Donald Trump is arguing that the delegate elections system is rigged because he "hasn't done his homework on it and he hasn't paid attention" about a voting process that has been place for years, former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu said Monday.
"Just because he wasn't smart enough to pay attention, he is trying now to bully the process with his rhetoric," Sununu told Fox News' Bill Hemmer on the "
America's Newsroom" program. "Every state is entitled to choose their own process. And every candidate, including all the other candidates, paid attention to that. But he chose to try run a campaign on hot rhetoric instead of doing his homework."
Trump's claims that the elections system is rigged against outsider candidates like himself grew over the weekend after Wyoming's state convention awarded all 14 of its delegates to his main rival, Ted Cruz.
"Wyoming has a process where they select delegates through a series of caucuses starting at the community, through the counties, and then to the state," said Sununu. "That's been in place for years."
Meanwhile, Sununu said Trump will be in trouble at the Cleveland convention this summer if he does not have 1,237 delegates, the minimum he needs to claim the presidential nomination on the first ballot.
And even though a new Wall Street Journal poll shows that most people believe the candidate with the most votes should have the nomination, it must be the majority, not the most votes from the delegates, said Sununu, and he doesn't think that will happen, even considering the number of unbound delegates that will be available.
"Most of those unbound delegates can't stand him," Sununu argued. "He has to try to win on the first ballot because a lot of his delegates also can't stand him, and they will abandon him on the second."
Sununu, the former White House chief of staff for President George H.W. Bush, also chaired the rules committee for the 2012 GOP convention, and pushed back against some in the party who want to change the event's rules before it convenes.
The convention rules "can't" be the same this year as they were in 2012, said Sununu, because "every convention has to adopt its own rules that deals with the time frame they're in and process that is taking place."
The Republican National Committee, led by Chairman Reince Priebus, has its own rules committee, Sununu continued, but "that rules committee cannot and should not try to change the rules for the convention. The convention should have its rules established by the convention rules committee that will meet a day or two before the opening of the convention and establish the rules."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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