Trump, Clinton get closer to an election showdown
Published 8:58 am Wednesday, April 27, 2016
WASHINGTON — Bolstering his grip on the Republican primaries, Donald Trump prepared today for a general election showdown with Hillary Clinton, accusing the Democratic front-runner of “playing the woman card” in her presidential campaign.
Trump swept five states in Tuesday’s Northeast primaries, bringing him tantalizingly close to securing the Republican nomination against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Clinton, meanwhile, is now 90 percent of the way to her party’s nomination after four solid victories of her own.
Trump, the Republican businessman, pushed forward with his charge that Clinton is “playing the woman card,” telling CNN’s “New Day” in a telephone interview Wednesday that “she does have the woman card” but said that “a lot of women don’t like Hillary, despite the card.”
Clinton said during her Tuesday night rally in Philadelphia that Trump had accused her of playing the “woman card,” telling supporters, “if fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the ‘woman card,’ then deal me in.”
The Republican race now turns to Indiana, where next week’s primary marks one of Cruz’s last chances to slow Trump and push the race toward a contested convention. While Trump does need to keep winning in order to stay on his narrow path to the GOP nomination, he declared himself the party’s “presumptive nominee” after Tuesday’s results rolled in.
“It’s over. As far as I’m concerned it’s over,” he declared. The real estate mogul now has 77 percent of the delegates he needs.
Trump emerged with more than 50 percent of the Republican votes in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maryland, and scored over 60 percent in Delaware and Rhode Island. Similarly, Clinton won convincingly in four of the five contests, scoring 56 percent in Pennsylvania and 63 percent in Maryland — the two biggest contests of the night. Her rival, Bernie Sanders, won the Rhode Island primary with 55 percent of the vote.
Trump planned to deliver a foreign policy speech in Washington and then campaign in Indiana. The address at a downtown hotel is the first in a series of speeches the Republican front-runner is expected to give in the coming weeks, all with the goal of easing Americans’ concerns about his readiness for the presidency.
Likewise, Clinton was eager to turn her attention to Trump. While Clinton advisers say they won’t underestimate Trump, as many of his vanquished Republican rivals did, her campaign sees opportunities to not only energize Democrats in an effort to keep him out of the White House but also appeal to Republicans turned off by the brash billionaire.