Some delegates who confirmed their decisions to back Mr Trump gave a lukewarm response, saying they are supporting him out of a sense of obligation because he won their state’s primary.
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Donald Trump has officially done it, quietly moving past the magic number of delegates needed to ensure he is crowned Republican nominee for the White House in 2016.
Five states including California vote on June 7 with more than 300 delegates at stake. Though his winnings had been virtually guaranteed by Ted Cruz’s defeat, it is only now that Trump has reached the threshold with the help of some previously uncommitted delegates who now support him.
Trump was due to deliver a speech on energy later Thursday in Bismark, North Dakota.
Barring some dramatic rebellion or boycott by delegates still unnerved by the notion of a former reality star taking their party’s helm – and some are still agitating for exactly that – there will be no contested convention.
“Leadership is leadership”, House said.
Trump has surpassed the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination. When I think of the campaign I held in 2005 – touring the United Kingdom to become leader of the Conservative Party – it was pretty exhausting, but it is a small campaign compared to the vast nature of what these candidates have been through.
Complicating her election challenge, Clinton’s Democratic rival Bernie Sanders embraced the possibility of a one-on-one debate with Trump.
Hours before clinching the nomination, he announced the departure of political director Rick Wiley, who was leading the campaign’s push to hire staff in key battleground states. Even though anti-Trump factions exist all over the country and even within his party, their full-on onslaught and negative campaigns could not derail the business tycoon’s candidacy.
He told a Bismarck audience that Clinton has “declared war on the American worker”, that she’s “going to abolish your right to own guns”, and that she created a foreign policy legacy “of total chaos”.
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At the Billings rally, Trump offered new specifics on his general election strategy.
