tickets for the debate about 300 went to grassroots activists and elected officials and 600 were divided equally between the candidates.
Trump claimed it was the third time the RNC had stacked the audience at a GOP presidential debate with “donors and special interests, people that control the candidates” but not him since he’s self-funding his campaign.
“The RNC they have to get their act together,” Trump told The News.
Just 10 donors got tickets from the RNC, Spicer said in a Tweet.
Spicer said the remaining tickets went to CBS News, which broadcast the debate, and the South Carolina Republican Party.
Matt Moore, chairman of the state GOP, said in reaction to Trump’s claim that “everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I know the facts.”
“I can show you hundreds of photos with state committee members and grassroots activists,” Moore said. “I guess none of that matters.”
Asked for details about his promise to save Social Security from insolvency, Trump re-iterated comments he made in Saturday’s debate that he’d eliminate fraud and waste from the federal pension program.
There’s “tremendous fraud, waste and abuse” with thousands of people listed on the rolls as 106 years old, Trump claimed.
He also said he would rule out the raising the retirement age as a way to ease financial pressure on the Social Security system as some have proposed.
“People have been paying into Social Security all their lives,” he said. “Now all of a sudden all these guys want to cut it, cut it, cut it. It’s not fair.”
Trump is the only presidential candidate who hasn’t released a plan to update Social Security, according to Teresa Arnold, South Carolina director of AARP, which has launched a campaign to pressure presidential candidates into taking a position on the issue.
The AARP says it has enlisted some of its members to ask Trump his position in person as he campaigns in early-voting states.
AARP also says it has asked for Trump’s position several times through social media and asked news reporters and debate moderators to raise the question with him.
The AARP campaign has also included advertising in early states, including ads on GreenvilleOnline.com.
Trump continued his theme of economic nationalism during the rally, warning the audience that China intended to steal business from The Boeing Co.’s aircraft plant in North Charleston.
Trump said Boeing agreed to build a massive plant in China in exchange for a big order of its aircraft from China.
Unless he’s elected president “that plant will be in jeopardy very quickly,” Trump told the audience.
“They want to take those planes, and they want to make them in China,” he declared. “And that’s not good. But if I win, it’s never going to happen.”
Trump and the other five Republican presidential candidates are campaigning intensely in South Carolina in hopes of winning the state’s first-in-the-South presidential preference primary on Saturday.
The Democratic presidential candidates are also visiting the state with an eye toward South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 27.