Thread: Trump Doesn't Expect Violence if He Fails to Win Republican Presidential Nomination

Trump Doesn't Expect Violence if He Fails to Win Republican Presidential Nomination

By Josh Haskell
Apr 17, 2016, 2:35 PM ET

Donald Trump doesn't believe the Republican National Committee will see violence if he fails to win the nomination when the convention is held this summer.

Speaking Sunday in Staten Island ahead of New York's primary this week, Trump again criticized the Republican Party's process for choosing a nominee, saying the "rigged system" makes it about party bosses instead of voters.

"I hope it doesn’t involve violence," he said, claiming his rallies are "the safest places to be in the country."

"But I will say this -- it's a rigged system, it's a crooked system. It's 100 percent crooked."

RNC chair Reince Preibus responded to some of Trump's frequent complaints last week, saying it was the responsibility of the campaigns to understand the rules as the nomination process had been known for more than a year.

Trump expressed confidence he would win the nomination on the first ballot in Cleveland by securing the needed 1,237 delegates.

"A lot of people say, 'don’t complain, you’re winning,' and I think we’ll get there on the first ballot, actually," he said.

Trump's path to the nomination became less certain Saturday after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz swept 14 available delegates in Wyoming, a week after doing the same in Colorado. Trump said his campaign didn't put much effort into either state because both were they were for "the bosses" and not the voters.

"We didn’t play in Colorado because I heard that it was going to be for the bosses, for the RNC," he said. "I don’t wanna play that game. I’m winning with the voters and we’re winning big."

Trump contended Cruz's recent wins were because of the money his campaign spent wining and dining delegates.

"Nobody has better toys than I do," he said. "I can put them in the best planes and bring them to the best resorts anywhere in the world. Doral, Mar-a-Lago. I can put them in the best places in the world -- California. I have something that blows everything away."

Trump’s campaign has accused the Cruz campaign of breaking the rules when it comes to the hunt for the delegates needed to secure the nomination. His convention manager, Paul Manafort, threatened the campaign would be challenging some results while speaking to ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.

“We’ll be filing protests. Missouri, we're going to be filing protests. Colorado, we're going to be filing protests,” Manafort said.

Cruz’s delegate operations director, Ken Cuccinelli, countered in a later interview, saying Trump's campaign was whining about the results and had used unsavory tactics to win delegates.

“How about calling for riots in the street? How about threats -- 'We’re going to go to the hotel rooms of delegates' -- death threats to the Colorado Republican chairman?” Cuccinelli said. “They keep using the rhetoric. This is a banana republic approach from the Trump team because they’re getting beat on the ground.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump...ry?id=38466532

Cruz’s delegate operations director, Ken Cuccinelli, countered in a later interview, saying Trump's campaign was whining about the results and had used unsavory tactics to win delegates.

“How about calling for riots in the street? How about threats -- 'We’re going to go to the hotel rooms of delegates' -- death threats to the Colorado Republican chairman?” Cuccinelli said. “They keep using the rhetoric. This is a banana republic approach from the Trump team because they’re getting beat on the ground.”

Trump isn't whining. He's exposing a problem in our political system, one that needs the high beam on it. It's not right for a candidate to win delegates from a state because party bosses refuse to hold an election of the people, and it's not right for a candidate who won delegates to lose them from party boss tactics whether it's coercion of some form, threats of positions within the party, wining and dining, making secret promises of what you'll do for them if you're elected or while you're still in the Senate if you lose the nomination.

It's a very bad system that needs much reform to bring our elections back to the people. We're taking our country back from foreign interests, and we need to take our country back from the politicians, political insiders, and party bosses who have sold off and our our poor beleaguered country to any and every foreign lobbyist with a nickel in their pocket to hand out to them.

We can't fix our country if the very system that we depend on to protect us is as corrupt as the problems we're trying to solve.

3/17/16

Trump warns of 'riots' if denied White House nomination