Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said that if the GOP tries to deny him the party's nomination even if he's within reach of sufficient delegates at convention time, "We'd have riots."
Trump told CNN "Newsday" Wednesday morning he's large numbers of people into the party — "The really big story is how many people are voting in these primaries," — and he says "if you just disenfranchise these people, I think you would have problems like you've never seen before."
He told anchor Chris Cuomo, "I wouldn't lead it," but said it could happen.
Trump cited a hypothetical scenario where he'd go to the Cleveland convention in July with roughly 1,000 delegates and a rival would show up there with 500.
He said he believes he would nail down the nomination before the convention and said he couldn't imagine failing to get the party's nomination virtually "automatically" in such a scenario. Trump said "I don't even want to think about" what he'd do if he's in such an advantageous position but still does not become the nominee.
John Kasich said his home state victory Tuesday night dealt Donald Trump a "very, very big blow" to getting the number of delegates required to win the GOP presidential nomination. He told NBC's "Today" that winning Ohio makes the case that neither Trump nor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz can "come into Ohio with the philosophies they have and win. And if you can't win Ohio, you can't be president."
Kasich has won no other states and lags far behind Trump and Cruz in delegates. But Kasich predicted that "nobody is going to have enough delegates" by the time of the Republican National Convention this summer to win the nomination outright.
