USA TODAY International Edition
CRUZ QUITS RACE AFTER KNOCKOUT BLOW IN INDIANA
Trump romps to win in Hoosier State primary, prompting Texas senator to suspend campaign
Donald Trump easily won the Indiana primary Tuesday, all but clinching the Republican presidential nomination and calling for party unity as rival Ted Cruz dropped out of the GOP race.
“It’s been some unbelievable day and evening and year,” Trump told supporters at his building in midtown Manhattan, predicting that more Republicans will jump aboard the “Trump train” before a tough fall election against Democratic front- runner Hillary Clinton. “We’re going after Hillary Clinton,” Trump said to loud cheers.
Cruz, who finished a distant second to Trump in Indiana, told supporters earlier in the evening, “We gave it everything we’ve got, but the voters chose another path.”
Hours after Trump and Cruz accused each other of being unhinged liars, the New York businessman called Cruz “one helluva competitor” and added that the Texas businessman has an “amazing future.”
Trump thanked the people of Indiana for helping him over- come deficits in early polling and ignoring negative ads about his candidacy.
Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus, who spoke with Trump as the Indiana results rolled in, declared him “the presumptive nominee” and said in a tweet, “We all need to unite and focus on defeating” Clinton.
Cruz, who had hoped for a rally that would help him force a contested convention in July, had ar- gued earlier in the day that Trump is an unstable person who would drag Republicans down to defeat in November.
“Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and says, ‘ Dude, what’s your problem?’ ” Cruz said in Indiana.
The Indiana primary capped a remarkably angry campaign in which Trump and Cruz accused each other of being unhinged liars. Trump even suggested Tuesday that Cruz’s father was somehow linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
Protesting the senior Cruz’s criticism of him, Trump cited an ( uncorroborated) report in The National Enquirer with a picture supposedly showing Rafael Cruz standing near Oswald on a street. “It’s horrible,” Trump told Fox News.
Cruz called Trump’s claims “nuts” and “kooky,” saying Trump “is utterly amoral — morality does not exist for him.” He called the GOP front- runner “a pathological liar” who “doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies.”
Responding to what he called Cruz’s “ridiculous outburst,”
Trump described “Lyin’ Ted” as “a desperate candidate trying to save his failing campaign.” He said the Texas senator “does not have the temperament to be president of the United States.”
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who pulled out of Indiana last week and vowed to take on Trump in upcoming states, indicated he would remain in the race.
In a memo sent after Trump’s win, Kasich’s chief strategist, John Weaver, said, “Our strategy has been and continues to be one that involves winning the nomination at an open convention.”
Cruz had indicated earlier in the day that he would stay in the Republican race even if he lost Indiana, and his campaign announced appearances this week in Nebraska and Washington. But he told backers in Indiana he would continue only “as long as there was a viable path” to the nomination. “Tonight, I’m sorry to say it appears that path has been foreclosed,” Cruz said.
Trump is trying to unite Republicans behind his candidacy, even as he faces criticism from current and past rivals as well as a variety of “Never Trump” organizations.
Katie Packer, who chairs an anti- Trump group called the Our Principles PAC, indicated it would not give up despite the Indiana results, noting that Trump is still short of the delegate ma- jority he needs. “A substantial number of delegates remain up for grabs in this highly unpredictable year,” she said. There is “more time for Trump to continue to disqualify himself in the eyes of voters — as he did yet again today, spreading absurd tabloid lies about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination.”
Indiana marks Trump’s seventh win in a row, a streak that began in his home state of New York on April 19. After winning five more Northeastern states last week, Trump declared himself the “presumptive nominee.”
Cruz, who last defeated Trump in Wisconsin nearly a month ago, had high hopes for Indiana, a state with many conservative voters, but his campaign struggled. Former House speaker John Boehner, one of many GOP lawmakers who dislike Cruz, described the Texas senator as “Lucifer in the flesh,” and critics in the basketball- crazy Hoosier State mocked Cruz for describing a hoop as a “ring.”
Cruz had hoped to energize his campaign by naming businesswoman Carly Fiorina as his potential running mate. The move did not generate many votes in the Indiana primary.