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Donald Trump dared protesters to show their face during a rally in Boca Raton, Florida, on Sunday night, reports David Smith. When one finally did, the Republican frontrunner ignored him and carried on with a disjointed speech.

The event in luxurious Sunset Cove passed relatively peacefully, a much-needed lowering of the temperature after the violence and chaos last Friday in Chicago, where he called a rally off.

Trump attempted to turn that debacle into a personal victory.

“We’ve been given a lot of credit,” he said. “And you know what, it was an amazing thing, and the other side actually said this didn’t work out too well. Because all over the world they’re talking about what took place, and they’re talking about how well we handled it, and they’re talking about the fact that nobody got hurt, nobody got injured, everything went smooth, it was a nice easy break-up.”

Later, training his fire on the media as the crowd whistled, Trump asked mockingly: “Do we have a protester anywhere? Do we have a disrupter? Because unless we have a disrupter – I don’t even call them protesters, I call them disrupters – unless we have a disrupter, the camera never goes off my face. They’re all live. They never go off my face. Is there a disrupter in the house?”

There was no response and he continued his rambling remarks. But before the end one protester of Asian appearance waved a homemade banner and was jostled and shoved before being escorted out by uniformed security guards. Trump took no notice of the skirmish and continued to talk.

All night the reality TV showman was in evidence. Triumphalist music blared as he flew by helicopter over the bay on what an announcer described as “Trump Force One”. Walking out on an amphitheatre stage, he was dwarfed by a gigantic stars and stripes. He told how he had proved wrong the pundits who dismissed him as a clown or self-promoter.

“I’m a better person than the people I’m running against,” he boasted. “And I’m a better person than Hillary.”

The crowd, many wearing T-shirts and shorts as they stood on the open-air lawn, cheered both remarks then chanted: “We want Trump! We want Trump!”

The businessman, who enjoys a healthy poll lead in delegate-rich Florida, which votes on Tuesday, described the millions of new voters supporting him as “the biggest political story in the world today”.

He also spoke of the strategy that has served him so well, calling rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio “Lyin’ Ted’ and “Kiddie Marco” in the hope the names will stick: “You have to brand people a certain way when they’re opponents. Like Jeb Bush; we called him ‘low energy’.”

Trump took swipes at China and Mexico and complained that America does not win any more. He delivered a rousing and bizarre finale: “We’re going to win, win, win. We’re going to win so much you’re going to get sick and tired of it. You’re going to say, ‘Mr President, we can’t take it any more! You’re winning too much. Please, we don’t want to win that much any more. Please Mr President, we can’t take it.’”