Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said today that a contested GOP convention could be a disaster if he goes to Cleveland a few delegates shy of 1,237 - and doesn’t leave s the party’s nominee.
“I think you’d have riots,” Trump said on CNN.
Noting that he’s “representing many millions of people,” he told Chris Cuomo: “If you disenfranchise those people, and you say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re 100 votes short’ . . . I think you’d have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen.”
The billionaire businessman emphasized, though, that he expects to secure the 1,237 delegates needed to win the party’s nomination ahead of the Republican National Convention in July.
“I’m a closer,” he said. “I get things closed.”
Trump now has 621 delegates. He walloped Sen. Marco Rubio in the first-term senator’s home state of Florida on Tuesday, forcing Rubio from the race. He also won in Illinois and North Carolina, extending his lead over Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas as the once-unwieldy nominating contest narrowed to a three-person brawl with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who won his home state’s primary.
“I did well in Ohio, but I was running against a popular governor,” Trump said today. He added: “I ran out of a little bit of time. I think if I had a day or two more, it would have been perhaps a little bit different.”
Trump and Cruz are in a dead heat in Missouri, which was still too close to call on the morning after the Republican primary. The state has 52 Republican delegates.
“We started out with 17 people; we’re down to three,” Trump said on CNN. “But this has been a nasty one; I guess that’s why your ratings are as high as they’ve ever been.”
In a remarkable campaign fueled by anger, Trump has been under steady attack - by rival Republicans, by progressives, by super PACs determined to derail his candidacy, and by the president, who has twice taken shots at the GOP front-runner in recent days.
The tone and tenor of the campaign will eventually shift away from divisiveness, Trump suggested Wednesday.
“I think there’s a natural healing process, once the battle is over, once the war is over,” he said. “I’ve gotten along with people all my life, this is actually a little unusual. . . . I think it will happen again.”
He added: “We have to win, and as we win people will forget and they will feel better. That’s the way life is. After we put it away, a lot of feelings will be soothed.”
But, he said in a subsequent interview on MSNBC: “We don’t want to lose the edge. We still have two people left.”
Asked Wednesday whether he’d consider Rubio for vice president, Trump deflected the question, telling MSNBC: “It’s just too early.”
Mr. Trump noted that he liked Mr. Rubio — “until about three weeks ago, when he started getting nasty. ... I was very surprised when he started doing his Don Rickles routine on me.”
Also today, Mr. Trump says he will not participate in the next GOP presidential debate on Monday in Utah because “we’ve had enough debates.”
The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination said on Fox News that he’s committed to a big speech the same night.
Mr. Trump says he didn’t know about the March 21 event until Tuesday night, when he won critical primaries in Illinois, North Carolina and Florida.
Without Mr. Trump, the only two onstage would be Mr. Kasich and Mr. Cruz. It would be a clash of potential alternatives as each man maneuvers to claim the mantle of credible alternative to the brash billionaire who has controlled the race for months.
The Associated Press contributed.
First Published: March 16, 2016, 12:58 p.m.
