There’s something else about these delegate fights that have taken place over the weekend where Cruz has just skunked Trump. It isn’t even a contest. It is fascinating to watch. And, of course, the Trump people think that games are being played and that tricks are being pulled. But that’s not happening. This is just somebody who understands the system using it. You know, we could go into a little discussion if you want about insider versus outsider, and I’ve tried to tell people: “These insiders are not just gonna let this stuff go, folks. They’re not just gonna sit idly by and let you take it away from ’em.”

This morning on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, the guest, the Trumpster. During a discussion about Trump’s loss at the Colorado Republican convention, Ainsley Earhardt is talking here to Trump, and Ainsley Earhardt says, “Over the weekend you lost the state of Colorado, and you tweeted about it. You said you were angry. You said it was unfair. Why do you think that?”

TRUMP: In the Denver area and Colorado itself they’re going absolutely crazy because they weren’t given a vote. It’s a crooked deal. And I see it. And honestly I see it with Bernie, too. I’ve gotten millions more votes, millions, not just a couple, millions more votes than Cruz. Now they’re trying to pick off those delegates one by one. That’s not the way democracy is supposed to work. You know, and they offer ’em trips, they offer ’em all sorts of things. What kind of a system is this? I’m an outsider and I came into the system and I’m winning the votes by millions of votes. But the system is rigged, it’s crooked. When you look, even at Bernie, I’m not a fan of Bernie, but every time I turn on your show, Bernie wins, Bernie wins, Bernie wins, but yet Bernie is not winning.

That’s true. That’s true about Crazy Bernie. They have rigged it over to the Democrat side. They’re using their superdelegates. It’s not rigged on the Republican side. This is just the establishment taking advantage. You know, what they’ve done is fake everybody out here. And look, this is multileveled here, to get an idea of what’s going on. The establishment has had everybody looking at rule 40, for example. I mean, there have been all kinds of leaks in Politico. I mean, the last series of months we’ve had story after story about how supposedly the establishment is panicking, and the steps that they’re going to take to try to stop Trump. And we hear about maybe a third-party candidate that we’ve never heard of being nominated on the floor in a brokered convention. Everything.

But the one thing that nobody leaked, the one thing that nobody had a heads-up on was how Cruz was going to go into all of these states and arrange to get most of the delegates. We’re talking second and third ballot here. On the first ballot the delegates — for the most part; there are exceptions — are pledged to vote the way the people in their state voted. Pennsylvania, however, is different. Pennsylvania is coming up. You want to know about Pennsylvania? Only 17 out of Pennsylvania’s 70 some odd delegates vote the way voters in the primary go. Some 51, 54, I don’t have the number right in front of me, over 50 delegates in Pennsylvania are unbound, on the first ballot.

Just use an example. If Trump wins Pennsylvania by 75%, he likely will only get 17 of the 60 or 70 delegates, because only 17 are pledged and bound to whoever wins the state primary. Well, Trump has not been working any of these delegates. Why? Who knows. It could be that he didn’t think he had to. It could be he didn’t even know. It could be he had nobody on his staff that really knows how this works.

You do because you have been treated to in-depth explanations of how this whole delegate process works, particularly once we get to second and third ballots. And even I pointed out to you that it’s very possible — we won’t know actually ’til the convention starts — very possible that a lot of delegates that have to vote Trump on the first ballot don’t actually support him. And if we get to second or third ballot then they’ll abandon him and go for whoever. Right now Cruz is calling dibs.

Now, what happened in Colorado is, I’m sorry to say, it’s not a trick. What happened in Colorado is right out in the open. Everybody’s known how Colorado runs its affairs. Everybody has known. Nobody just chose to look at it. It’s no secret that Colorado was gonna have a convention and they’re gonna choose their delegates before the primary. It’s not a secret. It’s just nobody leaked it. Nobody talked about it. Nobody bragged about it. So it was left to be discovered by people who didn’t know. And it turns out that people on the Trump campaign didn’t know.

Now, I can understand how they might feel tricked here. I can understand how they might feel bugabooed because millions of votes, theoretically, are gonna happen that aren’t going to count. Hey, welcome to establishment politics. We have played for you the sound bites on this program of delegates — I’m sorry — of officials, rules committee officials. We played the sound bite of one of these guys that said, “Hey, what you all have to understand is the people don’t select our nominee; the delegates do, we do.” None of this is a mystery. This is the definition of insider versus outsider. This is a classic illustration of how an outsider has to learn the insider game to play it.

Every business has its rules and laws, bylaws, and specific ways that you have to climb the ladder of success. In addition to that, people that run the club — in this case, the Republican establishment — are not gonna sit idly by and let a bunch of outsiders, the peasants with pitch forks, however you want to visualize them, they’re just not gonna sit idly by and let people come in and take it. It’s too valuable. In most cases this is how all of these people value themselves. This is from which they derive their self-worth, is their membership in this club.

