Donald Trump on Thursday said he did not support a resolution presented to the Republican National Committee to crown him as the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee even as his rival Nikki Haley continues with her campaign.
The RNC confirmed earlier in the day that it would consider the proposal next week to officially declare Trump the presumptive nominee before 48 states had cast ballots in the primary. Hours after the former president said he didn’t like the idea, the proposal was withdrawn, reports say.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said that while he appreciated the proposal to make him the presumptive nominee, “I feel, for the sake of PARTY UNITY, that they should NOT go forward with this plan, but that I should do it the ‘Old Fashioned’ way, and finish the process off AT THE BALLOT BOX.” “Thank you to the RNC for the Respect and Devotion you have shown me!” he added.
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With his current tally of 32 delegates, Trump is a ways short of the 1,215 required for the nomination. Before his intervention, news of the draft resolution had rankled some RNC members who thought it unjust to make him the presumptive nominee while a rival is still in the race.
“Who cares what the RNC says?” Haley campaign spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas told The Dispatch, which first reported the resolution. “We’ll let millions of Republican voters across the country decide who should be our party’s nominee, not a bunch of Washington insiders.”
After victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump and his allies are piling pressure on Haley to drop out of the race. On Wednesday, Trump also went after donors to Haley’s campaign, saying that anyone who made new contributions would be “permanently barred” from his “MAGA camp.”
