The presumptive Republican nominee is taking his tiff with the GOP establishment public, making it clear that there is lots of tension at the top echelons of the party a month before the national convention. Donald Trump also put some names to his general complaints, accusing former Florida governor Jeb Bush of working against him and even making thinly veiled references about Sen. Ted Cruz’s involvement in a supposed plot against him.
“We’re going to beat Hillary. And it would be helpful if the Republicans could help us a little bit,” Trump said. “You know? Okay? Just a little bit.”
Trump criticized talk of a delegate revolt at the convention in Cleveland, saying any type of effort to oust him as the nominee would be “illegal,” but later said it was a media-generated story anyway so it didn’t matter. “It’s all made up by the press,” he said. “It’s a hoax, I’m telling you.”
Still, despite his dismissals he directly took aim at his old primary opponent Bush. “By the way, Jeb is working on the movement, just so you understand. I love competition like that. I love it,” said Trump. He added: “And the other one should be obvious to you, but we’ll figure that out very easily.” Although Trump never actually said Cruz’s name, there seems to be little doubt about who he was referring to.
If the GOP refuses to rally behind him, Trump made it clear he is ready to put his money where his mouth is and stop fundraising for the party. “Right now, I’m raising a lot of money for the Republican Party, and a lot of beneficiaries, and I like doing it—but we have to have help,” Trump said. “You know, life is like a two-way street, right?”
He drove that point home in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that aired Sunday, saying that while “it would be nice if the Republicans stuck together” he is confident that he could “win either way.”
