Donald Trump is vowing he will win Florida as campaigning intensifies little more than a week before the state's presidential primary March 15.
The GOP front-runner spoke Saturday during a raucous rally at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Trump spoke for more than an hour before thousands of supporters.
"If we win Florida believe me it's over,” he said. “If we win. And we're going to win, and you're going to have a great president, and you're going to have a great country again."
The crowd cheered as Trump paused every few sentences for the latest protester to be ejected. He paused at one point for a woman who had fainted. He ordered a supporter who had brought flowers to give the bouquet to her.
"This is not like your normal, low-key, really boring rally that nobody cares about,” he said.
Trump mixed barbs for Rubio and Clinton with promises to end Obamacare and Common Core, come down hard on terrorists and illegal immigrants and shrink the nation's multi-trillion-dollar debt.
Thousands of Donald Trump fans gathered at UCF to see Trump. Steve Hamas waited in line hours before Trump arrived. Hamas says he switched from unaffiliated to a Republican so he can vote for Trump in next week’s presidential primary.
“I think there’s a lot of people with tape over their mouth,” said Hamas. “People like me who wanted to say things, we felt we had tape over our mouths and he took that tape off.”
Meanwhile, scores of protestors waved signs and chanted as thousands of Trump supporters filed into the CFE arena. Tasnim Mellouli held a sign saying “terrorists are not Muslim”
“I’m here today because Trump’s rhetoric is extremely harmful to our people,” she said. “And I want him to know that this is my country too, this is all of our country, not just his”
Trump is leading Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in the latest Quinnipiac poll of Florida voters 44 – 28 percent.