Still unreconciled to his Colorado wipe-out, Donald Trump has openly accused the Republican establishment of conspiring to stop him from clinching the party’s presidential nomination by stacking rules against him.
“I know the rules very well, but I know it’s stacked against me by the establishment,” Trump told a CNN Town Hall in New York on Tuesday night, amid growing signs of a “contested convention” in July to decide the nomination.
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus promptly rejected the charge. “Nomination process known for a year + beyond. It’s the responsibility of the campaigns to understand it. Complaints nowIJ Give us all a break,” he tweeted.
Hours before the Town Hall, Trump used a campaign rally to go all out against his party establishment, charging: “Our Republican system is absolutely rigged. It’s a phony deal.” His reference was to the Colorado Republican Party’s award of all its 34 delegates to his rival, Ted Cruz, without holding a formal primary voting under a change of rule it notified last August.
Asserting “crooked politicians” were out to stop him from winning, Trump thundered: “They’re dirty tricksters. They should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this kind of crap to happen.”
“The rules are no good when you have to play dirty tricks to pick up delegates,” he said. And in a separate interview with The Hill, Trump actually called the Republican nominating process a “scam”, commenting: “It’s a disgrace for the party. And Reince Priebus should be ashamed of himself because he knows what’s going on.”
But the day was not without its positives for Trump as House Speaker Paul Ryan formally ruled himself out of contention for party nomination in the event of a contested convention.
Scotching the speculation that Republicans could finally nominate him at the party convention in their bid to keep both Trump and Cruz out, Ryan told reporters at RNC’s headquarters: “let me be clear, I do not want, nor will I accept, the nomination of our party.”
“If no candidate has the majority on the first ballot, I believe you should only turn to a person who has participated in the primary. Count me out,” said Ryan, who as Speaker will be chairing the Republican convention in Cleveland.
In another development on Tuesday, Trump was finally declared the winner in Missouri, which held its primary nearly a month ago. It was a narrow win for Trump against Cruz (40.8% to 40.6%), but he managed to garner 12 additional delegates.
Trump, according to Real Clear Politics, now has 755 delegates against Cruz’s 545 and John Kasich’s 143. A candidate needs 1,237 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination.
Cruz, meanwhile, slammed Trump in a radio interview, accusing him of being inciting violence and using dirty tricks to intimidate voters.
“That is the tactic of union thugs. That is violence. It is oppressive. The idea that Donald is threatening delegates, we’re seeing that pattern over and over again,”