LARGO, Fla. — The tumultuous GOP presidential primary tumbled further into chaos Saturday as unrest swirled around Donald Trump for a second straight day, leading two of his three remaining rivals to waver on whether they could support him as the Republican nominee.

Three days before a series of critical contests that could strengthen Trump’s grip on the nomination and potentially whittle the field from four candidates to two, Marco Rubio and John Kasich blasted the current front-runner for incendiary rhetoric that they blame for the increasingly violent confrontations at and around his campaign events.


Campaigning in Central Florida on Saturday morning, Rubio paused ruefully before responding to the question of whether he still promises to support the party’s nominee even if it’s Trump.

“I don’t know,” Rubio said. “I already talked about the fact that I think Hillary Clinton would be terrible for this country, but the fact that you’re even asking me that question. … I still at this moment intend to support the Republican nominee, but … it’s getting harder every day.”

Kasich, campaigning in his home state of Ohio, wavered too. “It makes it extremely difficult,” he said.

The Florida senator and Ohio governor, who are both fighting to avoid campaign-ending losses to Trump in their home states on Tuesday, blamed him for fostering a climate at his campaign events that enables violence. That climate, Rubio said, has the country “careening toward chaos and anarchy.”

“We settle our differences in this country at the ballot box, not with guns or bayonets or violence,” Rubio told reporters.

“You wonder if we’re headed in a different direction today where we’re no longer capable of having differences of opinion but in fact now protests become a license to take up violence and take on your opponents physically,” he said. “This is what happens when a leading presidential candidate goes around feeding into a narrative of bitterness and anger and frustration.”

Kasich, who has run a uniquely positive campaign in one of the ugliest presidential cycles in modern political history, struggled to express his disgust with what he’s seeing in Trump’s events.

“Yesterday when you asked me about the violence, I didn’t know what you were talking about because I didn’t see it,” he told reporters. “But I saw it last night and put a statement out last night. And I’m sort of to the point where I’ve had enough of this. So the fact of the matter is you take things a day at a time. I do not believe, and frankly I’m a little shocked that we got to this point. I’m shocked at it.”

Roughly an hour after Rubio and Kasich had made their comments, Trump’s rally near Cincinnati offered further illustration of how the simmering tensions he has stoked with incendiary rhetoric for months are boiling over as he gets closer to becoming the GOP nominee. As he was speaking in an airplane hangar, a protester attempted to jump onto the stage, startling Trump and drawing four Secret Service agents to encircle him immediately as they subdued the protester.

“It’s gotten to a danger point,” Rubio said later Saturday afternoon in an interview with POLITICO aboard his campaign bus in Tampa. While the senator was quick to condemn violent protesters for their behavior, he laid much of the blame on Trump for inciting a mob. “I’m also not going to excuse the fact that Donald Trump at his events, has seen an increased amount of violence and aggression against reporters, against the protesters, against the spectators … you name it. It’s gotten — American politics is turning into the comments section of a blog, where there [are] no limits now on what you can say or what you can do or not do.”

In September, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus sought to stabilize his party’s nomination contest by persuading all the GOP candidates to sign a pledge to support the eventual nominee. But as the GOP coalition continues to splinter from Trump’s success, Priebus has been reluctant to join a growing chorus of anti-Trump conservatives that even includes Mitt Romney, the party’s most recent presidential nominee.

“The party itself — led by Reince Priebus — is scared to death of Trump and his supporters,” said a Republican operative in Washington who worked on behalf of a candidate who has since left the race.

An RNC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two weeks ago, Rubio undercut his own “Never Trump” message by promising in the Detroit GOP debate, along with the party’s three remaining presidential candidates, that he would support the party’s nominee no matter who it might be.

But the unrest in Chicago, which capped off a week of violent altercations between Trump supporters and protesters that included a white man who was videotaped punching a black protester as he was being escorted out of an arena, is changing the equation for the senator — along with the heightened urgency of a candidate who may be running out of time.

“The job of a true leader is not to stoke people’s pain,” Rubio said. “Because when you do that, there are consequences. There are consequences to that, and they’re playing out before our eyes.”

Rubio criticized Trump less strongly in Thursday’s Miami debate — yet, more directly than Ted Cruz and Kasich did — by saying that presidential candidates have to consider the consequences of their words.

On Saturday, he suggested that everyone step back and contemplate their own responsibility in a social order that appears to be “coming apart at the seams.”

“No matter what our differences are, who wants to live in a country where everyone hates each other over everything?”

Rubio also laid blame on the media’s reality TV-style coverage of the campaign — and on himself for briefly submitting to it.

“I’m not proud of some of the things I said about Donald Trump,” Rubio told supporters. “And that will never happen again. But I spent 10 months and 28 days campaigning on issues, and no one covered it. The media has failed us in this discourse as well.”

Cruz, aiming to emerge on Tuesday as the only candidate standing against Trump, held firm to his pledge to support whoever wins the Republican nomination.

Trump has defended his supporters and blamed protesters for the violence, and Saturday in Cleveland, he found a new target: supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders .

“Bernie was saying, Mr. Trump should speak to his crowd,” he said. “You know where they come from? Bernie’s crowd.”

“Bernie’s people,” Trump said, were disrupting his rallies “every five minutes.” Trump mocked Sanders repeatedly and then added: “Wouldn’t it be fun to meet Bernie in the finals?”

The Cleveland rally was repeatedly interrupted by protesters, as Trump again insisted his supporters aren’t violent. “My people aren’t violent. It’s these people that come in. My people want to do one thing. Make America great again.”

At his rally, Trump’s team also worked to display his support among nonwhites and non-Christians: Positioned directly behind the podium were supporters waving signs “Muslim Americans for Trump” and “Sikh Americans for Trump.” He also reiterated promises to bring more heavy industry back to the U.S., saying a 35 percent tax on imported products would stop companies from relocating overseas.

On Friday in St. Louis, before the mayhem in Chicago, Trump had complained to the crowd that there are not "consequences" for protesters who disrupt his events.

“Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick them out] is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore,” Trump said at the Peabody Opera House. “There used to be consequences. There are none anymore. ... These people are so bad for our country. You have no idea, folks, you have no idea.”

Trump’s Cleveland rally featured several interruptions by protesters, and the scene suggested the threat of violence is becoming a frightening new normal during the Trump campaign.

As the rally cleared, a few dozen mostly black protesters who had edged close to the arena found themselves quickly surrounded and penned in by Trump supporters, and a shouting match ensued. Protesters chanted "Dump Trump" but were quickly drowned out by pro-Trump cheers. Though most exchanges were civil, some Trump allies hurled coarse insults -- one urged the group to "Go back to Africa," nearly sparking a confrontation. Another yelled "savages" at the group. In a third prolonged exchange one white Trump backer berated a white protester, telling him "it's our country," and gesturing toward black protesters said, "it's not their country." Spectators with nervous expressions and hordes of state and local police looked on, including six on horseback in riot gear.

But despite the fresh memories of scattered violence in Chicago a day earlier, tempers were largely kept in check. Police broke up the crowd peacefully, and some heated shouting turned into good-natured debates that carried on in the parking lot, which took on the feel of a tailgate party after the protesters departed.

Anna Palmer and Katie Glueck contributed to this report.