Hold on to your tinfoil hats – Donald Trump just accused Ted Cruz’s father of possibly having a hand in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Ted Cruz on Tuesday night ended his presidential campaign, essentially ceding the nomination to front-runner Donald Trump.
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Cruz’s polls show he is not trailing Trump in IN as badly as he was right after dropping five more states late last month, but his supporters are increasingly skeptical about their prospects in Indiana.
Meanwhile in the Democratic race, Clinton’s lead over Bernie Sanders has expanded to 54 percent to 40 percent in her biggest advantage since early March, according to NBC News and Survey Monkey.
The next major Democratic primary occurs the same day, when West Virginia will award 37 delegates. Trump leads Cruz 996-565 in the delegate count and holds a substantial lead both in the crucial in primary race and in overall nationwide polling. “It’s disgusting”, Trump said.
As the vote returns flowed in, Cruz announced that he has ended his campaign at an event in Indianapolis, with his wife, Heidi, at his side. If Trump wins all or a lot of them, the requiems for the Cruz campaign will begin to roll in. Combined, she is a little more than 200 delegates short of clinching the nomination; Sanders is about 1,000 delegates short.
Cruz had been counting on a win in Indiana’s primary to slow the NY billionaire’s progress toward the Republican nomination.
In Indiana, the stakes are high.
Similarly, Clinton would have 2,676 delegates, almost 300 more than the 2,383 required to become the first ever woman to be a presidential nominee of a major political party. Trump, in response, said Cruz had become “more and more unhinged”. Cruz and other Republicans have argued that Trump would be roundly defeated in the general election, denying their party the White House for a third straight term.
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Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Trump’s final two rivals for the nomination, have no path to winning the nomination on the first ballot and are only vying for a contested convention. Cruz is at 572 delegates, while Kasich trails with 156. He also won the majority of delegates from state party conventions in three states, a sign of his team’s superior organization.
