Trump Campaign Manager Rips Cruz

Fresh off a prosecutor’s decision not to pursue battery charges against him, Donald Trump’s campaign manager on Friday thanked the GOP presidential front-runner for his loyalty and ripped Sen. Ted Cruz as a spoiler with no chance to win.

A prosecutor in Florida decided not to press a battery charge against Corey Lewandowski over an incident in which a reporter accused him of assaulting her at a news conference in Florida. Surveillance video undermined her account. Lewandowski also rejected Cruz’s argument that Trump encourages violence.

“You’ve got a typical politician who is just so typical,” said Lewandowski. “If this incident occurred on his staff, his answer immediately was to fire the person. And that’s the fundamental difference between a Donald Trump and a Ted Cruz, is loyalty … That’s the type of loyalty our country needs. And that’s the type of person who stands up for what is right regardless of what the political pressures are.”

[lz_radio_ad]

Notwithstanding head-to-head match-ups suggesting the Democrat Hillary Clinton would win handily in the general election, Lewandowski argued that Trump is the only Republican who can expand the playing field to states where Republicans traditionally have struggled. He named Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan. He added that even if Trump did not carry New York, he would run strongly enough to force the Democrats to burn resources defending it.

“The map is very simple,” he said. “Ted Cruz can win the exact same states that Mitt Romney won four years ago, and he can’t win one more.”

[lz_related_box id=”124306″]

Under fire for getting outmaneuvered by the Cruz campaign on the selection of delegates in various states, Lewandowski said the Trump campaign is the only one to submit its own slate of delegates in Pennsylvania. Delegates selected in each congressional district during the primary officially will be unbound.

But Lewandowski predicted Trump would win the old-fashioned way — by amassing at least 1,237 delegates needed to win on the first ballot. He said Cruz will be shut out of that path by April 26.

“The question he has to ask himself is why is he still running if cannot mathematically be the president of the United States,” he said. “It just doesn’t make sense. He’s doing it to be a foil.”

Lewandowski downplayed reports that his own role has been diminished as Trump has added new top staffers to his team. The additions are preparation to run a national campaign against a strong Democratic opponent, he said.

“You have to grow this campaign in order to win,” he said. “We are going to run against, in the general election, a dominant machine.”