Trump shifts to new campaign phase

Published 10:31 am Wednesday, May 4, 2016

INDIANAPOLIS — Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nomination virtually in hand, signaled a new phase of his outsider campaign on Wednesday that includes a search for a running mate with experience governing and outreach to one-time competitors in an effort to heal the fractured Republican Party.

On that, though, there are exceptions.

“I am confident I can unite much of” the GOP Trump said Wednesday on NBC’s “Today Show, as several prominent Republicans said they’d prefer Democrat Hillary Clinton over the New York billionaire. In a shot at his critics, Trump added: “Those people can go away and maybe come back in eight years after we served two terms. Honestly, there are some people I really don’t want.”

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His comments on several networks came a few hours after Trump, once dismissed as a fringe contender, became all-but certainly the leader of the Republican Party into the fall campaign against Clinton. The former secretary of state suffered a defeat Tuesday in Indiana to her rival, Bernie Sanders, but holds a definitive lead in Democratic delegates who will decide the Democratic nomination.

The Republican competition changed dramatically with Trump’s Indiana victory and Ted Cruz’s abrupt decision to quit the race. Trump won the Indiana contest with 53.3 percent of the vote, to Cruz’s 36.6 percent and Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 7.6 percent, according to unofficial results.

But the billionaire’s surge toward the nomination — he still is about 200 delegates short of the 1,237 needed to win — left the GOP in a deep state of uncertainty.

Some Republican leaders remain acutely wary of Trump and have insisted they could never support him, even in a faceoff against Clinton.

“The answer is simple: No,” Tweeted Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who has consistently said he could not support Trump.

Even before the Indiana results were finalized, some conservative leaders were planning a Wednesday meeting to assess the viability of launching a third party candidacy to compete with him in the fall.

Such Republicans worry about Trump’s views on immigration and foreign policy, as well as his over-the-top persona.

Hours before clinching victory in Indiana, Trump was floating an unsubstantiated claim that Cruz’s father appeared in a 1963 photograph with John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald — citing a report first published by the National Enquirer.

Trump defended his reference to the Enquirer article on Wednesday morning as “Not such a bad thing,” but the line of attack was the final straw for some Republican critics.