ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, the biggest day so far in the presidential primary season. The candidates are traveling the country holding rallies, making speeches. And we're going to hear some of what the top three Republicans are saying today.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We start with the front runner, Donald Trump. He held a rally this afternoon at Radford University in Virginia. He identified student loan debt and unemployment as a burden on the economy.
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DONALD TRUMP: One of the questions I get especially when I go to, you know, schools and colleges is the debt is just killing people. The debt, the government debt. They borrow from the government, the costs of the colleges are going through the roof. And the biggest problem we have - you know what it is? You graduate - you're a good student, you have a great school like this, and sometimes it's hard to get jobs. And I'm being nice when I say sometimes 'cause I know you people. Hey, is everybody all set with jobs? Raise your hands, who's got jobs? OK, who doesn't? Oh, no. That's a lot of hands. That's a lot of hands. That's a lot of talent. So here's what's happening. People go to a great school, they graduate, you know, top of their class. They graduate with good marks, they work really hard. Their parents are proud, everybody's proud -they can't get a job. That's going to change, folks. You're going to get jobs. You're going to get such great jobs. We're going to bring jobs back from China. We're going to bring them back from Mexico. We will start - before I'm finished, I guarantee you that we will have Apple products made in the United States, not in China. I guarantee it.
SHAPIRO: In Dallas, Ted Cruz promised to improve the American economy. He pointed to illegal immigration from Mexico and South America as a reason for high unemployment. And Cruz criticized Donald Trump for staffing his hotel with foreign workers.
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TED CRUZ: That's not a whole lot different, what Donald's doing, than a whole lot of other big companies. But you don't get to abuse and take advantage of American workers and then suddenly style yourself a champion for American workers.
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CRUZ: If I'm elected president, we will secure the border.
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CRUZ: We will end illegal immigration, we will end taxpayer funding for sanctuary cities, and we will end welfare benefits for those here illegally.
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CRUZ: And what we are going to see is more and more jobs for American citizens, for legal immigrants. We're going to see wages going up. And when we repeal Obamacare, when we abolish the IRS, small businesses are going to explode. Millions of high-paying jobs, wages going up, young people coming out of school having two, three, four, five job offers.
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CRUZ: Morning in America.
CORNISH: And Marco Rubio spoke in Atlanta today. He warned voters not to make Trump the Republican nominee for president. Rubio said he offers a different direction.
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MARCO RUBIO: When I'm elected president of the United States, for the first time in eight years you're going to have a president that follows the Constitution of the United States of America.
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RUBIO: Not a president that ignores it like Barack Obama, not a president like Donald Trump who says if he's president, he wants the change the First Amendment so that - to make it easier to sue people that say things he doesn't like. There aren't enough judges in the world to hear all those cases.
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RUBIO: When you elect me president, you're going to have a president that protects your Second Amendment right to protect defend yourself and your family again.
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RUBIO: When you elect me president, you're going to have a president that understands that what makes America great is not our president and is not our government. It's our people. It's our families. It's our communities.
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SHAPIRO: That's Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump making their pitches to voters one day before Super Tuesday. You can hear some of what the Democratic candidates said today elsewhere in the program. Join us tomorrow night on many stations for special coverage of the results as they come in live from Super Tuesday. We'll have analysis, victory and concession speeches and of course, reports from all of our correspondents out in the field and here in the studio.
CORNISH: All that from our NPR politics team. And there are plenty of other ways for you to contribute ideas or just continue the conversation. One is to go to NPR.org and scroll to the bottom of the page to click on contact. The other's on social media. Right, Ari?
SHAPIRO: That's right. You can find the show @npratc on Twitter. I'm @arishapiro.
CORNISH: And I'm @nprAudie. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.