Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:54 pm
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has gone into hiding after getting trounced in the Wisconsin primary and routed in the race for delegates in Colorado and South Carolina.
After months of Trump’s face and voice being all over the Sunday news shows, the Republican frontrunner was nowhere to be found. The only pro-Trump guest was his convention manager Paul Manafort.
Manafort kept up the Trump campaign’s tradition of saying completely insane things by claiming that Ted Cruz is intimidating Republican convention delegates with Gestapo tactics, “Well, he’s threatening, you go to these county conventions, and you see the tactics, Gestapo tactics, the scorched-earth tactics–Well, you look at, we’re going to be filing several protests because reality is, you know, they are not playing by the rules. But frankly, that’s the side game. Because the only game I’m focusing on right now is getting delegates. And the games that have happened, even this past weekend, you know, are not important to the long-term game of how do we get to 1,237.”
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Trump did do a phone interview with Jeanine Pirro ,who had donated $20,000 to in 2006, on Fox News on Saturday night, but there have been no high-profile media appearances since he lost Wisconsin on Tuesday. The tone was set when Trump did no media appearances, and only released a statement on Election Night that accused Ted Cruz of illegal activity.
Donald Trump has gone mostly media dark at a time when he is getting crushed by Ted Cruz is the race for convention delegates.
In fact, Trump lost five of the six delegate seats on the ballot in South Carolina’s 3rd and 7th congressional districts. Ted Cruz nabbed a delegate in the 7th district, while another, Alan Clemmons, remained uncommitted despite Trump’s dominant finish there in the state’s Feb. 20 primary. (The Manhattan billionaire won 43 percent of the district’s vote, to Cruz’s 20 percent and Kasich’s 6 percent.) Cruz also won two of three delegates in the 3rd district, while a third — Susan Aiken, a supporter of Marco Rubio — will go to the convention as an uncommitted delegate.
At the same time, Trump so far has been swept in Colorado, which unlike most states chooses its delegates indirectly, through a series of caucuses. Cruz, who has had a team working the state for months, received a thunderous ovation in Colorado Springs at Saturday afternoon’s chaotic GOP assembly as he announced his preliminary delegate haul while Trump’s bare-bones operation struggled to get organized.
Donald Trump can no longer win the Republican nomination with big rallies, phone interviews, and tweets. The contest to be the next GOP nominee has entered the professional political realm, and Trump is being routed like the unskilled, unprepared, and unorganized amateur that he is.
The Republican frontrunner is showing his lack of character by running away when the going gets tough. Americans want a president who will lead, not a spoiled rich boy who will take his ball and go home when things aren’t going his way.
Trump is becoming the thing that he hates most. A loser who is getting outhustled in a deal.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
