Republican front running nominee Donald J.Trump called the party's delegate selection system "corrupt and crooked" on Sunday as he pressed his case that the process was rigged against him.
The New York Times reports that he told reporters at a Staten Island hotel stating, "Look, nobody has better toys than I do. I can put them in the best planes and bring them to the best resorts anywhere in the world.
"You're basically buying these people," he added. "You're basically saying, 'Delegate, listen, we're going to send you to Mar-a-Lago on a Boeing 757, you're going to use the spa, you're going to this, you're going to that, we want your vote.' That's a corrupt system."
Trump's comments were the latest fireworks in his increasingly volatile feud with the Republican National Committee on how delegates are selected in the nomination process of a presidential race. He was the only candidate to campaign in New York two days before the primaries there where he holds a wide margin in the polls.
He accepted an award from the New York Veteran Police Association during his visit to Staten Island, a stronghold of his support, and spoke at a party brunch. At a rally in Poughkeepsie, he again criticized party officials.
Still speaking to reporters on Staten Island, Trump said he hoped that the July convention "doesn't involve violence. And I don't think it will," he said. "But I will say this: It's a rigged system. It's a crooked system. It's 100 percent crooked."
They better get going," he urged the Republican National Committee to cheers from the few thousand people at the first of his two New York rallies ahead of Tuesday's pivotal primary, NBC News reported.
"Because I'll tell you what, you're gonna have a rough July at that convention," the Republican front-runner continued. "You better get going, and you better straighten out the system because the people want their vote, the people want to vote and they want to be represented properly."
But despite Trump's incessant complaining, another NBC News article said that Trump has benefited far more than Ted Cruz under the party's arcane rules for allocating delegates.
With 756 delegates or 45 percent of all delegates awarded to date,Trump now leads the Republican field. Yet, he has won about 37 percent of all votes in the primaries, according to the NBC analysis, meaning, Trump's delegate support is greater than his actual support from voters.
In contrast, Cruz' 545 delegates comprise 32 percent of the delegates awarded to date while winning 28 percent of all votes in the primaries. For each percentage point of total primary votes that Trump has won, he has been awarded 1.22 percent of the total delegates while Cruz was awarded 1.14 percent.
Using Republican Party math, Trump has been awarded a delegate bonus of 22 percent as Cruz got 14 percent delegate bonus.
