WASHINGTON (CNN) — Donald Trump Jr. said that the only way Texas Sen. Ted Cruz can convince delegates to support him over his father is with bribery.
“Ted Cruz has no chance of winning this without bribing the delegates. That’s his game at this point,” the son of the real estate mogul told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a CNN “State of the Union” interview that aired Sunday.
Trump Jr. said if his father wanted to bribe delegates he could — and do it very well.
“He could send his private plane and send them down to Doral, they could play golf for a week and then we win that delegate. That’s not the way this country should be run,” Trump Jr. said.
But the businessman’s oldest son said that he and his family might consider becoming more involved in the delegate allocation process.
“So are you or your sister, Ivanka, or, Eric, or any other member of your family, are you planning to help your dad woo delegates one by one on behalf of your father,” Tapper asked.
“You know I think we’ll do some of that, I think that’s natural,” Trump Jr. said. “I think we’re going to do what we need to do to win, to a point, but I think we want to win without having to do that.”
Cruz’s camp has been beating back allegations of bribing delegates all week as the Trump campaign has been sharply critical of what it considers to be a “rigged” delegate allocation process.
Cruz’s campaign delegate adviser Ken Cuccinelli disputed similar accusations in a CNN interview earlier this week.
“I call foul and BS,” he told CNN’s John Berman. “This is just more outrageous charges from the Trump campaign … If there’s any not nice tactics going on here, the Trump people are pushing delegates away from themselves and to us because of their frankly rough and unprecedented Gestapo tactics.”
Trump Jr. also said the Republican National Committee would rather have Hillary Clinton elected to the presidency than allow Trump to be the Republican nominee.
“I think at this point the Republican establishment would much rather just hand the things over to Hillary, hand the reins over to her, let her run it,” Trump, Jr. said. “There’s no accountability in the party. ”
“They want to try to push someone else who has zero chance of winning anywhere else, it doesn’t make any sense to me. I have to certainly question their motives,” he added.