So I don’t see Ted Cruz lying and cheating his way to the convention. I see a lot of hard work. I see some people who know what they have to do, given where they are. They’re in second place in both the vote count and the delegate count. They’re serious about winning. The Cruz team is serious about winning. They have made themselves fully aware of how the process works, and they’ve been out working it for quite a while. They went into Louisiana where Trump scored a massive win but they’ve come out of there with many more delegates than, by appearances, they should have.

Ted Cruz had goals. He worked the problem ’til he got the result he wanted. What he’s demonstrating, folks, he’s demonstrating he knows how to work himself within this insider labyrinth. He knows how to navigate it. He knows how to work it. He knows how to turn it to his advantage. You have to look at this and say, “Okay, what does this tell us about Cruz, if he should become president?” No matter how enamored you are — and a lot of people are — no matter how enamored you are of the notion of a total outsider with no links to the establishment, no links to insider politics, nothing whatsoever, you’re fascinated by that happening, somebody coming in and just totally wrecking the castle, finding out that you can’t do that without getting inside the castle first. ‘Cause people inside the castle are not gonna let you crumble the walls.

You know, being an outsider, it has benefits, but it has drawbacks, too, and knowing the rules inside out and outworking the competition is not cheating. If you happen to be more knowledgeable of how things work and are able to work it to your advantage, that’s just hard work. That isn’t cheating. I think the entire lesson, if look at the Obama campaign and the Cruz campaign, organization matters, from the grassroots on up. Obama has charisma. Trump has loads of charisma. They connect with their audiences.

But I think what happened to Trump — and I’m just wild guessing here — I think the assumption was made at some point that our lead is so massive and that our love is so great and we’re just skunking everybody, if you go back to the early months of the primary, we’re skunking everything, we’re getting all that free media, we’re getting all these votes, we’re winning in every one of these primaries, most of ’em that count, losing some of the caucuses, but our poll numbers, we’re getting double-digit leads over people. And it was probably assumed that that would translate to delegates, and maybe even assumed it would translate to massive public and inside-the-party support. But of course it doesn’t.

People that don’t want Trump to win are going to get even more worked up about it and do what they can to stop it. And they’re gonna use the tools that they have available. And it happened to be the tools that they wrote. It happened to be the tools that they, who run the establishment, put in place. And every business has them, folks. Every business. Every career, every industry, no matter what, every organization, even Planned Parenthood, there is a way you get to the top in that crowd. At every homeless shelter there’s a structure. There’s a way you get to the top there. There’s a way you get to the top at Harvard. There’s a way you get to the top in a professional sports organization.

There’s a way you get to the top in politics. People who don’t like certain rules may call them loopholes and may say somebody’s cheating. But that’s just people using the rules as they have been written. Politico has a story: “Trump’s Saturday Delegate Disaster.” But it’s interesting; there’s no mention of Cruz in this story. That’s quite telling to me, because, remember, The Politico is the chosen receptacle for GOP establishment leaks. This is a long story, “Trump’s Saturday Delegate Disaster,” and there’s not a single mention of Ted Cruz.

Why is Trump having a delegate disaster? It’s Ted Cruz. It isn’t the establishment. And I’m gonna remind you again, I don’t know how many times, but I’ll say it again. If the establishment or Cruz succeed, if Trump doesn’t get his 1,237 before the convention, it may be over, the way this is going. Because what Cruz is sewing up is delegates on the second ballot.

But my humble belief is that if and after the powers that be dispatch Trump, they will then next seek to dispatch Cruz. Over there Paul Ryan’s running a campaign for something, and everybody’s marveling at it. He was just in Israel talking to Bibi Netanyahu. And there are people whispering Kasich, Kasich, Kasich. So this is by no means settled…

…NBC News has a story. I know, I know, NBC News. But their headline is this: “Despite Complaints, Delegate System Has Given Trump a 22 Percent Bonus.” And their point is that Trump leads with 756 delegates, or 45% of all delegates awarded, yet he’s won 37% of all votes. Meaning Trump’s delegate support is greater than his actual support from voters. As a matter of Republican Party math, Trump has been awarded a delegate bonus 22% above his raw support from voters.

So their point here is that even if you apply the same thinking to Cruz, you still end up with Trump has been awarded 8% more delegates than Cruz for the same rate of voter support. And they say Trump’s not factoring this in. They list the reasons why Trump has had a delegate bonus, if you will. Some of it benefits from crossover voters in open primary states. But their point here at NBC News — I know it’s NBC News — is that Trump really’s got nothing to complain about, because he has benefited from some of these very rules that have garnered him more delegates than the vote totals he’s amassed have actually earned him. (For more from the author of “RUSH: Cruz Isn’t Cheating Trump, He’s Outwitting and Outworking Trump” please click HERE)

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