Ted Cruz has swept Colorado’s delegates and some of South Carolina’s delegates are switching to Cruz. Cruz took all of the Colorado delegates while Trump’s ground campaign floundered again. That story here.
This morning on ‘Fox and Friends’ Trump erupted in a fit of anger over the Colorado Republican leaders choosing Colorado’s candidate. The rules in Colorado have been known since last summer. Voters at the convention voted for Delegates to represent their preferred candidates at the convention in Cleveland. Details of the Colorado rules here.
I’ve gotten millions … of more votes than [Sen. Ted] Cruz, and I’ve gotten hundreds of delegates more, and we keep fighting, fighting, fighting, and then you have a Colorado where they just get all of these delegates, and it’s not [even] a system,” Trump said, during the Fox News broadcast. “There was no voting. I didn’t go out there to make a speech or anything. There’s no voting.”
“They offer them trips — they offer them all sorts of things, and you’re allowed to do that,” Trump said, of the method by which some woo delegates. “I mean, you’re allowed to offer trips, and you can buy all these votes. What kind of a system is this? Now, I’m an outsider, and I came into the system and I’m winning the votes by millions of votes. But the system is rigged. It’s crooked.”
How is it possible that the people of the great State of Colorado never got to vote in the Republican Primary? Great anger – totally unfair!” wrote Trump, in one Twitter post.
He followed it up with a second tweet: “The people of Colorado had their vote taken away from them by the phony politicians. Biggest story in politics. This will not be allowed!”
The Colorado Republican party changed their rules for the presidential preference poll last August. From the Denver Post on August 25th,
The GOP executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference poll after the national party changed its rules to require a state’s delegates to support the candidate that wins the caucus vote.”
“It takes Colorado completely off the map” in the primary season, Ryan Call, a former state GOP chairman, told the paper.
Apparently the Trump campaign was unaware of this change, or unaware how to handle it to their advantage. And now they’re furious that Cruz won in Colorado.
Voters at the convention voted for Delegates to represent their preferred candidates at the convention in Cleveland. Details of the Colorado rules here. This could not have been a surprise to the Trump campaign.
Trump on ‘Fox and Friends’ responding to the decision in Colorado to give all of their delegates to Cruz: