Donald Trump, who held a rally Wednesday night at Clemson University in South Carolina, earlier made his rounds on the morning shows, where he was cagey, but characteristically confident. | Getty Trump goes after Bush in South Carolina The New York billionaire is aiming to end the former Florida governor's candidacy.

After blowing away the competition in New Hampshire, Donald Trump has his eyes on the next prize: South Carolina. So does the rest of the GOP field.

With reliable polling so far virtually nonexistent here, the shrunken crew of Republican candidates descended upon the state on Wednesday, eager to make their pitches ahead of the Feb. 20 primary.


In a dirt-floor-covered rodeo arena on the outskirts of Clemson University, Trump boasted of his enormous New Hampshire victory.

"We won it big. ... We won by a lot — a really lot,” he said to roaring applause from a crowd of about 3,000. “I got like one hour of sleep … because when you have victory you don’t need sleep.”

The evening rally, hosted in the heart of a deeply conservative and religious district of rural South Carolina, began with a prayer — and a knock on the media. Almost every head was bowed as African-American evangelical Pastor Mark Burns told the crowd that Trump “believes in Jesus Christ” and is an authentic Republican. “The media believe Trump is not a true conservative … but the devil is a liar.”

But rather than talking about socially conservative issues, Trump launched into an attack on Jeb Bush, aiming to end the candidacy of a man who must win here to keep his bid alive. Bush, Trump noted, spent millions more than other contenders in New Hampshire. “And what, is he fourth or fifth?”

“I’ve spent less money than anybody else — but I’m No. 1," Trump said. “I feel bad for this guy because he’s not going to win."

For Bush, barely hanging on in the 2016 GOP race for the White House, South Carolina could be his last, best shot. Trump went time and again into a rant against the ex-Florida governor on Wednesday night, knocking him on everything from education to immigration.

“Jeb Bush loves Common Core and he loves weak borders. ... ‘They come as an act of love?’” he asked sarcastically, flicking at an often-repeated Bush comment about the reasons undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. “Give me a break.”

Sticking to his usual points, Trump warned the crowd that America is falling behind the rest of the world, in everything from infrastructure to schooling for the next generation: “You go to some of these Asian countries, you go to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, different places in China, you see airports and infrastructure of the likes you’ve never seen … We’ve got trains, they’re like … 150 years old! We’re becoming a Third World country!”

And he railed against “political correctness,” a point that delighted the crowd. “You go to a department store and what don’t you see? ‘Merry Christmas.’ You don’t see ‘Merry Christmas’ anymore. We’re going to say, ‘Merry Christmas!’”

He also jabbed Hillary Clinton for banking $600,000 for giving speeches to Goldman Sachs — a point that has severely crippled the Democratic candidate among some far left progressives: “Actually I have been paid much more than that, but I don’t represent the government, you know?”

Earlier in the day, Trump made his rounds on the cable networks, where he was cagey but characteristically confident.

“They’re all smart, intelligent, very accomplished people. I wouldn’t necessarily pick one” to be a likely principal antagonist, he said in an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” while remarking that Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who finished second in the primary “is a little bit closer than the others, but that could be an outlier also.”

After falling short in Iowa last week after months of polls that showed him in the lead, Trump crowed about the New Hampshire results that more closely mirrored the surveys he follows so closely.

“We had the polling at 34, 35, 32, probably the result was even a little bit higher than the polling. But I think they’re all really potential threats, but I’m okay at handling threats,” Trump added.

Ted Cruz went into New Hampshire with relatively low expectations and finished a respectable third. But he has much higher hopes for South Carolina, where he sees a first-place win as a gateway to locking down much of the conservative South.

Cruz made his appeal in Myrtle Beach on Wednesday, claiming that he is the Manhattan mogul’s real competition. The “only candidate that can beat Donald Trump is me,” Cruz told reporters there.

The bold pledge came after Trump’s campaign unleashed a new ad against Cruz earlier this week in South Carolina that featured many of his attacks against the Texas senator.

“Ted Cruz, the worst kind of Washington insider, who just can’t be trusted,” a narrator intones in the spot, which hits Cruz for his failure to report 2012 loans from Citibank and Goldman Sachs during his Texas Senate run and his campaign’s tactics in the Iowa caucuses.

Cruz’s campaign, meanwhile, unveiled a new ad, titled “Playing Trump,” which features kids playing with a Trump action figure. “What does he do?” one child asks, to which another responds, “Pretends to be a Republican.”

In casting his next challenge as a head-to-head bout with Trump, Cruz remarked upon what he characterized as an impending all-out “bloody” brawl among establishment candidates like Bush, Marco Rubio and Kasich. Bush finished a surprisingly strong fourth, just a hair behind Cruz, while Rubio settled into a disappointing fifth place but pledged to do better going forward. Chris Christie bombed with a sixth-place finish, despite having invested heavily in New Hampshire, and dropped out of the race later on Wednesday.

“Jeb Bush got a new lease on life last night,” Cruz told radio host Mike Gallagher, adding that Kasich “also had a good night.

“I think you’re gonna see Kasich and Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio all fighting it out for the establishment lane,” Cruz said.

Bush hopes to harness any momentum gathered from his finish as the race shifts south.

With Christie’s exit, Bush fundraisers have begun courting three of the New Jersey governor’s biggest contributors: hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone and Anthony Carbonetti, a Wall Street executive and onetime chief of staff to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The Bush campaign is increasingly leaning on the family name. On Wednesday, it released a new radio ad set to air in South Carolina featuring former President George W. Bush, who pitches his brother as a strong leader.

“We live in troubled times with the military deployed around the world,” the former president says in the spot. “We need a strong leader with experience, ideas and resolve. There’s no doubt in my mind that Jeb Bush will be a great commander in chief for our military.”

The 43rd president is expected to campaign with his younger brother in the lead-up to the Feb. 20 primary.

Jeb Bush also criticized Kasich on Wednesday for lacking a presence in South Carolina, echoing a campaign memo that laid the groundwork for attacks on his establishment foes, namely the Ohio governor and Rubio.

But Kasich warned he would not shy away from taking on any opponent challenging him. “I don’t want to go back into the negative road,” he said during an earlier campaign event in the Charleston suburb of Mount Pleasant, “but I’m not going to sit back and let ’em pummel me.”

Ben White, Michael Crowley, Nolan D. McCaskill and Eliza Collins contributed to this report.

