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 The New York billionaire, who has been outmaneuvered by Cruz in a
series of recent state meetings to select national convention
delegates, said the process was set up to protect party insiders and
shut out insurgent candidates.
"The system is rigged, it's crooked," Trump said on Fox News on
Monday, alleging the Colorado convention results showed voters were
being denied a voice in the process.
"There was no voting. I didn't go out there to make a speech or
anything, there's no voting," Trump said. "The people out there are
going crazy, in the Denver area and Colorado itself, and they're
going absolutely crazy because they weren't given a vote. This was
given by politicians - it's a crooked deal."
Trump has 743 bound delegates to 545 for Cruz, according to an
Associated Press count, in the battle for the 1,237 delegates needed
to win the nomination on the first ballot and avoid a messy floor
fight at the Republican National Convention from July 18-21.
But both are at risk of not acquiring enough delegates for a
first-ballot victory, leaving many free to switch their votes on
later ballots.
That has set off a fierce scramble by Republican candidates to get
their supporters chosen as convention delegates and brought new
scrutiny to the selection rules, which vary by state.
Trump, who has brought in veteran strategist Paul Manafort to lead
his delegate-gathering efforts, complained about Cruz's recent
success at local and state party meetings where activists pick the
actual delegates who will attend the national convention.
Trump accused Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, of trying to steal
delegates in South Carolina. Trump won the state primary in
February, but Cruz supporters got four of the first six delegate
slots filled at congressional district meetings on Saturday,
according to local media.
Cruz also succeeded at getting more of his supporters chosen as
delegates in Iowa, where he won the caucuses in January, and at last
week's state convention in North Dakota.
"YOU CAN BUY ALL THESE VOTES"
"Now they're trying to pick off those delegates one by one," Trump
said. "That's not the way democracy is supposed to work. They offer
them trips, they offer them all sorts of things and you're allowed
to do that. You can buy all these votes."
Trump distributed a video of what he said was a Colorado voter
setting his Republican Party registration on fire in protest of the
process. "Great people being disenfranchised by politicians," Trump
said on Twitter, adding the Republican Party was "in trouble."
Guy Short, a Cruz backer in Colorado who was elected as a Republican
national convention delegate for the sixth time, disputed Trump's
allegations.
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"Donald Trump is a liar," Short told Reuters in an email. "Nobody
was offered anything. In fact, I spent thousands of dollars of my
own money campaigning to become a delegate because it's that
important to make sure Donald Trump is NOT our nominee."
Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer told Fox News
the process for choosing delegates had been set by states for more
than a year and was no secret.
"Not understanding that is one thing, but it's hardly rigged when
it's done right out in the open," he said.
Cruz campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said Trump was insulting the
process to distract from his losses. "He has a pattern of whining
when he isn't winning," she said in a statement.
Trump's organizational troubles even extend to two of his children.
Eric Trump, 32, and Ivanka Trump, 34, missed the deadline for
registering as Republicans to vote in next week's New York primary.
State records show both are registered voters who are not enrolled
in a party, ABC News reported.
For already registered voters, any request to switch party
affiliation must have been made by early October. The deadline for
new voter registrations was March 25.
Trump was the target on Monday of a new ad by the Democratic
front-runner, Hillary Clinton, that listed Trump's comments on
women, Mexican immigrants and Muslims.
Both Clinton and rival Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont,
have tried to position themselves as the Democrat most capable of
defeating Trump.
"Donald Trump says we can solve America's problems by turning
against each other," Clinton's ad said. "It's wrong and it goes
against everything New York and America stand for."
(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Megan Cassella; Editing by
Bill Trott and Jonathan Oatis)
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